Comics

Comics are a series of drawings, usually arranged

horizontally on the page of a newspaper, a magazine, or a
book, that read as a narrative. The drawings carry the story,
but words may appear to enhance the narration. Text, when
included, often relies on the use of conversation to convey
information and on onomatopoeic sounds, such as Wham!
Pow! Slam!, to complement the action. The Yellow Kid
(1895) was among the first to regularly employ text within
the narrative frame by writing words on the shirt of "the
Kid." Since the late nineteenth century, comics have
usually featured a regular cast of characters, and contain
either a complete story or a series of episodes.
Modern comics have several forms: the single-frame story,
in which one picture conveys the entire tale, relies heavily
on familiar characterization and sequence of spatial
relationships within the frame; the gag strip, made up of
three or four pictures with a joke in the last frame, such as
Sad Sack (1942); the serial strip, which shows a new piece
of the story every day or once a week, such as Terry and
the Pirates (created in 1934 by Milton Caniff); and the
comic book, in which complete stories are contained within
the pages, the first of which, Funnies on Parade, was
published by Procter and Gamble in 1933 and sold for ten
cents. By the late 1940s, more than 50 million copies of
comic books were sold a month. The first comic strips were
syndicated in 1914, and any small-town newspaper could
purchase them. By the mid-twentieth century, Chic Young's
Blondie was the most highly syndicated comic strip in the
world, and Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey, which displayed
an American irreverence to military authority, was
syndicated in more than fifty countries.
The modern comic emerged from three forms of visual art:
mural arts, humorous cartoons, and the photo-graphic arts.
As an art form of social commentary, the modern comic
strips are also a direct outgrowth of the nineteenth-century
humorous cartoon, which was often a political or social
comment. Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) pioneered
political cartooning with the creation of a regular character,
Dr. Syntax. George Cruikshank (1792–1878) introduced
dialogue within the frame, usually included in balloons.
The narrative sequences of William Hogarth (1697–1764)
translated caricature into an art form and showed the
sequence of narrative pictures featuring a regular cast. For
portrayal of action, comics are indebted to Eadweard
Muybridge's "Study of the Body in Motion," a series of
photographs of a galloping horse, which became the
foundation for the creative depiction of basic elements of
action. Other historians credit the Swiss artist Rodolphe
Töppfer (1799–1846) with the first awareness of the
expressive qualities of line that allow a wide range of
exaggerated facial expression in his collection of picture
stories, Histoires en estampes (1846).
Changes in technology furthered the development of the
comic. The invention of photoengraving in 1873 made
newspaper illustration relatively inexpensive. In addition,
the size of the reading public grew, and at the turn of the
nineteenth century, a wide range of comics became a staple
in American life. In 1892, James Guilford Swinnerton's
strip for the San Francisco Examiner was among the first to
include continuing characters in a daily newspaper. In
1893, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World published its first
full-page color comic, and in that same year the New York
Recorder also featured a color page of comics. By the early
1900s, regular strips were appearing in the newspapers of
major cities throughout the United States. Comics could be
original or adaptations of literary works: in 1929, Harold
Foster adapted Edgar Rice Burrough's 1914 Tarzan of the
Apes for distribution by the Metropolitan Newspaper
Service.
Not everyone viewed the comics benignly. Frederic
Wertham's The Seduction of the Innocent (1954)
maintained that comics exercised a bad influence on young
people and led to an increase in juvenile delinquency. This
attack led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority in
1955 and the Newspaper Comics Council, in an effort to
police the content of comic books and strips.
As an instrument of popular culture drawing on the fine and
literary arts, comics have successfully reflected social
frustrations, like their eighteenth and nineteenth century
predecessors. Rube Goldberg's The Inventions of Professor
Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts (1914) described revolt against
the tyranny of machines, and Goldberg received a Pulitzer
Prize for Professor Lucifer and for Boob McNutt (1915) in
1948. Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury (1970) depicted campus
unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, and Trudeau won a Pulitzer
Prize for his work in 1975. Berkley Breathed created a
satirical comic, Bloom County, for which he won a Pulitzer
Prize in 1987. Comics (from the Greek κωμικός, kōmikos
"of or pertaining to comedy" from κῶμος - kōmos "revel,
komos",[1] via the Latin cōmicus) is a graphic medium in
which images convey a sequential narrative. The term
derives from the mostly humorous early work in the
medium, and came to apply to that form of the medium
including those far from comic. The sequential nature of
the pictures, and the predominance of pictures over words,
distinguishes comics from picture books, though there is
some overlap between the two. Most comics combine
words with images, often indicating speech in the form of
word balloons, but pantomime strips, such as The Little
King, are not uncommon. Words other than dialogue,
captions for example, usually expand upon the pictures, but
sometimes act in counterpoint.[2]
Early precursors of comics as they are known today include
Trajan's Column and the work of William Hogarth. By the
19th century, the medium as we know it today began to
take form among European and American artists. Comics
as a real mass medium started to emerge in the United
States in the early 20th century with the newspaper comic
strip, where its form began to be standardized (image-
driven, speech balloons etc.). The combination of words
and pictures proved popular and quickly spread throughout
the world.
Comic strips were soon gathered into cheap booklets and
reprint comic books. Original comic books soon followed.
Today, comics are found in newspapers, magazines, comic
books, graphic novels and on the web. Historically, the
form dealt with humorous subject matter, but its scope has
expanded to encompass the full range of literary genres.
Also see: Comic strip and cartoon. In some circles, comics
are still seen as low art,[3][4][5][6][7][8] though there are
exceptions, such as Krazy Kat[9] and Barnaby. However,
such an elitist "low art/high art" distinction doesn't exist in
the French-speaking world (and, to some extent,
continental Europe), where the bandes dessinées medium
as a whole is commonly accepted as "the Ninth Art", is
usually dedicated a non-negligible space in bookshops and
libraries, and is regularly celebrated in international events
such as the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Such
distinctions also do not exist in the Japanese manga, the
world's largest comics culture.
In the late 20th and early 21st century there has been a
movement to rehabilitate the medium. Critical discussions
of the form appeared as early as the 1920s,[9][10] but serious
studies were rare until the late 20th century.[11]
Though practitioners may eschew formal traditions, they
often use particular forms and conventions to convey
narration and speech, or to evoke emotional or sensuous
responses. Devices such as speech balloons and boxes are
used to indicate dialogue and impart establishing
information, while panels, layout, gutters and zip ribbons
can help indicate the flow of the story. Comics use of text,
ambiguity, symbolism, design, iconography, literary
technique, mixed media and stylistic elements of art help
build a subtext of meanings. Though comics are non-linear
structures and can be hard to read sometimes, it is simply
presented. However, it depends of the reader's "frame of
mind" to read and understand the comic.[12] Different
conventions were developed around the globe, from the
manga of Japan to the manhua of China and the manhwa of
Korea, the comic books of the United States, and the larger
hardcover albums in Europe.
In 1996, Will Eisner published Graphic Storytelling, in
which he defined comics as "the printed arrangement of art
and balloons in sequence, particularly in comic books."[42]
Eisner's earlier, more influential definition from 1985's
Comics and Sequential Art described the technique and
structure of comics as sequential art, "...the arrangement of
pictures or images and words to narrate a story or dramatize
an idea."[43]
In Understanding Comics (1993) Scott McCloud defined
sequential art and comics as: "juxtaposed pictorial and
other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey
information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the
viewer."[44] this definition excludes single-panel
illustrations such as The Far Side,"Zanzibear", The Family
Circus and most political cartoons from the category,
classifying those as cartoons. By contrast, The Comics
Journal's "100 Best Comics of the 20th Century",[45]
included the works of several single-panel cartoonists and a
caricaturist, and academic study of comics has included
political cartoons.[46]
R. C. Harvey, in his essay Comedy at the Juncture of Word
and Image, offered a competing definition in reference to
McCloud's: "...comics consist of pictorial narratives or
expositions in which words (often lettered into the picture
area within speech balloons) usually contribute to the
meaning of the pictures and vice versa."[47] This, however,
ignores the existence of wordless comics.
Most agree that animation, which creates the optical
illusion of movement within a static physical frame, is a
 separate form, though ImageTexT, a peer-reviewed
academic journal focusing on comics, accepts submissions
relating to animation as well,[48] and the third annual
Conference on Comics at the University of Florida focused
on comics and animation.
Comics artists usually sketch a drawing in pencil before
going over the drawing in ink, using either a dip pen or a
brush. Artists may also use a lightbox to create the final
image in ink. Some artists, Brian Bolland for example,[55]
use computer graphics, with the published work as the first
physical appearance of the artwork. By many definitions
(including McCloud's, above) the definition of comics
extends to digital media such as webcomics and the mobile
comic.
The nature of the comics work being created determines the
number of people who work upon its creation, with
successful comic strips and comic books being produced
through a studio system, in which an artist assembles a
team of assistants to help create the work. However, works
from independent companies, self-publishers or those of a
more personal nature can be produced by a single creator.
Within the comic book industry of the United States, the
studio system has come to be the main method of creation.
Through its use by the industry, the roles have become
heavily codified, and the managing of the studio has
become the company's responsibility, with an editor
discharging the management duties. The editor assembles a
number of creators and oversees the work to publication.
Any number of people can assist in the creation of a comic
book in this way, from a plotter, a breakdown artist, a
penciller, an inker, a scripter, a letterer and a colorist, with
some roles being performed by the same person.
In contrast, a comic strip tends to be the work of a sole
creator, usually termed a cartoonist. However, it is not
unusual for a cartoonist to employ the studio method,
particularly when a strip become successful. Mort Walker
employed a studio, while Bill Watterson eschewed the
studio method, preferring to create the strip himself. Gag,
political and editorial cartoonists tend to work alone as
well, though a cartoonist may use assistants.
Tools
Bob the artist uses a variety of pencils, paper, typically
Bristol board and a waterproof ink. When inking, many
artists preferred to use a Winsor & Newton Series 7, #3
brush as the main tool, which could be used in conjunction
with other brushes, dip pens, a fountain pen and/or a variety
of technical pens or markers. Mechanical tints can be
employed to add grey tone to an image. An artist might
paint with acrylics, gouache, poster paints or watercolors.
Color can also be achieved through crayons, pastels or
colored pencils.
Eraser, rulers, templates, set squares and a T-square assist
in creating lines and shapes. A drawing table provides an
angled work surface with lamps sometimes attached to the
table. A light box allows an artist to trace his pencil work
when inking, allowing for a looser finish. Knives and
scalpels fill a variety of needs, including cutting board or
scraping off mistakes. A cutting mat aids paper trimming.
Process white is a thick opaque white material for covering
mistakes. Adhesives and tapes help composite an image
from different sources.
Computer generated comics
Computers dramatically changed the industry, and today
many cartoonists and illustrators create digital illustrations
using computers, graphics tablets and scanners. Digital art
has replaced traditional pen-and-ink drawings on an
increasing number of comic books and strips. Some
illustrators do a pencil sketch, scan it and then use different
software programs to execute the finished art, enlarging
sections of the drawing for detailed close work. To create
comic book covers, Jim McDermott transfers his drawings
to his computer and then develops digital paintings, and
Dave McKean also has combined both traditional and the
digital methods.[56]
In 1998, Pete Nash displayed fully digitized artwork on his
Striker comic strip for The Sun.[57] Computers are now
widely used for both coloring and lettering, forcing some
comic book letterers to look elsewhere for work.Snuffy
Smith cartoonist Fred Lasswell, a prolific inventor and
early adopter of new technology, was one of the first
cartoonists to email comic strips to King Features
Syndicate and also pioneered the use of computer-
generated lettering.
On the comic strip Blondie, computer technology makes it
possible for the writer Dean Young, the cartoonist John
Marshall and the art assistant Frank Cummings to
collaborate even though they live in three different states.
Marshall's studio is in Binghamton, New York and
Cummings lives in Birmingham, Alabama, while Young
alternates between Vermont and Florida. To capture the
finely polished inking details seen in Blondie, Marshall
works on a Wacom tablet linked to his Macintosh. First he
draws a rough, sent to Young for review, and then it's back
to the computer for the finished art, delivered electronically
to King Features.[58]