Short History Of Comics

1. A Short History of Comics

2. Introduction: How Did
Comics Come About?

3. Telling stories in pictures can
be traced back perhaps even to
cave paintings. The telling of
stories visually with words has
evolved in many cultures.
These include Egyptian wall
paintings which combined
images with hieroglyphics;

4. …the Bayeux tapestry;
medieval church wall paintings;
the narrative art of eighteenth
century artists such as William
Hogarth; and the l'Imagerie
d'Epinal from the Vosges area
of France with its framed
sketches of stories.

10. All these provided the basis
from which the earliest comic
emerged. This was
Rowlandson's picture tales
told through simple line
drawings of a comic character
called Dr. Syntax who
appeared in stories such as
The Tour of Dr. Syntax in
Search of the Picturesque.

11. Dr. Syntax

12. In other work contemporary
with Dr Syntax it is possible
to see three of the basic
conventions of the comic:

13. Sketches and
caricature - art that
exaggerates physical
appearance;

16. Speech balloons or
bubbles that were
being used by artists
such as Hogarth in his
political engravings

17. Written commentary
or caption in the picture
to add to the point being
made by the sketched
image.

19. However, the first
combination of images and
words into the comic form of
a series of framed images
linked together, using words
to characterise as well as to
tell the narrative is attributed
to Rodolphe Topffer, a
short sighted Swiss artist

20. Topffer used the cartoon style as
his sight failed. He believed that
there was no value difference
between stories in words and
stories in pictures. His first
published picture story was Les
amours de M. Vieux Bois and this
was followed in 1829 by another
based on the story of Faust.

21. In 1845 Topffer wrote ‘The picture
story .. appeals particularly to
children and to the masses, the
sections of the public which are
particularly easily perverted and
which it would be particularly
desirable to raise'. Topffer's desire
to use this form for moral and
educational purposes was not to be
how subsequent publications used
it.

22. So are comics rooted in class
divisions? Are they a way for
the middle class to educate the
working class? Are they, in fact,
the first ‘text’ books?

23. Topffer regarded his art as
helping to teachthe illiterate
population as well as being
culturally improving. But
others saw comics as away
of being rather rude and
sensational – a bit like some
of the Sunday papers today.

24. The 18
th
century forged a link
between:
Images
Visual Conventions
Narrative
Popular Appeal.
But how did the commercial and
populist children's 'comic' emerge
as an important part of popular
culture in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries?

25. During the 19th century
newspapers and magazines
had begun to expand rapidly
as a result of the following
factors:

26. 1. The improvements in
printing technology and
therefore the ability to
reproduce line
drawings.

27. 2. Cheaper paper
production, making
newspapers accessible
to a wider market.

28. 3. The changing
demographics - far
more people lived in
towns and cities, so
helping communication
and distribution.

29. 4. The increased
literacy of the
population.

30. 5. The improvements in
distribution available with
new forms of transport such
as the railways so that
newspapers could reach
most areas of the country.

31. Popular forms of mass print
emerged from publications already
in existence:
-the Chap books
- Reynolds Newspaper, a radical
working class paper,
- the Penny Dreadfuls of the 1840s
and 50s, so called because they
cost one penny and told gory or
sensational stories.

32. Two of the most popular Penny
Dreadful stories were Varney the
Vampire and Sweeney Todd the
Demon Barber, the latter running
for 220 weeks .Their popularity
shows that audience's pleasures in
the gory and grotesque are not
new.

33. In 1867 Judy, a humour magazine
appeared which had contributors
such as Charlotte Yonge, a fervent
follower of the Oxford Religious
revival, whose presence reveals
Judy’s original moral purpose.

34. It also had the subversive character
Ally Sloper in it. This slippery,
working class character became
very popular and would be the
blueprint – the original design - for
many similar types of comic
character, in particular the 'naughty
kid' such as Dennis the Menace

36. Ally Sloper eventually left the
'seriocomic journal' to appear in ‑
his own comic called Ally Sloper's
Half Holiday in May 1884,
becoming the first recognisably
English comic. This was published
until 1917. The transfer of a
character to his/her own comic is a
trend that many later comic
characters, such as Judge Dredd,
followed.

37. This magazine was aimed at an
adult working class audience and
contained satirical attacks on the
‘establishment’ as well as saucy
stories about Ally Sloper and his
ability to 'slope off' from work.

38. The power of the picture story had
not been lost on the religious tract
societies of the time: The Boys
Own Paper (18 January 1879),
followed the next year by The Girls
Own Paper, appeared as moral
teaching aids that followed the role
that Topffer had originally outlined.

39. Comic publishers wishing to
maintain their audience
experimented with colour such as
The Coloured Comic. But this was
too expensive for its market and the
first regular coloured comic was
Puck (1904-40) aimed at a family
audience followed by Rainbow
(191456) which was targeted ‑
specifically at children.

40. Another early comic was Magnet,
first published in 1908, with Billy
Bunter, a fat schoolboy as one of in
characters. Cartoon or comic
strips in newspapers like Rupert
the Bear, which began in The Daily
Express in 1920, were part of the
same trend as Tiger Tim's Weekly
(192040), Film ‑ Fun (192062) and ‑
Chick's Own (1 92057). ‑

41. It was in 1921 that the company
most associated with the comic in
the UK published its first comic.
The Scottish based D.C.Thomson
launched Adventure.

42. This was followed in 1922 by the
titles Rover and Wizard. These
comics were characterised by
farfetched stories and larger than ‑
life characters.

43. Other developments, such as the
graphic novel, were developing.
Mitsou, a story about a cat
appeared in 1920 while Tintin,
written by Herge appeared on 10
January 1929 and the first Asterix
comic was published in 1957. The
form of the graphic novel would be
most popular on the continent.