When was comics invented

Boniface , published in by Paulin. Artistically, Mr. There are dramatic differences between Mr. Boniface and Cham's earlier albums. In Mr.

In fact, the term "comic strip" becomes somewhat of a misnomer here, since his panels were rarely arranged in strip format.

This innovation allowed him to create for the reader a kinesthetic equivalent to the narrative. When Mr. Boniface is on a boring coach voyage, for example, we are forced to follow the endless landscape across the horizontal page fig. When he is seasick fig. Cham even added to each chapter heading a short apocryphal epigram commenting on its panel, satirizing the pomposity of "serious" books especially those of the Romantics and underscoring the distance traveled by this new irreverent comic genre.

Since each "chapter" consists of only one image with a brief caption, he was also parodying the contemporaneous literary mode for long, multi-chapter books, particularly travel memoirs. The frenetic rhythms of classic comic strips make their appearance in Monsieur Boniface fig.

Figure 11 shows Mr. Boniface's view through his coach window where he sees only the coachman's boots, an image made all the more poignant by the inclusion of the epigram, "'Ah, Nature, how beautiful you are. An inventory of the formal innovations that Cham introduced into the comic book would be extensive, but it would have to include: the elimination of the boxed format, the substitution of typography for the hand-written text, the use of multiple tiers of frames in irregular formats, combinations of disparate styles, fragments, out-of-scale objects, different points of view, close-ups as well as distant views, and all-black or all-white panels.

While it is indisputable that many of these visual conventions of modern comics made their first appearance in the work of Cham, there is still another precedent that must be addressed, a particularly French phenomenon called "The Salon in Caricature. Bertall, "Salon of ," Les Omnibus , Well before the arrival of the comic strip, there had been caricatures of individual paintings, of course, but only in the s, and only in France, were these images combined into entire pages, often entire "comic books" devoted to that year's Salon installation.

The first was published in fig. In that year, Bertall, the pseudonym of the caricaturist Albert d'Arnoux — , produced his humorous "Salon of On a single page, artists could caricature a variety of paintings—history, genre, landscape, still life, portraiture—each with its own scale, subject, and style, and combine the images into the free-form layouts soon to be familiar in comics fig. When the pages were hand-colored, as many of them were, their resemblance to modern comic books is even more striking.

In any case, the first "Salons in Caricature" represent clear precedents for the free-wheeling combinations of imagery that soon appeared in French comics. Although Cham continued to produce comic books after Travel Impressions of Mr. Boniface , none surpassed this volume.

Beaucoq of , are more conventional both in drawing and in format. He published over a hundred such albums as well as Salons in caricature, and continued to produce them until his death in During this time he produced thousands of images and four full-length comic books. Cham had already abandoned this format three years earlier. Crayon Lithography. Artists do not often write interesting fiction, nor do many writers draw remarkable images.

Thus, when Hercules attempts to clean the Augean stables, a turn of the page shows him sinking into the mire figs. Modern viewers might notice that what is missing in all the early comic strips are the "speed lines" that have since become the standard sign for motion.

These speed lines have since become one of the most characteristic visual signs in the language of comics. Three Artists Misunderstood and Malcontent and Dis Pleasures of a Pleasure Trip were both published by Aubert, although their style and formats differed markedly from that of the by-then defunct Collection des Jabots.

Its most extraordinary frame exploits shifts in scale in an unprecedented way. In both panels, he shatters the illusionistic window and normative perspective that had governed art production from the Renaissance. He draws frames that are not even "art," showing a close-up of Monsieur Plumet's account book fig.

Images expand and contract across the pages; on turning the page one can't be certain what one will find, sometimes a full-page drawing, sometimes up to 18 tiny ones. On occasion, readers cannot even be certain of the order in which the frames should be read. It was not published by Aubert, but by J. He abandoned the crayon lithography in which he had drawn his two previous comic books, in favor of wood engraving, a medium in which he would work for the rest of his life.

Holy Russia was published during the Crimean War, and took full advantage of the contemporary interest in all things Russian. A progressively more boring account of the origins of the Russian people is shown slowly being swallowed up by ink fig. No one earlier had so closely incorporated text with image.

His most striking formal innovation, already introduced in Dis pleasures , is his combination of numerous artistic styles into a kind of tour de force of the comic-book art. His homage to Cham includes not only all-black frames pl. The distinctive contour style of the English artist Richard Doyle, who drew for Punch , also appears in several panels, often in combination with other styles, as we can see in figure In figure 28 , for example, the uniformity of the frames underscores the boring, repetitive nature of the recitation of Russian genealogy narrated by the text.

The most dramatic pages in this album, however, which appeared in only a few copies, are where the relentless black and white of the text and illustrations are shattered by two pages stained red to symbolize the violence and bloodshed of the czars fig. Townsend explaining Outcault and the Kid. This comic book starts what is now called the Platinum Age of Comics.

In a Funny Folks comic book came out, taking a close first stab at a format for many Platinum Age comic books. Funny Folks was created by F. Howarth, but published by E. It was a black and white collection of reprints from the Puck magazine.

In The Blackberries came out and is the first known full color comic book. It used a format of 9" x 12" and was a hardcover book. Then the most often used format of 17" wide x 11 tall" began being used by a number of comic books. After the Yellow Kid , Outcault would create many other strips and characters. One of them also ended up in comic book form. Thanks to the merchandising success of Buster Brown , many companies made Buster Brown comics as premiums to sell their stuff.

Most of these comics were full color, but with only reprinted Sunday comics on one side of the page. They were large volumes and were priced at 50 cents. This format lasted over a decade. The book was still a hardcover, but was 15" wide x 5" tall. They were 10" by 10" with 4 panels per page, each page. They were black and white, 52 pages for 25 cents. In the first monthly comic book came out.

It was cover dated January and had a price of 10 cents. The title was Comics Monthly and lasted 12 issues.

Each issue was devoted to a popular comic strip character that was syndicated by King Features. Issue 1 and 12 was Polly and her Pals. These were all reprints of daily black and white strips. They were printed in both softcover and Hardcover with dust jackets. They were very popular with a 60 cents price. In Dell Publishing took a crack at a regular Comic Book. The comic was called The Funnies and was done in a big tabloid-sized format.

They were 16 pages and sold for 10 cents. It was distributed by the newsstands along with newspapers. Unlike Comic Monthly , this book was done 4 colours and had original comic strips instead of reprints. A new issue came out every Saturday, but it lost money. Issues 3 to 21 were 30 cents each. The price changed to 5 cents with issue 22 and lasted the final issue with Walt Disney got into comic books too. The earliest of these was Mickey Mouse Book.

These were 9"x12 ", 20 pages long and stapled together. Despite the title of "book" this was in fact a magazine, inside it had a variety of songs, games and stories. There were later printings of this book but some lyrics were edited, advertising was inserted and christmas card was a part of the front cover.

It was published by David McKay Co. There were both hardcover and softcover versions of this book. A second book came out after the Mickey Mouse cartoons and the characters within were made similar to the cartoons. Mickey Mouse Comic 1 also came out in It reprints the Mickey Mouse comic strips done by Floyd Gottfredson from to The series lasted 4 issues with later reprintings.

It was also published by David McKay Co. There were two different Mickey Mouse Magazines done in The first in January published by Kamen-Blair. It was distributed by daries and local theaters. It lasted until issue 9, the first few issues had a 5 cent cover price, the later ones did not.

The second was also give aways done through different Dairie companies. It had two volumes, the both going 12 issues. Both magazines were done by Walt Disney Productions and they ended in Like the previous incarnation, this magazine would run 12 issues, then restart back at 1 with another volume.

This continued for 5 years, with 12 volume 4 converted to a more traditional comic book format. It turned 68 pages and shrank to normal comic book size.

I'll discuss that when we get to that point and time. Not all comics were squeaky clean and sold on newsstands. From about the 's to the 's small dirty comics were sold through underground means. These were called Tijuana Bibles, despite the name they were made in America. While much of their origins or artists are not known it's believed they were made by members of organized crime.

This is partialy because the bibles were illegally using trademarked characters. Well known comic strips, movies stars, sport celeberties and more had their likeness used to tell dirty stories with. The book shown here is a collection of Tijuana Bibles. If you are over 18 and you want to see examples of some Tijuana bibles, click here and here.

In , Detective Dan, Secret Op. Done by Norman Marsh this comic had a 3 color, cardboard cover. Inside was black and white. Sold for 10cents, dimensions were 10x13". It had 36 pages and was only a one shot published by Humor Publishers Corp.

There was some other appearances by him though. Also done in Free Comics became popular in the early 's. This was mainly because of the depression and deflation. It also kept the publishing presses running during very hard times. Shutting down and starting up the printing presses cost time and money and the presses did everything they could to keep them going. Thousands of different comics were given away as companies used popular comic strips for advertising purposes.

The pioneers of this trend is given to Sam Gold and Kay Kamen. Eastern Color Printing Company was one company that became very important in formation of comic industry. They had a 45 year old sales manager named Harry I. Wildenberg, among his duties were to come up with ideas to keep the color presses going. In he noticed the color comic strips sections of newspapers were popular and thought they would be good for advertising.

He suggested the idea of a comic book used for advertising to Gulf Oil Company, one of his clients. These were one full page, full color comic pictures. The comic was given away at Gulf Gas Stations making them probably the first comic book published and distributed outside of the newspaper market.

The comic was advertised on radio telling people to go to Gulf Gas stations to get them on April 30 th Much to everybodys surprise, the comics proved an very effective draw to the gas stations. People were quickly coming in and snatching them all up. Sensing public backlash, that same year comic book publishers created the Comics Code Authority in order to self-regulate their industry, much as the Motion Picture Association of America was formed to prevent government involvement in film production.

The Code set a number of requirements for comic books:. Subsequently cancelling many horror, crime, and romance titles which violated the Code, comic book companies began publishing comic books featuring superheroes from the Golden Age. They revamped existing superheroes and created new superhero characters. The return of Flash, albeit an updated version of Flash, in Showcase 4 October marks the beginning of the Silver Age, when superhero comic books saw a renewed commercial success.

The late s through the s saw a change from dark and supernatural comic book themes to the other end of the spectrum with books containing silly plots and a high degree of camp. Heralding the outrageousness of the Batman television series in the mids, Batman comic books introduced ridiculous characters such as Batbaby, Bat-Ape, Bat-Mite, and Ace the Bat Hound. Also during this time, taking the place of serious villains to battle Superman, numerous forms of kryptonite were brought forth—gold, blue, Jewel, red-green, Magno, red-gold kryptonite and Kryptonite Plus.

The Bronze Age signaled a more realistic style within comic books as a younger generation of artists, including Neal Adams , John Byrne , George Perez , Frank Miller , and others, replaced aging artists who had helped to create the superhero comic books of the s and s. In a genre where heroes are relied upon to surmount almost any challenge, it was revolutionary to illustrate the brutal murder of an innocent character alongside the ultimate failure of her anticipated savior.

This more lenient attitude allowed for the return of the horror comic genre, including titles such as The Tomb of Dracula in and Ghost Rider and Tales of the Zombie in Additional supernatural characters Man-Bat, Swamp Thing, and Blade were introduced in the early s.