media history 5
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Impress Template: Xuhai 2
Media History
5th session: Comicbooks
Steen [email protected]
Comicbook History
What are comicbooks?
Why are comicbooks relevant?
The history of comicbooks
Comicbooks and popular culture
Remediation
What are comicbooks?
Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence.
Little Sammy Sneeze, Winsor McCay
What are comicbooks?
What are comicbooks?
What are comicbooks?
Histoire de Monsieur Cryptogame by Rodolphe Tpffer (1830)
What are comicbooks?
The Yellow Kid/Hogans Alley, Richard Felton Outcault
What are comicbooks?
Rudolph Dirks Katzenjammer Kids
Why are comics relevant?
9th artArchitecture
Drawing / Painting
Sculpture
Literature
Music
Theater
Dance
Photography
As old as photography
Mass production reduces status
Obeys the rules of commerce
Popular equals vulgar
Humor as opposite harmony and the sublime
Influence on children
Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent
Blacklisted for corrupting their only audience
Visual forms subordinate to language
We need words to understand the imageAnchorage
The image as attractive and hence dangerous
The imprisonment of the word
Artistic mediocrity
William Blake
Four-fold symbolic handicap
It is a hybrid
Story-telling that appear to remain on the level of sub-literature/paraliterature
Connected to caricature, which is thought inferior
Propose a return to childhood
The history of comicbooks
Newspapers
Comicbooks
Cartoons and animated films
Alternative comix
80 comics revised
90 comics
00s
Newspapers and comics
Comic strips are found in newspapers and seen as a way to sell more newspapers
Newspapers and comics
Comics arent seen as independent, but as light entertainment at the end of the paper
Newspapers and comics
This means that the strips are short, concluding and typically humorous
Otherwise, they will use cliffhangers
Cartoons and animated films
Cartoons and animated films
Cartoons and animated films
Cartoons and animated films
Cartoons and animated films
The American Comics Industry
The American Comics Industry
Only slowly do magazines emerge solely dedicated to comics
Generally considered kids entertainment
Superhero Mania
Comic books were a ghetto. I sold my part of the enterprise to my associate and then began The Spirit. They wanted an heroic character, a costumed character. They asked me if he'd have a costume. And I put a mask on him and said, 'Yes, he has a costume!'"
Comics are genres
Superhero
Horror
Detective
War stories
Comics are publishers
DC (Detective Comics
Marvel
EC (Entertaining Comics)
Dark Horse
Comics retail
Usually, comics are sold at newsstands or other non-specialist shops
Comics panic
Comics panic
Comicbook stores
As comics get their own magazines, shops dedicated only to comics emerge
Comicbook stores
Comics gain a subculture
Readers follow every issue
Stories change, as a result
Continuity emerges as a lawToday, people are employed to make sure continuity is maintained.
Alternative comix
Hippie comics
Comics industry
Comics return to books when they gain cultural recognition
The 80s years of change
Two major changesRAW and Maus
The British Revision of the American Superhero
RAW Magazine
Intellectual underground
The medium is broadened
New subject matters introduced
Maus
Comics become morally complex
They treat serious topics such as Holocaust
Graphic novels are introduced
Superhero Revision
Superheroes become morally suspect
Who watches the watchmen?
Superhero Revision
The Comics Code Authority is challenged
Superhero Revision
Fascism is brought to the foreground
The 90s diaspora and a bursting bubble
The comicbook market collapses
All manner of comicbooks emerge
DC and Marvel both make art-house imprints
The Sandman
DCs biggest success without superheroes
Sin City
Will Eisner, The Spirit
Frank MillerDaredevil
Comicbooks and Popular Culture
Comicbooks and Popular Culture
Comicbooks and Popular Culture
Comicbooks and Popular Culture
Remediation
The visual style is maintained, despite the loss of realism
Remediation
Cross-over inspiration
Comics work as inspiration for movies and games
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