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. Thetelling of stories visually with wordshas evolved in many cultures. These includeEgyptian wall paintingswhich combined images with hieroglyphics; 4. the Bayeux tapestry ; medieval church wall paintings; the narrative art of eighteenth century artists such asWilliam Hogarth ; and thel'Imagerie d'Epinalfrom the Vosges area of France with its framed sketches of stories. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. All these provided the basis from which the earliest comic emerged. This wasRowlandson 'spicture tales told through simple line drawings of a comic character calledDr. Syntaxwho appeared in stories such asThe 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 thebasicconventions of the comic: 13.

Sketches andcaricature -art thatexaggerates physical appearance ;

14. 15. 16.

Speech balloons or bubblesthat were being used by artists such asHogarthin his political engravings

17.

Written commentary orcaptionin the picture to add to the point being made by the sketched image.

18. 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 toRodolphe 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 wasLes amours de M. Vieux Boisand this was followed in 1829 by another based on the story of Faust. 21. In 1845 Topffer wroteThe 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 teach the 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 thcentury forged a link between:ImagesVisual ConventionsNarrativePopular 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. Theimprovements in printing technologyand 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. Theincreased literacyof the population. 30. 5. Theimprovements in distributionavailable 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: -theChap books-Reynolds Newspaper , a radical working class paper, - thePenny Dreadfulsof 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 andSweeney 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 1867Judy , a humour magazine appeared which had contributors such as Charlotte Yonge, a fervent follower of the Oxford Religious revival, whose presence reveals Judys originalmoral purpose. 34. It also had the subversive characterAlly Sloperin 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 asDennis the Menace 35. 36. Ally Slopereventually left the 'seriocomic journal' to appear in his own comic calledAlly Sloper's Half Holidayin 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 andcontainedsatirical 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 byThe Girls Own Paper , appeared asmoral teaching aidsthat followed the role that Topffer had originally outlined. 39. Comic publishers wishing to maintain their audience experimented with colour such asThe 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 byRainbow(191456) which was targeted specifically at children. 40. Another early comic wasMagnet , first published in 1908, with Billy Bunter, a fat schoolboy as one of in characters.Cartoon or comic stripsin 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), FilmFun(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 basedD.C.Thomson launchedAdventure . 42. This was followed in 1922 by the titlesRoverandWizard . These comics were characterised by farfetched stories and larger than life characters. 43. Other developments, such as thegraphic novel , were developing.Mitsou , a story about a cat appeared in 1920 whileTintin , written by Herge appeared on 10 January 1929 and the firstAsterixcomic was published in 1957.The form of the graphic novel would be most popular on the continent.