Did you know?
- In the early 1950s, it became ne cessary to establish the Comics Code Authority self-censorship body in America; mostly to check the predominance of crime and horror in comics at that time – the things we do for our children!
- At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, nearly a quarter of all printed material in Japan was comics.
- What we refer to as the comic album or the graphic novel in Europe and English-speaking countries is called the tankōbon in Japan (pretty cool if you ask me).
- Even back then, comics weren’t always so innocent. From about the 1930's to the 1950's small dirty comics were sold through underground means. These were called Tijuana Bibles. While much of their origins or artists are not known it's believed they were made by members of organized crime. Well known comic strips, movies stars, sport celebrities and more had their likeness used to tell dirty stories with.
Which brings us
to the issue of the day:
THE (BRIEF) COMIC HISTORY
Well, as such things usually go (that is,
things we routinely do not care to check up on their history), comics have been
around for quite some time. Up until as recent as a few years ago, it was
generally believed that the first comic book was a reprint collection of the
first comic strip, best known as the Yellow
Kid. There have been recent discoveries however, proving that comic books
were around long before the Yellow Kid.
This new age of comics is being called the "Victorian Age" for now.
The Victorian Age
Today the earliest known comic book is
called The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck
by Switzerland's Rudolphe Töpffer, originally published in several languages in
Europe in 1837. It was 40 pages long and measured 8 ½" x 11". The
book was side stitched, and inside there were 6 to 12 panels per page. No word
balloons, but there was text under the panels to describe the story. Rudolphe
Töpffer then went ahead to create several graphic novels that were extremely successful
and reprinted in many different languages.
The Platinum
Age 1889 – 1938
An influential illustrated book to come out in this
period was called The Brownies: Their
Book. They were created by Palmer Cox and originally part of a children's
magazine called St. Nicholas. The
Brownies first appeared in the magazine in 1883 in a story called The Brownies' Ride. The Brownies were heavily merchandised and one of the products they
put out was book featuring their illustrations with a text story beside the
pictures.
Besides St. Nicholas, there were other
magazines using picture stories of sorts and they were getting popular. Among
the magazines were Judge, Life, Harper's
and Truth. Newspapers began to
recognize their growing popularity and added a Sunday Comics feature to cash
in, but the newspapers couldn't get the popular artists and their characters
because the Magazines already had them signed up. But a Puck staff member, Roy
L. McCardell told Morrill Goddard, the Sunday editor of The New York World
(then largest newspaper) that he knew someone who could provide something.
That someone was Richard F. Outcault. Outcault would
come to the newspaper and create Hogan's
Alley, best known for its unnamed staring character, whom New Yorkers
dubbed, the Yellow Kid. It is
believed that Outcault got his inspiration from a number of different sources.
Among them were the cartoons of Michael Angelo Woolf and Charles W. Saalburg
cartoons that used street kids.
After the Yellow Kid, Outcault would create many other strips and characters.
One of
them also ended up in comic book form. That was Buster Brown, published in 1902 by Cupples & Leon. Thanks to the merchandising success of Buster Brown, many companies took the advertising cue and made Buster Brown comics premiums to sell their stuff. Most of these comics were full colour, 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.
Walt Disney also bought into the comic book
movement. The earliest of these was Mickey
Mouse Book, done in 1930 - 31, published by Bibo & Lang. Despite the
title of "book" this was in fact a magazine, inside it had a variety
of songs, games and stories. The
Adventures of Mickey Mouse is considered to be the first "true"
Mickey Mouse comic book. It came out in 1931, 32 pages long and 5 -1/2" x
8 1/2" in dimension. It was published by David McKay Co. with a print run
of 50,000 copies. 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.
Comics And
Advertising
45 year old Harry I. Wildenberg was a sales manager
at the Eastern Colour Printing Company, and among his duties was to come up
with ideas to keep the colour presses going. In 1932 he noticed the colour
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. They liked the idea
and hired a few artists to create Gulf Comic Weekly. Among them were Stan Schendel who did The Uncovered Wagon, Victor (last name
unknown) did Curly and the Kids and
Svess (last name unknown) doing Smileage.
These were one full page, full colour comic pictures. The entire comic was 4
pages long and had a format of 10 ½ by 15. 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 30th 1933.
Much to everyone’s surprise, the comics
proved really effective in drawing people to the gas stations. People were
quickly coming in and snatching them all up. Gulf decided to print out 3
million copies a week and had the name changed to Comics Funnies Weekly. The series
remained in tabloid size and lasted 422 issues, ending on May 23, 1941. And
thus began a tradition of attracting buyers with free comic pieces.
The Japanese
Side Of The Story
Japanese comics and cartooning ("manga")
have a history that has been seen as far back as the 13th-century Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga, 17th-century toba-e and kibyōshi picture books, and
woodblock prints such as ukiyo-e
which were popular between the 17th and 20th centuries (good luck pronouncing these
names).
Manga, the Japanese term for comics and
cartooning, was first popularized by the artist Hokusai in the early 19th
century. Rakuten Kitazawa created the first modern Japanese comic strip (Tagosaku to Mokube no Tōkyō Kenbutsu,
1902).
It appears that along the line, the
American influence spread to the Japanese comic industry. Illustrated magazines
for Western expatriates introduced Western-style satirical cartoons to Japan in
the late 19th century. New publications in both the Western and Japanese styles
became popular, and at the end of the 1890s, American-style newspaper comics supplements
began to appear, as well as some American comic strips. Genres and audiences
diversified over the following decades, with comics aimed at shōnen (boys) and shōjo (girls) audiences making up the most significant markets.
As evidenced by the popularity of the likes
of Naruto (I’m a fan too), translations
of Japanese comics have become extremely popular in foreign markets, in some
cases equalling or surpassing the sales of domestic comics.
