Comic book

From ArticleWorld

The Comic Book is a graphical magazine or book, portraying a non-fiction story or event. The standard abbreviation for the comic book, is the simple omission of the word book to leave comic. Despite the official definition of the term comic, these publications are not necessarily rich with humor.

Comic Book Fundamentals

Comic Books are a collection of graphical images and limited text, which combined guide the reader through a storyline. The comic book encompasses many genres including science fiction, humor, sporting and even political. The earliest examples of comic books in existence differed greatly from the story based comics of the modern era. These early comics were simply a collection of individual comic strips, usually taken from newspapers, bound together to create a book. The comic strip is in itself a popular medium, but bares little resemblance to a full comic book. The strip will portray a simple set of events in a few simple boxes, usually to create a punchline, arguably the most famous example of a long running comic strip are the Charles Schultz Peanuts cartoons.

Cultural Value

The creation of the comic book as we know it today started from the bound collections of newspaper comic strips. The success of these books prompted the creation of work designed specifically for this new format. From here the industry grew and developed creating many of the formats still recognizable in modern editions like splash pages. The popularity of the comic book ingrained it into a part of the popular culture of it’s native United States. The comic books cultural value is particularly high as it remains on of the few art forms to have originated in the US.

Popularity Growth

The popularity of the comic book increased toward the end of the 20th century following the introduction of the ‘graphic novel’. Unlike the pamphlet style of the traditional comic book, the graphic novel has more in common with the book in terms of its binding and having a spine. The difference between the two styles is marginal, but nonetheless the comic book has seen a dramatic expansion in availability, through both the specialized and standard bookshops as well as public libraries.