In the current day, when you think of comics, the first thing that the average person would conjure up in their mind is the pervasive and universal Superhero Comic Book, in no small part due to the unchallenged stranglehold that superhero movies have on modern pop culture.
However, your consequent thoughts on the subject of comics would remind you that the Superhero Comic, is but just one genre, a fraction of what makes up the totality of comics.
Comics entail a broad medium, a unique combination of illustrations and text that is so broad in concept, there is no one generally accepted definition for it. Though comics have fallen in popularity somewhat nowadays, at its peak, they used to be the premier mode of cultural expression.
As a picture always succeeds where words fail, it is no surprise that sequential art, an art form that serves as a superset for comics, have been consistently recognized in many ancient cultures like Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Mesoamerica, etc.
But the true precursors to comics as we understand them would come around much later, around the 17th and 18th centuries. Early forms of comics were still a far cry from what they are now, but in many ways, still very similar, at least thematically.
These comics were little more than two or more heavily detailed illustrations in sequence to tell a narrative. Usually they were used to depict contemporary politics and social life, sometimes with a degree of satire or caricature. One of the first to popularize this new medium was British painter William Hogarth, in the 18th Century.
Newspapers
Around that time, printing developed to the point that newspapers became more commonplace, and took to printing satirical comics on its pages, a practice that continues to this day.
These illustrations, which generally critique the social and political state at the time, started to be called Cartoons in 1842. It was after this period, in the late 19th century, that the first mass serialized comic strips came to be.
The most popular comic strip of the time, The Yellow Kid, was created by Richard F. Outcault and published between 1895 and 1898 in the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer’s (yes, the Pulitzer) newspaper. The comic was one of the first Sunday paper comic strips and codified many of what would become the norm for comic strips, such as the use of word balloons.
In the 1920s and 30s the comics industry hit further highs as Europe would take to creating popular comic anthologies like The Beano in Britain.
In Belgium, Hergé’s masterwork, The Adventures of TinTIn newspaper strip was collected and sold as albums, creating the market for more strips to follow that path. But while the other parts of the world were still focusing on humorous and satirical works, America’s comic industry was looking to expand into more serious subject matter.
Mystery and action comics quickly became an irreplaceable part of the American comics industry. But not long after, in June 1938, a comic book would be published, which seemed to cash in on the Action genre of comics, but would go on to revolutionize the entire comic book industry forever.
Action Comics #1 introduced Superman, who despite not being the first, became the archetypical superhero, ushering in the Golden Age of comics.
Superheroes caused a huge boom of popularity for American comic books, playing a huge part in WW2, providing cheap entertainment and valuable propaganda for the allies. Post war, the popularity of superheroes declined somewhat, giving way to the rise of Horror, Romance, Western and Teen comedy comics like Archie Comics.
With the new found popularity of these more serious comics, a divide grew between them and the more humorous and satirical comics. In the 60s and 70s cartoonists took to using the word comix to refer to their more adult oriented but still. humorous works, differentiating them from both the newspaper comic strips and more juvenile comic books.
Later the term Graphic Novel was used to further separate themselves. With time, however, Superhero comics returned to being the most ubiquitous genre of comics, and though the medium is far less popular than it used to be, Superhero movies are giving them a second shot at being the center of pop culture again.