II semester Form 8
Шкільна бібліотека
Unit 3. Your preferences. Do you need a book?
The field is white
Black is the seed,
The man who sows it,
Is clever indeed.
What is your favourite book?
What books do you have at home?
Why do we read books?
Pair work. I / My partner
### like love enjoy hate
likes loves enjoys hates ###
True-to-life stories Novels Detective stories Thrillers Mysteries
Poems Fairy tales Fantasy Love stories Short stories
Comics Stories about nature Fables Adventure stories
Biographies of famous people
Let's Learn English! Topic: Books! 📙📚
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A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF COMIC BOOKS Giovanna Centeno Oct 9, 2020
Illustrated folios and wooden plates have been categorized as important artistic and political devices since the early points of most civilizations.
Graffiti in Roman cities was political, but also crude and funny. Illuminated
manuscripts contained holy images, but also doodles that have baffled
historians for centuries. Illustrating a story to make it more appealing to an
audience has been at the forefront of the human mind since its early existence
in caves. So, when we talk about the evolution of graphic novels and comics, we
are also talking about historical events, political debates, and even fashion.
So, the way I decided to structure this post is
through a timeline evolution. That way, not only will you be able to see different
art styles, but also understand a little bit of the background behind
each one. I hope that if you are already a major fan of graphic novels and
comics, you will understand their context a bit better, or if you are just now
becoming interested in them as a medium, that you can have a well-rounded list
to explore. There are excellent resources on the history of illustrated
storytelling, many of which are online for free. Most of the historical
context, and archives on big comic companies, such as DC and Marvel, are
available online on museum websites, such as the Norman Rockwell Museum, and on publishers’ websites.
Before we get into the specific art styles and
evolution throughout time, I think it’s essential to go through some term
definitions. What are graphic novels exactly, and how do they differ from
comics or trade paperbacks? According to the Norman Rockwell Museum archives on
illustration media, graphic novels are never before told stories, generally
compiled into one single volume. However, the term includes ‘novel’; not all
graphic novels are fiction. Many are also memoirs, which may be written and
illustrated by the same person, instead of a team. Comic books and trade
paperbacks, on the other hand, are serialized stories, often contained in an
already preconceived universe and storyline. Some comics are continuously
written and illustrated by a wide range of artists, changing every few years,
to give way to a new artistic concept or storyline. They should also not be
confused with comic strips or cartoons, both of which tend to be formatted to
fit a newspaper or magazine section, and do not always require serialization or
a range of characters.
For the purposes
of this post, I’m going to use the definitions above when talking about the
different artistic styles and books, while also including manga when specifically
talking about Japanese-style comic books, which are often but not always
exemplified by their black-and-white palette and explicit aesthetic details.
So, for instance, Marvel and DC superheroes are mainly featured in comic books,
but something like Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi would fall into the category
of graphic novel, even though the story contained in it is a memoir.
THE STACK NEWS
LETTER
1897–1938
As I mentioned before, we could start reviewing the history
and influence of illustrated storytelling all the way back to cave paintings,
illuminated manuscripts, and Greek vases; however, as that should be the role
of someone actually well versed in art history, writing a book on the subject,
or, just to be honest, more qualified than myself, I decided to start from the
early onset of serialized comic books as we know them today.
The Platinum Age of comic books owes most of its
purpose to political cartoons and propaganda. Yep, you heard it here first,
Superman and Captain America are not apolitical, much less without an agenda.
However, the first-ever comic book was a simple collection of works previously
published on a comic strip, marketed to kids due to its slapstick humor and
short storylines. That book was The Yellow Kid in McFadden’s Flat, published in the UK in 1897, and the notable thing about it is that it actually
acknowledged itself as a “comic book,” a terminology which wasn’t used until that point. Yeah, the name isn’t
great, which was a trend at that time and for most comics history. Racially
motivated stereotypes and names, even if this one, in particular, isn’t a
descriptor of the character (although there are some very bad racial stereotypes
in these strips) but rather is the yellow dress and relation to “yellow
journalism” (AKA sensationalism). These stories
were very prominent and used to disseminate misinformation and propaganda, as
we will see more clearly later on.
1938–1956
This era, known as the Golden Age, was mostly marked
by the raving political propaganda that surrounded the World War II
period. Captain America showed up in the modern form we know him as, and many other superheroes like
Wonder Woman and Superman started selling on huge scales. During the war
period, comic book consumption skyrocketed, becoming not only
an established pastime for young boys but also a fertile ground for the
recruitment of young men into the Army. The government discovered the value of comic books as a medium: the mass
production of entertainment in the follow-up to the war had a built-in market
for endless storytelling showing the glorious victory of the U.S. over the
Nazis. Because comic books were seen as a low-brow form of entertainment, they
were ideal for the American government in disseminating patriotic anti-Japanese
and anti-Nazi ideals, without seeming too close to actual propaganda. The new
world order made heroes and villains in comics the perfect recruitment technique.
Captain America was ahead of the curve in that sense.
It was already being published before the U.S. entered the war, and the debate
of whether the Americans should join was still in full swing. So, having Captain punching Hitler in the front cover was
not uncontroversial, as there were still some mainstream Nazi sentiments among
the political debates in the U.S.
By 1944 Comic books were so popular with men in the American Armed Forces that around 44% of men in the Army identified themselves as avid comic book readers. Superheroes following in the footsteps of Captain America became poster boys for Americans fighting in World War II, and because of this, their stories became explicit tools of propaganda. This was due to the fact that the Office of War Information (OWI) created what became known as the WWB (Writer’s War Board), which although it was not explicitly in the government’s payroll, had its
This was ultimately a mostly benign thing during the
war period, as these institutions’ main goals were to disseminate anti-racist
ideals and international cooperation later on through the image of the United
Nations. However, many of the storylines, which were seen as a new way to educate Americans in more informal ways, backfired. Researcher Paul Hirsh gives one example on his article of the famous issue of All-Star Comics “This is
Our Enemy,” which portrayed the four horsemen of the apocalypse waving the Nazi
flag while members of the Justice League look on horrified. Federica Barach, a member of the WWB, reported that her children interpreted the board-approved anti-racist narratives as more educational pieces on how racism was
inevitable rather than wrong. Hirsh also points out that anecdotal evidence
from several board members showed that anti-racist messaging was not being
received as it should be widely acknowledged. However, tactics did not change,
which possibly led to ultimate failure in the reception of these narratives,
which would lead to a fall of comic book production and consumption in the
post-war period, where the incentivizing of pro-war narratives was not as
highly coveted, and so Super-Hero lost a lot of their popularity to other
mass-produced genres like romance, westerns, and horror.
1956–1970
The censorship of comic books only grew in the post-war period, after psychiatrist
This censorship frenzy and parent panic led comic book
companies to cancel some of their most popular titles in genres other than
superheroes. Even so, several superhero storylines were continuously censored,
and production became very sparse. Storylines became less complicated and
political, and gimmicks like animal superheroes and celebrity features joined adventures
across the DC and Marvel universes.
By the mid-1960s a shift happened, specifically in
Marvel comics. Stan Lee became the head of Marvel’s creative team, creating
what we now know as “The Marvel Method,” which allowed for greater collaboration between artists and writers.
This period saw the rise of complex heroes like Spider-man, Fantastic Four, and
the Hulk. With darker storylines and more human personalities, these characters
became more identifiable and marketable than the exhausted simplistic and
invisible superheroes that had characterized the boom of the 1940s and ’50s.
The 1960s also ushered in the creative underground of
comics, with artists with more innovative and sometimes risky designs, which
led people like Wertham and many other mainstream political actors to
denounce comics as immoral and subversive to “good American ideals.”
1970–1985
Around the late 1960s, superheroes began reinventing
themselves. With the age of Aquarius and the hippie movement, kaleidoscopic
art, and the Sergeant Pepper era of the Beatles, both the artwork and
storylines became more complex and a bit trippy. Marvel comics became a
household name when it came to innovation and artist development, and they had
a fully formed and popular catalog of heroes to rival DC.
Another remarkable facet of this period is the
return to more relaxed restrictions on violence, political issues, and themes.
Horror comics, for instance, gained more space, as did more socially conscious
narratives. Unlike the wartime narratives of racial inclusivity
and American social progress, these new narratives found characters of color at
their center. They dabbled into the
aggressions African Americans suffered at the hands of police and denounced the
racism present in American society, rather than denying it. Thus they were
more effective in their message. There wasn’t room for interpretations (which
led many readers to see racial prejudice as inevitable, as was the case in the
1940s–’60s); instead, many superheroes of color like Storm and Black Panther took center stage, with their own narratives.
With that, comics went deeper into exploring the social politics of their time,
which at that moment were not considered mainstream.
This would also lead to the preamble to what would
become known as the Dark Ages, where art styles and narratives would take
darker tones. Suddenly superheroes had very human problems, like alcoholism and
drug addiction.
1985–1996
excerpt of Maus by Art Spiegelman
Many of these narratives are still popular today,
especially in the DC universe such as Batman’s The Dark Knight
Returns; however, sales slumped
across the board, leading to Marvel Comics filing for bankruptcy in 1996.
Another big facet of this time is the rise go the
graphic novel, more remarkably; Maus by Art Spiegelman was published in November
1996. A pioneer for its time, Spiegelman’s autobiographical story of a Jewish
family trying to survive Nazi-occupied Poland completely changed the medium that, up until this point, was
still seen as only a low-brow form of entertainment.
AGE OF MANGA
In the 1980s, another new style took over the world,
the Japanese comics known to most of us now as Manga. Manga nowadays has many different
styles, but the most defining characteristic is the black and white color
palette and the exaggerated emotional expressions.
Manga in Japanese can literally mean comic
book or comic strip, and it
developed as an art form from the old woodblock illustrations that have been
present throughout Japanese history. The modern manga style only gained
mainstream notoriety in the 1980s when Japan became a household name in terms
of international technology and entertainment.
One of the most versatile types of illustrated storytelling, mangas—like American comic books—started out being exclusively marketed to children but soon expanded
to encompass every aspect of human life. From overtly specific categories like cookbooks and even tech manuals to more mainstream subjects like horror, romance, and comedy.
Today you can find a manga for any taste and genre you
might like. I would highly recommend you explore Manga! Manga! The
World of Japanese Comics by
Frederik L. Schodt, where I got all the information regarding the rise of manga
for this article. If you want a more in-depth history and artistic analysis of
Manga as an art form, this book is a great source.
1996–2020 AND BEYOND
Comics today are some of the most popular mediums in
the book world, as technology has allowed for more democratic outlets for both
artists and readers. Mainstream publishers DC and Marvel are now the giants of
the industry and have taken over almost every corner of entertainment
you can find. Let’s be honest;
it’s hard to think of a single year for the past ten years in which a superhero
movie hasn’t been in theaters.
Plus, nowadays, artistic styles have branched out a
lot more, so if you don’t like the classic superheroes, you are certain to find
something to your liking. Like the Brazilian brothers Gabriel Bá and
Fabio Moon‘s cubic and watercolor
influences. Or the many iterations of essential classics being adapted to
graphic novels, like Parable of the
Sower by Octavia Butler or Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young
Girl.
Comics are a fascinating format, in which the visual
arts and literature meet in a unique but at the same time, timeless medium. So
whether you want to learn more about the history of comics or just relax with
your next favourite issue, there’s something for you.
Tasks will be later (:
It`s interesting! Read! https://www.thefilmmakersblog.com/blog/editing-lessons-from-the-oscar-winning-spider-man-into-the-spider-verse
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