A Little History On Comic Book Publishing

As someone who doesn't know as much as they wish they did about comics, I decided to research the history of comic book publishing in order to try to pin down the reasons why comic books have been so successful over many decades. As a live human being, I obviously know about Superman, Batman, Iron Man, Charlie Brown, Garfield, and all of the other comics that have made history, as well as movies, over the years. In order for all of these movies to be successful, there had to be consumers buying the comic books, and I'm sure the movies formed more consumers who now purchase these comics since they were fans of the films. I was interested in finding the main source of publishers who are to blame for the popularity of this industry, and to my surprise I actually knew one of them. For over 50 years, Marvel and Detective Comics (DC) have been leading in the publishing industry - making comic books into graphic novels and movies in order to get their names even more well known around the world.

As far as the very well known stylistic features of a comic go, they can be traced back to the medieval broadsheet where people would carve narratives strips into wood. Back in the day, these broadsheets were used to illustrate public executions and caricatures of popular public figures - much like "The Yellow Kid" did in New York City. When comic books were first being distributed in mass quantities all over the world, they were printed on the cheapest type of paper. As far as the well known format of comics goes, "In 1933, Harry Wildenberg and Max C. Gaines (future creator of MAD magazine) folded a traditional tabloid-size comic, Funnies on Parade, in half to create the first four-color, saddle-stitched newsprint comic that would become the format of modern comic books," which was later sold and featured on the popular place of purchase for a number of years, the newsstand.

"Archetypes, Commercialism, and Hollywood." A History of the Comic Book. Random History, Mar. 2008. Web. 22 Sept. 2012. <http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/033comic.html>.