The history of comics

Comic strips are said to have been traced all the way back to ancient hieroglyphics or even cave paintings, as comics are defined as a series of images with text which tell a story. Due to it following a complex narrative, the Bayeux Tapestry is seen as a huge cultural step for comics.

In the 19th century, printing is considered the biggest development in comic history, as it allowed comics to become mass-printed and more recognised. One of the first comic strips to be successful and properly recognised was Britain's 'Funny Folks', which eventually became its own weekly published comic.

In North America, the first comic to be recognised by historians was 'the Yellow Kid'. It features a young strange-looking boy in a yellow outfit, which his speech appears on, and commonly covered political and social issues. Back in this time, comic strips were not aimed at kids like they are today, they were aimed at adults as children had no money at that point. It was only later they became aimed at children with “Comic Cuts” being recognised as the first in 1890.

By the 1900s, there were many comic strips with a success story, and this is when they began to evolve into comic books, like the ones so well-known and loved now. The first comic book was 'Funnies on Parade', published in 1933. It featured reprinted comics and came for free with the newspaper. After this came the evolution from comic strips to comic books and what is considered the Golden Age of comic books. This was when the characters so popular now were created, such as Superman and Batman.

Superman (1938) is recognised as the first superhero comic book success story, which became a complete hit after being rejected by many newspapers.

In the 1960s Marvel came onto the scene, taking after DC’s popularity with their own superheroes such as the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk. Stan Lee came onto the scene and proposed the idea of Spiderman, which quickly became one of the most successful superheroes in comic book history. Through this other household superhero names such as Thor and the X-Men were created, and the Marvel Universe well and truly took off. This is universally recognised as Marvel is now very popular amongst a large majority of the public, kids and adults.

The most notable difference between DC and Marvel comic books was that Marvel characters usually had regular lives alongside being superheroes, making them more human and relatable to readers at the time. From this point, despite comic strips still being featured in many newspapers, comic books really took over and gained more popularity, making comic books a more common type of comic.

Comic strips and animation have many purposes throughout the world, most notably entertainment. The most valuable aspect of a comic strip or animation is its ability to pull in the readers and keep them constantly wanting more with a strong consistent narrative, conflict and the creation of a fantasy world. Despite this, another very important and popular use of comics and animation was for propaganda.

During the World War, Captain America was deemed America’s hero and often named a protector of the American Dream, a warped idea in which anyone can live a good, wealthy life in America with the right mentality. This worked as it gave people an inspiration with stellar morals.

Another popular use is satire. In both America and the UK, comic strips are very commonly used to make fun of/comment on the culture of the countries. An example of this would be 'Viz', a British comic magazine founded in 1979 which often parodied other popular comic strips at the time such as 'Beano' and has a much ruder, adult-appropriate narrative.

What is also recognised as a common use for comic strips in the 1950s was Ideology in the UK. Many comics were centered around the way women should act, and what their lives should look like. As many of these comics were aimed at young girls, it attempted to drill in the ideology that women should act and present in a specific way. Because of this, most women in comics were given a housewife storyline, and this did not help the global sexism issue but instead perpetuated it.

In the beginning, comics were small excerpts in newspapers, but they have grown to have their own publishers, and their own very passionate fanbase. At this point in comics history, the beloved comic books of Marvel and DC have inspired the DC Universe and Marvel Cinematic Universe. This crossover between comics and film has brought back some of the love and passion for comics, with comic book stores being more popular than ever due to people being genuinely passionate about the characters and storylines.