Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Comic Books

Starting point is 00:00:00 One of the most popular forms of media is comic books. Initially created as entertainment for children, they have since grown into a global media consumed by people of all ages. The development of the comic book was not something that came out of nowhere. It was the culmination of a type of communication that it actually began thousands of years earlier. Learn more about comic books, where they came from, and the business behind them, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? bouncing around, replaying the day, or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where,

Starting point is 00:00:53 well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. Comic books, despite being a relatively modern phenomenon, actually have roots that extend back into the distant past.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Comic books are simply a form of what is known as sequential art. Sequential art, as the name implies, is using a series of images to tell a story or convey a message. Several thousand years ago, sequential art was probably the most important form of art in that it was a means of communication for people who were largely illiterate. In theory, the use of pictures to tell a story can be dated back as far as 20,000 years ago to the cave paintings found in places like Lascault in France. True sequential art didn't appear until the rise of ancient civilizations. There are sequential works of art found in ancient Egyptian tombs that tell the stories of the people buried there.

Starting point is 00:02:11 There are Bas-relief sculptures found in Greek temples that tell the story of the gods. In ancient India, sequential images were often used with narrators to tell stories. In China, there were panels made of silkwood or paper, which were also used to tell stories. In the middle of Rome today, you can see Trajan's column, which sequentially tells the story of the military victories of the Emperor Trajan using images. Even with the development of writing, there was still a need for sequential art to tell stories to those who couldn't read or write. The biotapestry is a 70-meter-long depiction of William the Conqueror's Invasion of England, done entire. in embroidered cloth, and it's estimated to be 900 years old. The point of all this is that sequential art was something that was almost universal and independently

Starting point is 00:02:54 arose in civilizations around the world. While sequential art did appear as works of art, one place that seldom appeared was in books or scrolls. Before the printing press, books were very expensive to produce, and they were only of interest to people who were literate, so there was no need to use sequential art. There were illustrations in books, but that they were very expensive to produce, these images were often used to enhance a written story and were not the story itself. When the printing press was developed, the story was the same. Books were designed for text with some illustrations. But eventually the cost of printing and paper came down, and images were once again being used as the focal point of published material. These would usually be in the

Starting point is 00:03:35 form of images used as satire or propaganda, and they would often be combined with text. The fundamental difference between these printed images and earlier ones is that these printed images were not intended for an illiterate audience. There would usually be some sort of title or text explaining what was happening. With the reduced cost of paper and printing, printed materials such as newspapers and magazines began to become popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. The reduced cost and wider appeal of printed material, as well as improved printing technology, allowed for the creation of material that never would have made sense economically previously. The thing that we can point to for the first time that exclusively use sequential art

Starting point is 00:04:14 illustrations in a printed publication was a magazine called The Glasgow Looking Glass, which was first published in 1825. The magazine took a satirical look at Scottish society and the culture of early 19th century Britain. Despite only existing for about a year, the Glasgow looking glass ushered in several innovations that we take for granted, the biggest of which was the use of speech bubbles or word balloons. These are the spaces where text is placed to indicate what character is speaking and encloses what they're saying. It also pioneered the use of the phrase to be continued as a cliffhanger to get people to read the next installment. In 1827, the book Histoire de Mistre Vubois was published in Geneva, Switzerland. This was reprinted in the United

Starting point is 00:04:57 States in 1842 with the title The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck. In 1865, the German artist Wilhelm Bush published a book titled Max and Moritz. The book was an illustrated black humor book about two young boys with the text written entirely in rhymed couplets. Also in the 19th century, political and satirical cartoons became extremely popular in newspapers, but these were seldom serial in nature. In 1867, the British magazine Judy introduced the first regular illustrated character to appear, Allie Sloper. It was so popular that it was spun off into its own publication known as Ellie Sloper's Half Holiday, which was estimated to have an audience of 350,000, mostly working class people who read it. In 1895, cartoon known as the Yellow Kid appeared in Joseph

Starting point is 00:05:44 Pulitzer's New York World. A year later, it moved to William Randolph Hearst, New York Journal American. Due to a lapse in copyright, Pulitzer continued to publish it. These newspapers were known as Yellow Kid newspapers, later shortened to Yellow Newspapers, which is where the term yellow journalism comes from. In 1897, a German immigrant, Rudolf Durks, published the Cats and Jammer Kids in the New York Journal, which is where the termed in the New York Journal, which is widely recognized to be the first true comic strip. Also in 1897, the Yellow Kid in McFadden's flat was published in the UK. This was a collection of Yellow Kid cartoons and the first book to identify itself and use the term comic book. The early 20th century saw the rise in popularity

Starting point is 00:06:27 of comic strips, many of which were popular enough to have a collection of strips published as books. The Adventures of Tintin was a Belgian serialized comic strip first published in 1929 that was later republished as a best-selling book. The popularity of these collections of comic books as books led to the publication of more illustrated books, often for children, and their rise in popularity. Everything up until this point that I've mentioned was just to show that the origin of comic books, as we know them today, was actually in comic strips. There really wasn't a difference. However, when you say comic book today, you're usually referring to something very specific and different from a comic strip. It isn't just an illustrated book. It's an entire

Starting point is 00:07:08 genre of storytelling that often revolves around superheroes. In 1935, National Allied Publications published a book titled New Fun Number One. This is of significance because National Allied Publications later went on to become DC Comics. New Fun Number One was unique in that the entire book was original stories, not dependent on any previously published comic strips. They also published Detective Comics No. 1 in 1937, with the entire book. a grizzled private eye known as Slam Bradley. The thing that truly began, what is now known as the Golden Age of comic books,

Starting point is 00:07:46 was their publication of Action Comics No. 1 on April 18, 1938, which starred a character that was known as Superman. A copy of Action Comics No. 1 has sold at auction for $3.2 million. One of the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel, actually wrote a science fiction short story in 1933 about a telepathic villain with the name of Superman. Within a year, they published Detective Comics No. 27, which introduced another character that was a smash hit, Batman.

Starting point is 00:08:18 In October of 1939, timely publications was founded by a magazine publisher named Martin Goodman. The first book they published was called Marvel Comics No. 1, and the company later changed its name to Marvel Comics in 1960. Comic books took off during the 1940s, as they were primarily read by young men and boys. They were popular with soldiers during World War II, many of whom began reading before they joined the service. In one survey, 44% of all American soldiers during the war claimed that they were avid comic book readers. Superheroes such as Wonder Woman, the Green Lantern, and The Flash were all created during this period. In addition to superhero comic books, different types of comics proliferated as well.

Starting point is 00:08:59 Crime, westerns, and horror all became popular. A national moral panic developed in the United States in the early 1950s over comic books and their presentation of graphic violence and gore. In 1954, psychiatrist Frederick Wortham published a book titled Seduction of the Innocent, which claimed that comic books were a negative influence on children and contributed to delinquency. After Senate hearings on the subject, the Comics Code Authority was established, which was a voluntary regulatory board that vetted comic public. comics that were approved were able to use the Comics Code Authority seal on the cover.

Starting point is 00:09:35 Comic books waned in popularity after the Senate hearings, but reemerged in the late 50s and early 60s, and this began what is known as the Silver Age of Comic Books. This period was led by the creation of new characters by Marvel Comics. Developed by the team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Marvel superheroes were written for an adult audience. They wrote about contemporary issues such as communism in the Cold War. The characters, were often flawed and were not perfect heroes like the DC heroes. Characters developed during this period include the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, and the X-Men. The United States was not the only country where comic books achieved widespread popularity. In Japan, after World War II,

Starting point is 00:10:16 long-form illustrated books known as manga became popular. Firmly rooted in pre-war Japanese art and publications, manga was popularized by the work of Osamu Tizuka. Tizuka created work such as Astroboy, Princess Knight and Kimba the White Lion. Manga and its associated art form anime have grown to worldwide popularity and are one of the biggest Japanese cultural exports today. And for those of you feeling that this topic is getting shortchanged, I assure you that it will be the topic of a future episode. The 1970s saw a turn in comics to real-life subjects.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Superheroes would often deal with issues such as drug addiction and alcoholism. Black superheroes became popular with characters such as Falcon, Luke Cage, Blade, Greenlander John Stewart, and the early. created Black Panther. It also saw the rise of independent comics who weren't reliant on DC or Marvel and did not subject themselves to the Comic Code Authority. The 80s saw major changes to many popular characters. Having been around for decades, many characters were revamped, rebooted, or reimagined. Longer-form stories were sold in single publications that became known as graphic novels. This period saw the release of Batman the Dark Night Returns,

Starting point is 00:11:26 V for Vendetta, and The Watchmen. There was also a resurgence of compilations of comic strips published as books, just like there were in the 19th century. These included books for strips such as Calvin and Hobbs, the Farside, and Bloom County. Today, the comic book industry is as big as it's ever been. Global sales of comic books worldwide are nearly $8 billion, including all comic books and graphic novels. The value of major comic book companies like DC and Marvel has skyrocketed as well. Disney now owns Marvel and Warner Brothers Discovery owns DC. The value in the companies now largely comes from the intellectual property in their characters,

Starting point is 00:12:02 which are used for movies and television. Four of the top ten grossing movies of all time at the box office were movies based on comic book characters. Comics and comic books, like everything else, have also now gone digital, and many titles can be read online or on tablet devices. Despite the fate of newspapers and magazines, many of which have gone out of business in the face of competition from the internet, comic books have largely survived because there is an inherent collectibility about them. Comic books and comic book characters have left an indelible mark on modern society.

Starting point is 00:12:33 While superheroes are a modern invention, they can trace their roots back to a form of storytelling that is thousands of years old. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Comic Books

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