Oh, for those childhood days when we used to hide our comics inside our text books and try to steal some moments of fun-filled reading! The joy of spending some time with memorable characters like Spiderman, Superman, Tintin, and Asterix is unforgettable. There was a time when every child’s bookshelf was stacked with comic books of Phantom, Mandrake, Archie, Agniputra Abhay, or Chacha Choudhury. The situation is a little different today. The kids still love stories, but the medium has changed. TV channels like Pogo and Cartoon Network have replaced comic books. The electronic media has almost dethroned the print media. However, comics have survived, though diminished in their reach somewhat, entertaining kids and adults, but scripting comics is not child’s play at all. Orissa POST traces the history of comics and lists some interesting facts about some of the most popular ones.
Why comics are popular
If there was a fight between Superman and Spiderman who would win? A question like this often provided mental stimulus for kids who have grown up on comics. What exactly is it that makes comics so popular among kids and adults? According to research, a kid often turns to imaginary friends or fictional characters when he/she faces social discomfort and lack of a peer circle. This apart, with the rise in families opting for a single child, rapid growth of urbanisation and nuclear families, there is greater childhood loneliness. That turns kids towards relatable comic characters and the world of comic books. Another study reveals that children who are bullied turn to comic books for solace. They get comfort in the theme of ‘victory of good over evil.’ Social psychology also suggests that comics helps in encouraging pro-social behaviour among children and increases their leadership ability.
History
The history of comics can be traced to cave paintings of the pre-historic era and then to early precursors such as Trajan’s Column in Rome, Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Bayeux Tapestry. Rome’s Trajan’s Column, for example, is an early surviving example of a narrative told through sequential pictures, while Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek friezes, medieval tapestries such as the Bayeux Tapestry and illustrated manuscripts also combine sequential images and words to tell a story. But the beginning of present-day comics lies in the early part of the 19th century in Manga, created by Japanese artiste Fokosai. European cartoon characters were first created in 1827, and American characters were born in 1890.
Comics come in many formats. Comic strips are generally short, multipanel comics that traditionally often appeared in newspapers. In the US, daily strips have normally occupied a single tier, while Sunday strips are given multiple tiers.
Specialised comics periodicals formats vary greatly in different cultures. Comic books, primarily an American format, are thin periodicals usually published in colour. European and Japanese comics are frequently serialised in magazines — monthly or weekly in Europe, and usually black-and-white and weekly in Japan. Japanese comics magazine typically run to hundreds of pages.
Book-length comics take different forms in different cultures. European comic albums are most commonly printed in A4-size colour volumes.
Manga, DC, Marvel – Big Players of the Comic Multiverse
Even as a slew of companies is involved in publishing comic books, Manga, created in Japan, and DC and Marvel, two publishing houses of the US, are known as the market leaders.
Manga
Manga is said to originate from scrolls dating to the 12th century. Since the 1950s, it has steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing industry. By 1995, the manga market in Japan was valued at $6–7 billion, with annual sales of 1.9 billion manga books and manga magazines in Japan (equivalent to 15 issues per person). Manga have also gained a significant worldwide audience. Manga stories are typically printed in black-and-white, although some full-colour manga exist. In Japan, manga are usually serialised in large manga magazines, often containing many stories, each presented in a single episode to be continued in the next issue. With the relaxation of censorship in Japan in the 1990s, an assortment of explicit sexual material appeared in manga intended for male readers and correspondingly continued into the English translations. However, in 2010, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government passed a bill to restrict such content.
DC
Entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications in 1934. The company debuted with the tabloid-sized New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 with a cover date of February 1935. The initials “DC” came from the company’s popular series Detective Comics, which featured Batman’s debut and subsequently became part of the company’s name.
Interesting Facts about DC
Batman more popular
Although Superman remains the most well-known superhero in the world, Batman holds the title for most appearances, which currently stands at around 6,250.
The Dark Knight Returns
Comic Sans MS, a sans-serif casual script font designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation that became very popular, was based on the lettering used in the ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and ‘Watchmen’ graphic novels.
Batman vs. Superman
In 2000, a project was started to create a DC-multiverse crossover movie “Batman versus Superman.” It was, sadly, abandoned in 2002, but a poster did make a cameo as a joke in the apocalyptic movie “I Am Legend.”
Love couple
The Green Lantern and Wonder Woman were supposed to become a love couple, but that idea was scrapped in the 70s by DC.
Obama connect
Earth-23 is a planet in the DC Multiverse that is almost solely inhabited by black versions of DC characters. Black Superman was based on Barack Obama, while Wonder Woman was based on Beyoncé Knowles.
Marvel
Marvel Comics is the brand name and primary imprint of Marvel Worldwide Inc., formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, a publisher of American comic books and related media. In 2009, the Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment, Marvel Worldwide’s parent company. Marvel started in 1939 as Timely Publications, and by the early 1950s, was generally known as Atlas Comics. The Marvel branding began in 1961, the year that the company launched ‘The Fantastic Four’ and other superhero titles created by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and others.
The first modern comic books under the Marvel Comics brand were the science-fiction anthology “Journey into Mystery #69” and the teen-humour title “Patsy Walker #95” (both covers dated June 1961), which each displayed an “MC” box on its cover. Then, in the wake of DC Comics’ success in reviving superheroes in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly with the Flash, Green Lantern, and other members of the team Justice League of America, Marvel followed suit. In 1961, writer-editor Stan Lee revolutionised superhero comics by introducing superheroes designed to appeal more to older readers than the predominantly child audiences of the medium.
Marvel often presented flawed superheroes, freaks, and misfits—unlike the perfect, handsome, athletic heroes found in previous traditional comic books. Some Marvel heroes looked like villains and monsters such as the Hulk and the Thing.
Interesting Facts about Marvel Comics
Michael Jackson wanted to be Spider-Man
In the early 1990s, Michael Jackson tried to buy Marvel Comics just so that he could play Spider-Man in his own movie. “I knew Michael Jackson. And with the things he discussed with me, I felt he wanted to be Spider-Man. It was the character that interested him,” said Stan Lee in an interview with Moviefone.
Spider-Man was to be a disposable character
Marvel’s publisher Martin Goodman hated the idea of a superhero with insect powers. When Stan Lee and Steve Ditko came up with the idea, Goodman did not want to waste time. He let them use the idea of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy, a magazine that was about to be cancelled and for which he needed stories to fill the last pages.
Damage Control
In the Marvel universe, a fictional company called Damage Control specialises in cleaning up the mess that superheroes and super villains leave behind.
Amalgam Comics
Amalgam Comics was a publishing imprint shared by DC Comics and Marvel Comics, in which the two comic book publishers merged their characters into new ones. Batman and Wolverine became the Amalgam character Dark Claw. Superman and Captain America’s amalgamation was Super-Soldier.
Venom was created by a fan
Venom was conceived of by a Marvel Comics reader named Randy Schueller. Marvel purchased the idea for $220.00 after they sent Schueller a letter acknowledging Marvel’s desire to acquire it from him.
Indian challenge
In India, the craze for comics emerged in the mid ’60s when a newspaper group published Indrajal Comics. These comics popularised characters such as Phantom, Mandrake and Flash Gordon in India.
Amar Chitra Katha is one of India’s largest selling comic book series, with more than 100 million copies sold in 20 Indian languages. Founded in 1967, the imprint has more than 400 titles that retell stories from the great Indian epics, mythology, history, folklore, and fables in a comic book format. The comic series was started by Anant Pai in an attempt to teach Indian children their cultural heritage. He was shocked that Indian students could answer questions on Greek and Roman mythology, but were ignorant of their own history, mythology and folklore. It was during a quiz contest aired on Doordarshan in February 1967 that participants easily answered questions pertaining to Greek mythology, but were unable to reply to the question: “In the Ramayana, who was Rama’s mother?”
Popular comic strips
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz that ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward. The comic strip is among the most popular and influential in the history of comic strips, with 17,897 strips published in all, making it “arguably the longest story ever told by one human being.” At its peak in the mid- to late 1960s, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of around 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages. The strip focuses on a social circle of young children, where adults exist but are rarely seen or heard. The main character, Charlie Brown, is meek, nervous, and lacks self-confidence. He is unable to fly a kite, win a baseball game, or kick a football held by his irascible friend Lucy, who always pulls it away at the last instant.
Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of 24 comic albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a century after Hergé’s birth in 1907, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and had been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film.
Asterix
Asterix or The Adventures of Asterix , a series of French comics, first appeared in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959. It was written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo until the death of Goscinny in 1977. Uderzo then took over the writing until 2009, when he sold the rights to publishing company Hachette. In 2013, a new team consisting of Jean-Yves Ferri (script) and Didier Conrad (artwork) took over.
Webcomics
Webcomics, also known as online comics and Internet comics, are comics that are available to read on the Internet. Many are exclusively published online, but the majority of traditional newspaper comic strips have some Internet presence. King Features Syndicate and other syndicates often provide archives of recent comic strips on their websites. Some, such as Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, include an email address in each strip.
Comic book heroes (India)
Devi
Nagraj
Doga
Super Commando Dhruv
Chakra-The Invincible
Shakti
Parmanu
Chacha Choudhury
Gojo
Inspector Steel
Top 10 comic writers (International)
Stan Lee
Alan Moore
Frank Miller
Jack Kirby
Kelly Sue DeConnick
Neil Gaiman
Brian Michael Bendis
Warren Ellis
Jason Aaron
Scott Snyder
Superheroes
Batman
Superman
Spiderman
Wolverine
Ironman
Thor
The Hulk
The Flash
Wonder Woman
Arch-enemies
The Joker (Batman)
Venom (Spider-Man)
Magneto (X-Men)
Carnage (Spider-Man)
Dr Doom (The Fantastic Four)
Green Goblin (Spider-Man)
Lex Luthor (Superman)
Bane (Batman)
The Riddler (Batman)
Loki (Thor)
Writers say…
When asked about the craze for comic books among kids, Dash Benhur, the famous writer for children who won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Bal Puraskar in 2014, said it is the illustrations in the comic books that primarily catch the fascination of the children as they love pictures more than alphabets. Secondly, the kids these days have several forms of entertainment within their reach. Therefore, they prefer to read a 30 page comic book instead of flipping through 100 pages of a storybook. Besides, the dialogues written in the balloons draw them more than the descriptive narration of a storybook.
Echoing the same sentiment, Birendra Mohanty, an eminent Odia writer of children’s literature and a Kendra Sahitya Akademi Bal Puraskar winner of 2018, said that kids these days can take out very little time from their studies to read poetry, stories and essays. They prefer to read a comic book rather than a thick volume as the ‘speaking characters’ take them instantly to a world of imagination.
Bijay Mandal, OP
Inputs: Shabiha Nur Khatoon, OP