Comic in the United States
The comic is one of the first original American contributions to art.
Emergence
The term comic originated in New York, as in 1889 in the Sunday edition of Joseph Pulitzer belonging to the New York World an entertainment supplement (Comic Supplement) with cartoons was introduced. In 1895 Richard Felton Outcault moved to Pulitzer with his series Hogan's Alley ; the series was soon only called The Yellow Kid , after the color of the shirt of the main character, a boy who terrorizes his surroundings with rude jokes. Outcault had used the speech bubble to represent dialogues as early as 1894. But it was not until 1896 that he combined this integration of the text into the picture with the telling of a story across several panels.
The resounding success of this encore, especially the Yellow Kid , which made the newspaper the best-selling newspaper in the country, triggered the New York newspaper war between Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal , which lured Pulitzer away from his drawing staff.
In 1905 the New York Herald started its supplement, but tried to deliberately differentiate itself from the successful series such as The Yellow Kid or The Katzenjammer Kids by the German Rudolph Dirks , in which a rather brute, rude humor prevailed, which the young genre was already criticizing brought. The Herald's answer consisted primarily of the Little Nemo im Schlummerland series , which had a rather dreamy sense of humor and, above all, relied on the imaginative implementation of the dream stories. The draftsman Winsor McCay also deliberately used elements of contemporary Art Nouveau and thus distinguished himself from the previously dominant drawing style, which was still very much committed to the caricature style. The success remained far behind that of the competing papers, as did an attempt in Chicago with the German Lyonel Feininger , whose series The Kin-der-Kids and Wee Willie Winkie's World were quickly discontinued in 1906.
Pulitzer and Hearst soon adopted the principle of the Sunday supplement in other of their magazines and began delivering to other newspapers in cities where it was not represented. For this purpose they founded sales organizations, so-called syndicates . In this way, the comic supplement soon spread across the country. In 1908, three-quarters of the Sunday newspapers included these in their editions, also in order to retain the readers, because the newspapers themselves hardly differed in terms of content or appearance. Above all, the newspapers became interesting in this way for the masses of immigrants, who hardly knew the language, but could still be reached through the picture stories.
Introduction of day trips
After the illustrators of the sports pages regularly designed pictures on weekdays, the daily strip A. Mutt (later Mutt and Jeff ) was introduced in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907 , which Bud Fisher drew and which bears a strong resemblance to the strip A. Piker Clerk by Clare Briggs . In 1912 Hearst filled a whole page with four comics, including The Dingbat Family by George Herriman . Underneath, Herriman drew another story in a smaller bar in an animal world, at the end of which a cat is always thrown a brick at the head by a mouse. This plot became so popular that it ultimately formed the basis of a stand-alone comic: Krazy Kat depicted absurd variations on the same theme in a bizarre landscape in a constantly changing layout and ran from 1913 until the death of its creator in 1944.
From "funny" to family trip
The strips, for which the syndicates imposed restrictions on scope and content for nationwide distribution, should in the future become a mirror of American society as it had emerged as a result of the melting pot and should always adapt to changes in lifestyles.
In this way, the strips changed from a pure comedy series that only aimed at the final punch line, to a family series that formed the basis for a common lifestyle for all immigrant groups. Already in the strip The Gumps of Sidney Smith , the epic storyline was introduced as a dramaturgical concept, so readers also bought the newspaper the next day. For the first time a person died, in Gasoline Alley by Frank O. King (since 1918) the main character found a foundling and married. The people aged in real time and so the couple can have a child who grows up, marries themselves and goes to war in 1942.
This development culminated with Blondie , which Chic Young started in 1930 and is still running. In 1933 she married her fiancé Dagwood Bumford, the industrialist's son, but he had previously been disinherited and so Blondie and Dagwood lived in the same circumstances as their readers.
The adventure trip
By the end of the Second World War , only a few long-lasting and successful Funny could be introduced: Li'l Abner from Al Capp around the fictional village Dogpatch in Kentucky or Popeye from EC Segar , who initially played a supporting role in his series The Thimble Theater , but then quickly became the hero of the series, as the stubborn and not very clever one did not avoid a fight and thus met the readers' changed needs for spectacular, not too demanding entertainment.
The Depression after the economic crash in 1929 increased the need for realistic stories. Series like Blondie adjusted to reality, new series tried to find an appropriate narrative, both in terms of content and appearance.
Otherwise a different tone took hold in the comics.
The series Little Orphan Annie , in which an orphan is left to his own devices and has to cope with life , had previously become a great success in the 1920s . The world of cartoonist Harold Gray is one in which the poor are good and helpful, while the rich are selfish and evil, but all problems can be overcome with hard work and honesty. The comic broke away from the dogma of an amusing medium limited to the cheerful side of life; the images conveyed a threatening atmosphere to which the girl was exposed.
The series Wash Tubs by Roy Crane begins as a comedy about someone who wears glasses in love, but then turns into an adventure series with pirates and gangsters and, with the adult Captain Easy, introduced the forerunner of many subsequent series that satisfied the reader's need for characters, to arrange the so chaotic world for them and defeat the bad guys.
At the end of the 1920s, Charles Lindbergh inspired a whole series of series with the first successful solo crossing of the Atlantic, which centered on pilots.
In addition, the almost simultaneous start of such different series as the jungle series Tarzan , which Hal Foster designed in 1929, the science fiction series Buck Rogers and the detective series about Dick Tracy (by Chester Gould ) shows how much the comic strips were at that time were influenced by pulp literature and cinema and at the same time sought to attract different classes of readers.
Even the experiences of the little mouse Mickey Mouse , which Floyd Gottfredson drew for Walt Disney from 1930 onwards, took the title hero to distant areas and precarious situations. The tone was darker and the adventures wilder than anything that perhaps the most famous comic book character in the world later experienced.
For the first time a popular writer wrote the lyrics for the secret agent series Secret Agent X - 9 , Dashiell Hammett , followed by Mickey Spillane . The pictures for Secret Agent X - 9 were designed by Alex Raymond , whose Flash Gordon series, which was launched at the same time, modernized the medium with its depiction of strange, fascinating planets, suppressed eroticism, as well as the use of shiny colors, unusual perspectives and dissolution of the current layout.
In Terry and the Pirates , in which, like in Wash Tubs, a boy is out and about with an adventurer in the Orient, the draftsman Milton Caniff used a brush instead of a pen for the first time and was able to create a particularly authentic effect in his pictures and, thanks to a naturalism that was previously unknown, he was able to create a dramatic effect and achieve atmospheric effects. In 1936 Foster handed over the series for the "Lord of the Jungle" to Burne Hogarth and began a series with Prince Eisenherz that is still running.
The adventure trip had reached its climax, with the introduction of Superman in 1938, the comic genre that still dominates today was born.
The golden age of comics
When Superman landed on earth as the only survivor of the explosion of his home planet Krypton in 1938 , there had been hardly any costumed heroes before, such as the masked Shadow - borrowed from a Pulp series - and The Phantom . Superman led the Action Comics series to success and helped the "comic book" to assert itself alongside the daily newspaper as a medium for comics, which soon barely printed any newspaper strips. At the same time, the success of the series led to the fact that the publisher "Detectiv Comics" ( DC ), which had bought the rights to the series for 130 dollars from the inventors Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster , hired more artists and authors and thus the authorship of the stories increased lost in importance.
Other characters at DC included Batman from Bill Finger and Bob Kane , Wonder Woman , The Flash , Green Lantern , Hawkman and The Atom .
In 1939 the second major publisher for superhero comics, Marvel Comics, was founded . The one year later appearing Captain Marvel , who at times should be the most popular hero, was ironically not published here. Marvel's greatest successes were initially with the innovatively drawn Captain America , the first series by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby .
America's entry into World War II , in particular , created a need for morally impeccable heroes willing to sacrifice themselves for the just cause. In addition to a number of patriotically minded superheroes, aviator series became particularly popular. In the period between 1940 and the end of the war, there were few new series that did not deviate from viewer expectations, including The Spirit , a film noir- inspired crime series with which Will Eisner introduced new forms of layout and Carl Bark's humorous stories about the duck Donald Duck , who always plunges into chaos when dealing with everyday life.
Comics in the post-war era
Most adventure comics lost a large part of their readers after the war was won, because they had lost the enemy and had lost their inner dynamism. In addition, the competition from television made the comics increasingly difficult, as this naturally produced the action scenes in a more realistic and exciting way. In addition, newspapers began to die out, which was disastrous for comics insofar as the comic strips published in newspapers were still the most common form of distribution.
On the one hand, the needs of the readership led to a renewed boom among the funnies , the most famous of which were Walt Kelly's Pogo and Charles M. Schulz 's Peanuts , but which, in addition to the punch lines, contained a subtext that was only accessible to adult readers.
The magazines also tried to open up new topics and oriented themselves more and more to successful role models from Hollywood , but without being able to establish long-term formats. More and more people were now targeting adults who were consciously addressed through love and horror stories. These included, in particular, series such as Tales from the Crypt , which was at the center of a controversy about the harmful effects of comics on young people, although they were not intended for them. This culminated in comic book burnings by parents and politicians. In the mid-1950s, comic publishers therefore committed themselves in a comics code to self-restraint in their booklets in favor of the protection of minors and to submit each comic to a supervisory authority before publication. The first really successful title on the adult market was the satire magazine MAD from 1952 , which was significantly influenced by Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein and which became the most influential comic magazine of the post-war period.
The Silver Age of Comics
It was not until the early 1960s that comics sales picked up again. Once again, the superheroes, whose contemporary reanimation brought a new boom for a new generation ( The Flash , Wonder Woman ), played a decisive role in this . In response to DC's success with the Justice League of America , Marvel launched The Fantastic Four and a slew of new characters, including the Hulk , Silver Surfer, and Spider-Man , centered around an awkward, ever-financially struggling adolescent who stood up for the Felt guilty of murdering his uncle. This measure of equipping the hero with weaknesses with which the readers could identify, opened up new opportunities for the comic. In addition, there was the confrontation with social problems such as racism, poverty, drug addiction, which Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams introduced in Green Lantern and which also referred to current art flows such as Pop Art .
With the content and visual modernization of the genre - in 1966 the first black superhero was introduced with Black Panther - the decline in sales could not be stopped. Even the success of the Superman cinema series couldn't stop this trend. The Spider-Man films that followed quickly turned out to be a flop, as did the film about Supergirl . Commercial and artistic low point: in Superman IV the hero hurls the atom bombs at the sun and ends the Cold War with a speech .
The underground and its consequences
The renewed decline of superheroes is also due to the fact that this genre is subject to formal and content restrictions that prevent it from reacting to the changing needs of a changing society.
The trigger for a movement that was able to reflect the sensitivities of its readers was the underground comix , the first of which was probably in 1968 Zap by Robert Crumb , who with his absurd stories that absorb the social contradictions became the symbol of an entire generation and the band too Velvet Underground related. Authors directly influenced by this movement include Art Spiegelman , founder of Raw magazine and Peter Bagge , creator of the character Buddy Bradley .
Even if the underground movement quickly got out of hand and exhausted itself in an accumulation of sexual and violent taboos, which Crumb rejected - he was so horrified by the film version that he let his character Fritz the cat die - his influence is still noticeable today.
In particular, it became possible for more and more independently produced series to assert themselves on the market, such as the Elfquest series by Wendy and Richard Pini or Bone by Jeff Smith , whose fantasy worlds have complex characters and plot structures that are linked to one another.
The year 1986
At the beginning of the 1980s the crisis of the medium became more and more evident. The only longer-lasting day trips had proven to be Jim Davis ' Garfield and Hägar by Dik Browne .
The superhero genre, which was still the focus of American comics, lost more and more sales, the heroes turned out to be less attractive to the youth, new characters were rejected by them. Even in the cinema, films could hardly meet expectations. Flash Gordon , Popeye and Howard - A Beastly Hero were all losing money, despite the success of Star Wars , which not only looked like a comic book adaptation, but was made by George Lucas only because the rights were too expensive for Flash Gordon were.
Then in 1986 the anthologies of Art Spiegelmans Maus , Frank Miller's The Return of the Dark Knight and the series Watchmen - The Guardians by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons came on the market, which provided a makeover.
Maus was the first comic to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and, with his implementation of Spiegelman's father's experiences in Auschwitz, made a significant contribution to the recognition of comics as an independent art form outside the comic fan community.
Miller, who wrote the two equally spectacular Daredevil and Elektra stories by Bill Sienkiewicz at the same time , with his gloomy Batman version also provided the template for Tim Burton's theatrical version , which in 1988 advanced to the most successful film of all time and thus the one that continues today Triggered comic film boom.
With series such as The Crow by James O'Barr and Spawn by Todd McFarlane , new comic book heroes were established again, whose novel optics made the meaning of the plot more and more subordinate, while they helped to double sales through trading cards etc.
The first digital comic book appeared around the same time in 1985: Peter Beno Gillis and Michael Saenz created Shatter entirely on the computer. Since then there have been other magazines, but this comic book form has not yet made its breakthrough.
1986 In addition, appeared on the edge of the sky by Howard Cruse , the first graphic novel of an openly gay comic artist.
1990s crisis
Contrary to the new stars like Spawn or The Maxx , who appeared with the new independent publisher Image , DC and Marvel were able to sell fewer and fewer magazines. The old series lost more and more charm. The warrior Superman, for example, had to die spectacularly in the early 1990s (to later resurrect and marry Lois Lane ), Batman fell at the end of the long Knightfall series, but also returned in 1994.
There was a crossover between the two publishers, who let their heroes compete against each other without really benefiting from it. There was an economic crisis in the industry. Most independent publishers had to give up. Even Marvel Comics went bankrupt in 1996, but was ultimately saved by selling 23 film licenses in 1999. In the meantime, the publishers earn more with the films than with the sales.
Recently, more and more artists began to process (auto) biographical experiences in their stories ( Art Spiegelman : Maus ; Will Eisner : In the Heart of the Storm ; Craig Thompson : Blankets ; Harvey Pekar : American Splendor ) or to realistically depict social trends and thus becoming chroniclers of the present ( Love & Rockets by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez ; Seth : Palookaville ; Daniel Cloves : Ghost World ). Or their descriptions of stories from the past allow an authentic insight into this epoch without speculatively exaggerating it ( Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell : From Hell ; Jason Lutes : Berlin - Steinerne Stadt ; Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner : Road to Perdition ).
Authors such as Spiegelman , Eisner in the works mentioned or Seth in Actually, Life is Beautiful and Scott McCloud also began to describe the artistic act of drawing comics and to make theoretical considerations. Joe Sacco's Palestine is considered comic journalism .
In this way, the medium opened up for the first time the opportunity to grasp the reader's complex reality and ultimately to grow up.