Comic strip
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2023) |
A comic strip is a
Most strips are written and drawn by a comics artist, known as a
Comic strips have appeared inside American magazines such as
History
The Biblia pauperum ("Paupers' Bible"), a tradition of picture Bibles beginning in the Late Middle Ages, sometimes depicted Biblical events with words spoken by the figures in the miniatures written on scrolls coming out of their mouths—which makes them to some extent ancestors of the modern cartoon strips.
In China, with its traditions of
The origin of the modern English language comic strip can be traced to the efflorescence of caricature in late 18th century London. English caricaturists such as Richard Newton and George Woodward developed sophisticated caricature styles using strips of expressive comic figures with captions that could be read left to right to cumulative effect, as well as business models for advertising and selling cheap comic illustration on regular subscription.
Other leading British caricaturists produced strips as well; for example
The Caricature Magazine or Hudibrastic Mirror, an influential English comic series published in London between 1807 and 1819 by Thomas Tegg included some satirical stories in comic strip format such as The Adventures of Johnny Newcome.[5] [6]
Newspapers
The first newspaper comic strips appeared in North America in the late 19th century.[7] The Yellow Kid is usually credited as one of the first newspaper strips. However, the art form combining words and pictures developed gradually and there are many examples which led up to the comic strip.
The Glasgow Looking Glass was the first mass-produced publication to tell stories using illustrations and is regarded as the worlds first comic strip. It satirised the political and social life of Scotland in the 1820s. It was conceived and illustrated by William Heath.
Hugely popular, Katzenjammer Kids occasioned one of the first comic-strip copyright ownership suits in the history of the medium. When Dirks left
In the United States, the great popularity of
The longest-running American comic strips are:
- The Katzenjammer Kids (1897–2006; 109 years)
- Gasoline Alley (1918–present)
- Ripley's Believe It or Not! (1918–present)[13]
- Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (1919–present)
- Thimble Theater/Popeye (1919–present)
- Blondie (1930–present)
- Dick Tracy (1931–present)
- Alley Oop (1932–present)
- Bringing Up Father (1913–2000; 87 years)
- Little Orphan Annie (1924–2010; 86 years)[14]
Most newspaper comic strips are syndicated; a
Newspaper comic strips come in two different types:
Popularity
Making his first appearance in the British magazine
While in the early 20th century comic strips were a frequent target for detractors of "yellow journalism", by the 1920s the medium became wildly popular. While radio, and later, television surpassed newspapers as a means of entertainment, most comic strip characters were widely recognizable until the 1980s, and the "funny pages" were often arranged in a way they appeared at the front of Sunday editions. In 1931, George Gallup's first poll had the comic section as the most important part of the newspaper, with additional surveys pointing out that the comic strips were the second most popular feature after the picture page. During the 1930s, many comic sections had between 12 and 16 pages, although in some cases, these had up to 24 pages.
The popularity and accessibility of strips meant they were often clipped and saved; authors including
Production and format
The two conventional formats for newspaper comics are strips and single gag panels. The strips are usually displayed horizontally, wider than they are tall. Single panels are square, circular or taller than they are wide. Strips usually, but not always, are broken up into several smaller panels with continuity from panel to panel. A horizontal strip can also be used for a single panel with a single gag, as seen occasionally in Mike Peters' Mother Goose and Grimm.
Early daily strips were large, often running the entire width of the newspaper, and were sometimes three or more inches high.[19] Initially, a newspaper page included only a single daily strip, usually either at the top or the bottom of the page. By the 1920s, many newspapers had a comics page on which many strips were collected together. During the 1930s, the original art for a daily strip could be drawn as large as 25 inches wide by six inches high.[20] Over decades, the size of daily strips became smaller and smaller, until by 2000, four standard daily strips could fit in an area once occupied by a single daily strip.[19] As strips have become smaller, the number of panels have been reduced.
Proof sheets were the means by which syndicates provided newspapers with black-and-white line art for the reproduction of strips (which they arranged to have colored in the case of Sunday strips). Michigan State University Comic Art Collection librarian Randy Scott describes these as "large sheets of paper on which newspaper comics have traditionally been distributed to subscribing newspapers. Typically each sheet will have either six daily strips of a given title or one Sunday strip. Thus, a week of Beetle Bailey would arrive at the Lansing State Journal in two sheets, printed much larger than the final version and ready to be cut apart and fitted into the local comics page."[21] Comic strip historian Allan Holtz described how strips were provided as mats (the plastic or cardboard trays in which molten metal is poured to make plates) or even plates ready to be put directly on the printing press. He also notes that with electronic means of distribution becoming more prevalent printed sheets "are definitely on their way out."[22][23]
NEA Syndicate experimented briefly with a two-tier daily strip, Star Hawks, but after a few years, Star Hawks dropped down to a single tier.[9]
In Flanders, the two-tier strip is the standard publication style of most daily strips like Spike and Suzy and Nero.[24] They appear Monday through Saturday; until 2003 there were no Sunday papers in Flanders.[25] In the last decades, they have switched from black and white to color.
Cartoon panels
Single panels usually, but not always, are not broken up and lack continuity. The daily
Sunday comics
Sunday newspapers traditionally included a special color section. Early Sunday strips (known colloquially as "the funny papers", shortened to "the funnies"), such as
During the 1930s, the original art for a Sunday strip was usually drawn quite large. For example, in 1930, Russ Westover drew his Tillie the Toiler Sunday page at a size of 17" × 37".[26] In 1937, the cartoonist Dudley Fisher launched the innovative Right Around Home, drawn as a huge single panel filling an entire Sunday page.
Full-page strips were eventually replaced by strips half that size. Strips such as
Comic strips have also been published in Sunday newspaper magazines. Russell Patterson and Carolyn Wells' New Adventures of Flossy Frills was a continuing strip series seen on Sunday magazine covers. Beginning January 26, 1941, it ran on the front covers of Hearst's American Weekly newspaper magazine supplement, continuing until March 30 of that year. Between 1939 and 1943, four different stories featuring Flossy appeared on American Weekly covers.
Sunday comics sections employed offset color printing with multiple print runs imitating a wide range of colors. Printing plates were created with four or more colors—traditionally, the CMYK color model: cyan, magenta, yellow and "K" for black. With a screen of tiny dots on each printing plate, the dots allowed an image to be printed in a halftone that appears to the eye in different gradations. The semi-opaque property of ink allows halftone dots of different colors to create an optical effect of full-color imagery.[27][28]
Underground comic strips
The decade of the 1960s saw the rise of
Webcomics
Webcomics, also known as online comics and internet comics, are
Conventions and genres
Most comic strip characters do not age throughout the strip's life, but in some strips, like Lynn Johnston's award-winning For Better or For Worse, the characters age as the years pass. The first strip to feature aging characters was Gasoline Alley.
The history of comic strips also includes series that are not humorous, but tell an ongoing
A number of strips have featured animals as main characters. Some are non-verbal (
Social and political influence
The comics have long held a distorted mirror to contemporary society, and almost from the beginning have been used for political or social commentary. This ranged from the conservative slant of Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie to the unabashed liberalism of Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. Al Capp's Li'l Abner espoused liberal opinions for most of its run, but by the late 1960s, it became a mouthpiece for Capp's repudiation of the counterculture.
Pogo used animals to particularly devastating effect, caricaturing many prominent politicians of the day as animal denizens of Pogo's Okeefenokee Swamp. In a fearless move, Pogo's creator Walt Kelly took on Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, caricaturing him as a bobcat named Simple J. Malarkey, a megalomaniac who was bent on taking over the characters' birdwatching club and rooting out all undesirables. Kelly also defended the medium against possible government regulation in the McCarthy era. At a time when comic books were coming under fire for supposed sexual, violent, and subversive content, Kelly feared the same would happen to comic strips. Going before the Congressional subcommittee, he proceeded to charm the members with his drawings and the force of his personality. The comic strip was safe for satire.
During the early 20th century, comic strips were widely associated with publisher William Randolph Hearst, whose papers had the largest circulation of strips in the United States. Hearst was notorious for his practice of yellow journalism, and he was frowned on by readers of The New York Times and other newspapers which featured few or no comic strips. Hearst's critics often assumed that all the strips in his papers were fronts for his own political and social views. Hearst did occasionally work with or pitch ideas to cartoonists, most notably his continued support of George Herriman's Krazy Kat. An inspiration for Bill Watterson and other cartoonists, Krazy Kat gained a considerable following among intellectuals during the 1920s and 1930s.
Some comic strips, such as Doonesbury and
Publicity and recognition
The world's longest comic strip is 88.9-metre (292 ft) long and on display at Trafalgar Square as part of the London Comedy Festival.[32] The London Cartoon Strip was created by 15 of Britain's best known cartoonists and depicts the history of London.
The
In 1995, the United States Postal Service issued a series of commemorative stamps, Comic Strip Classics, marking the comic-strip centennial.
Today's strip artists, with the help of the NCS, enthusiastically promote the medium, which since the 1970s (and particularly the 1990s) has been considered to be in decline due to numerous factors such as changing tastes in humor and entertainment, the waning relevance of newspapers in general and the loss of most foreign markets outside English-speaking countries. One particularly humorous example of such promotional efforts is the Great Comic Strip Switcheroonie, held in 1997 on April Fool's Day, an event in which dozens of prominent artists took over each other's strips. Garfield's Jim Davis, for example, switched with Blondie's Stan Drake, while Scott Adams (Dilbert) traded strips with Bil Keane (The Family Circus).
While the 1997 Switcheroonie was a one-time publicity stunt, an artist taking over a feature from its originator is an old tradition in newspaper cartooning (as it is in the comic book industry). In fact, the practice has made possible the longevity of the genre's more popular strips. Examples include Little Orphan Annie (drawn and plotted by Harold Gray from 1924 to 1944 and thereafter by a succession of artists including Leonard Starr and Andrew Pepoy), and Terry and the Pirates, started by Milton Caniff in 1934 and picked up by George Wunder.
A business-driven variation has sometimes led to the same feature continuing under a different name. In one case, in the early 1940s, Don Flowers' Modest Maidens was so admired by William Randolph Hearst that he lured Flowers away from the Associated Press and to King Features Syndicate by doubling the cartoonist's salary, and renamed the feature Glamor Girls to avoid legal action by the AP. The latter continued to publish Modest Maidens, drawn by Jay Allen in Flowers' style.[9]
Issues in U.S. newspaper comic strips
Size
In the early decades of the 20th century, all
Daily strips have suffered as well. Before the mid-1910s, there was not a "standard" size", with strips running the entire width of a page or having more than one tier. By the 1920s, strips often covered six of the eight columns occupied by a traditional broadsheet paper. During the 1940s, strips were reduced to four columns wide (with a "transition" width of five columns). As newspapers became narrower beginning in the 1970s, strips have gotten even smaller, often being just three columns wide, a similar width to the one most daily panels occupied before the 1940s.
In an issue related to size limitations, Sunday comics are often bound to rigid formats that allow their panels to be rearranged in several different ways while remaining readable. Such formats usually include throwaway panels at the beginning, which some newspapers will omit for space. As a result, cartoonists have less incentive to put great efforts into these panels. Garfield and Mutts were known during the mid-to-late 80s and 1990s respectively for their throwaways on their Sunday strips, however both strips now run "generic" title panels.
Some cartoonists have complained about this, with Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, openly voicing his discontent about being forced to draw his Sunday strips in such rigid formats from the beginning. Kelly's heirs opted to end the strip in 1975 as a form of protest against the practice. Since then, Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson has written extensively on the issue, arguing that size reduction and dropped panels reduce both the potential and freedom of a cartoonist. After a lengthy battle with his syndicate, Watterson won the privilege of making half page-sized Sunday strips where he could arrange the panels any way he liked. Many newspaper publishers and a few cartoonists objected to this, and some papers continued to print Calvin and Hobbes at small sizes. Opus won that same privilege years after Calvin and Hobbes ended, while Wiley Miller circumvented further downsizes by making his Non Sequitur Sunday strip available only in a vertical arrangement. Most strips created since 1990, however, are drawn in the unbroken "third-page" format. Few newspapers still run half-page strips, as with Prince Valiant and Hägar the Horrible in the front page of the Reading Eagle Sunday comics section until the mid-2010s.
Format
With the success of
The writing style of comic strips changed as well after World War II. With an increase in the number of college-educated readers, there was a shift away from slapstick comedy and towards more cerebral humor. Slapstick and visual gags became more confined to Sunday strips, because as Garfield creator Jim Davis put it, "Children are more likely to read Sunday strips than dailies."
Second author
Many older strips are no longer drawn by the original cartoonist, who has either died or retired. Such strips are known as "zombie strips". A cartoonist, paid by the syndicate or sometimes a relative of the original cartoonist, continues writing the strip, a tradition that became commonplace in the early half of the 20th century. Hägar the Horrible and Frank and Ernest are both drawn by the sons of the creators. Some strips which are still in affiliation with the original creator are produced by small teams or entire companies, such as Jim Davis' Garfield, however there is some debate if these strips fall in this category.
This act is commonly criticized by modern cartoonists including Watterson and Pearls Before Swine's
Assistants
Since the consolidation of newspaper comics by the first quarter of the 20th century, most cartoonists have used a group of assistants (with usually one of them credited). However, quite a few cartoonists (e.g.: George Herriman and Charles Schulz, among others) have done their strips almost completely by themselves; often criticizing the use of assistants for the same reasons most have about their editors hiring anyone else to continue their work after their retirement.
Rights to the strips
Historically, syndicates
Censorship
Starting in the late 1940s, the national syndicates which distributed newspaper comic strips subjected them to very strict censorship.
As comics are easier for children to access compared to other types of media, they have a significantly more rigid censorship code than other media. Stephan Pastis has lamented that the "unwritten" censorship code is still "stuck somewhere in the 1950s". Generally, comics are not allowed to include such words as "damn", "sucks", "screwed", and "hell", although there have been exceptions such as the September 22, 2010 Mother Goose and Grimm in which an elderly man says, "This nursing home food sucks," and a pair of Pearls Before Swine comics from January 11, 2011 with a character named Ned using the word "crappy".[37][38][39] Naked backsides and shooting guns cannot be shown, according to Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams.[40] Such comic strip taboos were detailed in Dave Breger's book But That's Unprintable (Bantam, 1955).
Many issues such as
See also
- Biblia pauperum
- Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
- Comic book
- Comic strip syndication
- Comics studies
- History of American comics
- List of British comic strips
- List of cartoonists
- List of newspaper comic strips
- Military humor comic strips
References
- ^ Eisner 2008, pp. xi–xii.
- ^
"histoire de la bande dessinée chinoise, les lianhuanhua (1)" [History of Chinese comics: lianhuanhua] (in French). 2008-01-20. Retrieved 2010-01-10.
[...] le quotidien Shenbao (申报) publie dès 1884 un supplément intitulé Magazine dla vie quotidienne, les mœurs et les coutumes en Chine à une époque où les photographies sont encore rares. [Translation: ... from 1884 the daily Shenbao (申报) published a supplement called "Magazine of the Studio of carved stone" (点石斋画报) which contained series of narrative images done with the baimiao technique. So this allowed the newspaper to enhance its readability by illustrating contemporary events at home and abroad, or by depicting daily life and behavior and customs in China at a time when photographs still remained uncommon.]
- ^ James Gillray (1800). Democracy;-or-a Sketch of the Life of Buonaparte (hand-coloured etching). British Museum. 1851,0901.1030.
- ^ Thomas Rowlandson (1784). The loves of the fox and the badger, - or the coalition wedding (hand-coloured etching). British Museum. 1868,0808.5095.
- ^ Adventures of Johnny Newcome Plate1 1 (paper). British Museum. 1812. 1872,1012.5010.
- ^ Adventures of Johnny Newcome plate 2 (paper). British Museum. 1812. 1872,1012.5011.
- ^ Robinson, Jerry (1974). The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
- ^ "Two bad boys, seven pranks and one children's classic – European studies blog". blogs.bl.uk. Retrieved 2019-07-29.
- ^ a b c d e "Toonopedia".
- ISBN 0-87474-172-6.
- ^ Gordon 2002, p. 14.
- ^ "'Big Deals: Comics' Highest-Profile Moments', 1999". Archived from the original on 2013-06-30. Retrieved 2013-01-15.
- ^ "The Ripley's Believe It or Not! cartoon is the longest running cartoon in the world. It has been published since 1918, when Robert Ripley himself was the cartoonist". Ripley's Entertainment. July 14, 2014.
- ^ "Moeller, Jennifer and Marilyn Gardner. "At 75, Blondie's more modern now, but still ageless". Christian Science Monitor, August 31, 2005". The Christian Science Monitor.
- ISBN 1-56097-018-9.
- ^ Khoury, George (2004). True Brit: A Celebration of the Great Comic Book Artists of the UK. TwoMorrows Publishing. p. 9.
- ^ Birch, Dinah (24 September 2009). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 240.
- ^ White, Linda. "You can't go home again". Telling Our Stories. Archived from the original on 2010-10-29.
- ^ a b "Newspaper Archive".
- ^ "Live Auctioneers, Etta Kett, January 2, 1933".
- ^ Scott, Randy. "The King Features Proof Sheet Collection". Insight. Fall 2009. p. 3.
- ^ Holtz, Allan (December 15, 2009). "Stripper's Guide".
- ^ "How Cartoons Are Syndicated". Popular Mechanics. 45 (3): 451. March 1926.
- ^ Baudart, Sébastien (2005). Strips in de Belgische dagbladpers, 1945–1950 (PDF) (in Dutch). p. 69. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2009-03-19. Retrieved 2009-05-15.
- ^ Michielsen, Stefaan (2003-09-26). "Zondagskrant als antwoord van uitgevers op krimpende markt". De Standaard (in Dutch). Retrieved 2009-05-15.
- ^ "ComicStripFan".
- ^ Campbell, Alastair. The Designer's Lexicon. Chronicle, San Francisco: Chronicle, 2000.
- ^ ""Popeye Google Doodle Logo"". 8 December 2009.
- ISBN 0-914171-64-X.
- ^ Gallo, Carmine. "Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Reveals The Simple Formula That Will Double Your Odds Of Success". Forbes. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
- ^ ""The Lynn Johnston Interview," Hogan's Alley #1, 1994". Archived from the original on 2013-06-19. Retrieved 2013-01-16.
- ^ "Cartoonists make record strip". BBC News. 2003. Archived from the original on January 23, 2018. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
- ^ Moynihan, Shawn (May 14, 2009). "Comics-Page Changes Can Come at a Price". Editor & Publisher. Archived from the original on May 16, 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-15.
- ^ Pearls Before Swine at Comics.com
- ^ Katina Alexander (June 14, 1987). "A Superhero For Cartoonists?". The New York Times. p. 34. Retrieved August 18, 2012.
- ^ "Tain't Funny". Time. September 29, 1947. Archived from the original on October 23, 2007. Retrieved 2009-05-15.
- ^ "Mother Goose and Grimm/Mike Peters Website". Grimmy.com. 1994-01-01. Retrieved 2012-12-27.
- ^ "Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip, January 10, 2011 on GoComics.com". Comics.com. January 10, 2011. Archived from the original on January 15, 2011. Retrieved December 27, 2012.
- ^ "Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip, January 11, 2011 on GoComics.com". Comics.com. January 11, 2011. Archived from the original on January 24, 2011. Retrieved December 27, 2012.
- ^ Adams 2007.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-1-59184-185-2.
- ISBN 978-0-393-33126-4.
- Gordon, Ian (2002). Comic Strips and Consumer Culture: 1890–1945. Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 1-56098-856-8.
Further reading
- Blackbeard, Bill, ed. (1977). The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. Smithsonian Institution Press/Harry N. Abrams.
- Castelli, Alfredo (2003). Here We Are Ggain: 1895-1919: the First 25 Years of American Newspaper Comics.
- Gordon, Ian. Comic Strips and Consumer Culture (1998) Smithsonian Institution Press
- Goulart, Ron. Encyclopedia of American Comics
- Goulart, Ron. The Funnies
- Goulart, Ron. The Adventurous Decade
- Holtz, Allan. American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. (2012) ISBN 978-0-472-11756-7
- ISBN 978-0877540304
- Horn, Maurice. The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons (Chelsea House, 1979) ISBN 978-0877541219– 6 volumes
- Horn, Maurice. 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics (ISBN 978-0517124475
- Koenigsberg, Moses. King News, Moses Koenigsberg
- Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism
- ISBN 0-913035-01-7.
- Robbins, Trina (1993). A Century of Women Cartoonists. Kitchen Sink Press. ISBN 0-87816-206-2.
- Robinson, Jerry. The Comics
- Sheridan, Martin. Comics And Their Creators
- Stein, Daniel and Jan-Noel Thon, eds. From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels. Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative. Berlin/Boston 2015.
- Tebbell. The Compact History of the American Newspaper
- Strickler, Dave. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists
- Walker, Brian (2004). The Comics: Before 1945. ISBN 0-8109-4970-9.
- Walker, Brian (2002). The Comics: After 1945. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-3481-7.
- Watson, Elmo Scott. A History of Newspaper Syndicates in the United States, Elmo Scott Watson
- Waugh, Coulton. The Comics
External links
- National Cartoonists Society Archived 2012-10-14 at the Wayback Machine
- Leiffer, Paul; Ware, Hames, eds. "The Comic Strip Project". Archived from the original on March 23, 2010.
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has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Paschal, Belinda M. (September 24, 2023). "See you in the funny papers: Comic strips' evolution as a uniquely American art form". The Columbus Dispatch. Retrieved January 10, 2024.
- Comic Art Collection at the University of Missouri
- Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University