1. The emergence of Comics.
"Life is a comic book, which is a chapter each
day and each of us are mere characters." (Autor
Unknown)
1. Introduction to the fundamentals of comics
and its various denominations, languages,
characters, authors and contexts.
1.1 Initial considerations
The multiple languages addressed in the comics allow a full discussion on the
subject. Since its beginnings, the "Ninth Art", as it is called, awakens the
imagination and interest of many people in the world. In addition to serving as a
source of inspiration and imagination, the comics are embedded in historical
contexts according to each age studied.
The interaction between different languages and features a brand is present
and constant in human communication process. It is interesting to observe how the
comic, a support of extremely visual mass media, in which the images appear static
on paper can effect so close to the cinema, for example, an art that works with
moving pictures and sounds. Making use of own resources as drawing, lines,
colors, texts etc…, Comics, one of the first means of mass communication to
globalize even before the movie, can extrapolate the role, thus ensuring the
development of narratives extremely agile and very cinematic features, at various
times.
Despite his success with children and adults, comics were seen for nearly a
century as an art "minor" too popular to be accepted as the "ninth art" by a
society with a vision cultural elite (the other eight arts are : music, dance, painting,
sculpture, literature, theater, film and photography). In the 60s, however, the
emergence of Pop Art that would begin to change. And from the 80s, the
advancement of pop culture and the emergence of artists who revolutionized the
language of comics, as Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore and Frank Miller, the comic did
finally got to be seen with an artistic value equivalent to the other arts.
Before this advance for consideration of comics as an art, they were
published in newspapers like little strips, usually humorous theme, which
sometimes could criticize or highlight some aspect of political, social or economic.

2. Therefore, until the 1980s the comics were not considered an "art", but more a
form of expression of content in major publications daily.
The newspapers then were important drivers of comics, since this medium
reaches the most different people in different times and contexts. The comics
entertained, instructed, educated and informed, and served as a complement or
even as a time of rest after the reader finds the news daily newspapers.
After the newspapers, magazines, the first two comics, around 1840, in the
USA. In 1842, the magazine was published "The Adventures of Obadiah
Oldbuck," considered the first comic book hardcover published in English. These
magazines have revolutionized the genre and began to attract more and more
readers to the comic book universe.
Many authors emphasized in the production of these stories, such as
Richard Outcault, Pat Sullivan, Hergé, Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Lee Falk, Bob
Kane, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster and others. These artists created famous
characters that had been marked forever in the minds of people because of their
cleverness, cunning, mysteries, thoughts, feelings and even super powers.
Characters like Superman, Batman, Felix the Cat, Prince Valiant, Mickey Mouse,
Tarzan, Captain America, Green Lantern and other heroes allowed people to
imagine that they would resolve conflicts and wars, disagreements, and external
threats that could, as in several stories , save the world
Today, we note the major progress that had those magazines and
publications that have made multimillion dollar companies, not only producing
magazines and comic strips, but also movies and cartoons. How great exponents of
these companies, we have Marvel and DC Comics, and the empire assembled and
designed by Walt Disney, which includes magazines, comics, movies, cartoons and
amusement parks theme.
Finally, we observe that the comics have always been and will be present in
people's lives. What is the person who has never opened a newspaper to see the
cartoons? Or never bought a comic book that was amused to read? These
questions are for children and adults, because the comics are not old, have no
contraindications, is for everyone and everything. Reading is a pleasure that
humans can and should enjoy, and provide reading of comics culture, comedy and
produce and rational thinking beings, so can question and envision a better world
for this and future generations.
1.2 Presentation of the systematic content.
Different denominatios of comics;
The early creators and the first comic books;

3. The different eras of comics.
2. Development of systematic content.
2.1 Different denominations of comics.
The Comic books have gained, over time, different denominations
and strands assigned by authors or by scholars of the subject. Listed below
are some denominations of comics and the definition of own comic strip
(HQ). Besides these, we see the name of comics in different countries.
Comics (HQs): the comics are narratives told in comics, drawn one after the
other, creating a sequence of actions and hence a story, with a beginning,
middle and end. The teacher and cartoonist Will Eisner defined so the
comics: "... is the sequential art by various elaborate designs in a logical
sequence.‖ These narratives drawn in sequence usually present in the
horizontal direction and are usually accompanied by short texts dialog and
some descriptions of the situation, conventionally presented within figures
called "balloons".
The term "sequential art" (translated from the original sequential
art), created by comic artist Will Eisner in order to define "the
arrangement of pictures or images and words to narrate a story or
dramatize an idea", is commonly used to define the language used in this
form of representation.
It is an art form that combines text and images in order to tell stories
from many different genres and styles.
Cartoons: a cartoon, cartune or cartun (in Portuguese) is a humorous
drawing with or without subtitles. It is an extremely critical, portraying
quite synthesized something that involves the day-to-day society.
The term is of British origin and was first used in this context in the
1840s, when the magazine "Punch" published a series of cartoons that
parodied studies for the frescoes of the Palace of Westminster, adapted to
satirize the contemporary political events. The original meaning of the word
cartoon is the same "study" or "outline", and is widely used in the arts.
This type of design is still considered a form of comedy and keeps
your space in the press today.
Charges: charge is a style of illustration that aims to satirize through a
cartoon, a current event with one or more characters involved. The word is
of French origin and means load and exaggerated character traits of

4. someone or something to make it burlesque. Widely used in critical policies
in Brazil. Despite being confused with cartoon (or ―cartun‖ in portuguese),
which is a word of English origin, unlike the charge, which is always a
scathing critique linked to temporality, the cartoon depicts situations most
mundane day-to-day society. More than just a drawing, the charge is a
critical social-political graphically where the artist expresses his views on
certain everyday situations through humor and satire. To understand a
charge, does not necessarily need to be an educated person, just being inside
of what happens around you. The charge has a greater range than an
editorial, for example, so the charge as design critic, is feared by the
powerful. No wonder that when establishing censorship in any country, the
charge is the first target of censors below.
The term comes from the French ―charger‖ and it means
exaggeration, or even violent attack (cavalry charge). This means here is a
pictographic representation of character, as it says in the first paragraph;
burlesque and caricatures. It's a cartoon that satirizes certain fact, as an
idea, event, person or situation, mainly involving cases of a political nature
that is public knowledge.
The cartoons were created in the early nineteenth century by people
opposed to governments or political critics who wanted to express
themselves never displayed, unusual. Were repressed by governments
(mainly empires), but gained great popularity with the people, a fact that
led to its existence until the times of today.
Comics: is an expression of English origin which can be translated as
"comical" and designating the comics (HQs) produced in the United States.
This is explained by the fact that, originally, in that country the
"comics" brought only comedy in its storylines. However, nowadays they
deal with different genres like action and romance. The word is used in the
United States to describe any story into squares, but speaking countries is
most often used when referring to American stories and his characteristic
style of drawing. "Comics" are usually colorful and rich in detail.
Comic Books: are publications that bring comics, known in Brazil as
"gibis" or "revistas de histórias em quadrinhos" Are usually small
magazines that since 1975 had its format standardized in size 17 x 26 cm (in
Brazil called the "American format", because the dimensions of the most
popular magazines in the country were smaller, due to this called
"formatinho"). In the past the magazines had larger dimensions. A comic
book equivalent to half tabloid.
The "comic books" began circulating around 1934, with the United
States leading publications. Other countries in which these magazines
reached many readers were the UK (during the interwar period and up to
the 1970s) and Japan (which are popularly known as manga).

5. Bandes Dessinées: French designation for comics.
Fumetti: is the name by which the comics are known in Italy.
Fumetti refers to the smoke, in reference to the aspect of balloons
used to display dialogs, which look like smoke coming out of the mouths of
characters. In Italy, the most common is that comics are conveyed in
popular magazines, paper thin and small format and sold at newsstands, as
in Brazil.
Historietas: is the designation of comics in Spanish America.
Mangas: is the word used to designate the comics made in the Japanese
style. In Japan, the term designates any comics. Its origin is in Oricom
Shohatsu (Shadow Theatre), which at the time ran various feudal villages
telling tales through puppetry. These legends were eventually written on
scrolls and illustrated, giving rise to stories in sequence, and consequently
resulting in the manga. Give rise to various manga anime for television
viewing, video or cinema, but there is also the reverse process in which the
anime they become a print edition story in sequence or illustrations.
Tabeó: is the Spanish name for the comics.
Graphic Novels: A graphic novel is a kind of book, usually telling a story
through long sequential art (comics), and is often used to define the
subjective distinctions between books and other of comics.
The term is generally used to refer to any form of Manga or comic of
long term, that is, the analogous sequence in the art or a novel prose. Can
be applied to jobs that have been previously published comic journals, or
works produced specifically for publication in book form. A graphic novel
need not be geared for adult audiences, sometimes it is only necessary to
have a good structure and visible philosophical level (ex: The Saga of Uncle
Scrooge).
The definition of "graphic novel" was popularized by Will Eisner
after appearing on the cover of his book A Contract with God (―Um
contrato com Deus‖), job mature and complex, focused on the lives of
ordinary people in the real world. The stamp "graphic novel" was placed
on the intention to distinguish it from the traditional comic book format.
Eisner cited as inspiration books Lynd Ward, which produced complete
novels in woodcut. The commercial success of A Contract with God helped
to stabilize the term "graphic novel", and many sources erroneously

6. credited Eisner being the first to use it (in fact, it was Richard Kile who
originally used the term in some publications of the 1960s .)
The original meaning of the term was applied to closed stories. In
recent years the term has been used of synonymously to trade paperback
(bound editions shaped history books serialized in magazines).
Other similar work that preceded the emergence of the term were
albums franco-belgian Tintin, Asterix and Spirou, quite popular since the
1960s, the term is used synonymously album by the specialized media, both
graphic novel, how to trade paperback.
2.2The early creators …
The comics appeared inventive and creative minds in the mid-
nineteenth century. Believe that have arisen in the United States and is
known throughout the world. Listed below are the top names of comics and
their works, as well as the first comic books.
Richard Felton Outcault: was an American comic strip writer-artist. He
was the creator of the series The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown, and he is
considered the inventor of the modern comic strip.
Officially in most of the world, the character Yellow Kid by Richard
Felton Outcault is considered the first comic book character to your art
format designed and printed as is known in our times. But there precursors
and works that discuss this fact. Created and drawn in the comic
strip Hogan's Alley (and later under other names as well), it was one of the
first Sunday supplement comic strips in an American newspaper, although
its graphical layout had already been thoroughly established in political and
other, purely-for-entertainment cartoons. The Yellow Kid is also famous for
its connection to the coining of the term Yellow Journalism.
Mickey Dugan, better known as The Yellow Kid, was a bald,
snaggle-toothed boy who wore an oversized yellow nightshirt and hung
around in a slum alley typical of certain areas of squalor that existed in
early 20th-century New York City. Hogan's Alley was filled with equally
odd characters, mostly other children. With a goofy grin, the Kid habitually
spoke in a ragged, peculiar slang, which was printed on his shirt, a device
meant to lampoon advertising billboards.
The character who would later become the Yellow Kid, first
appeared on the scene in a minor supporting role in cartoon panel
published in Truth magazine in 1894 and 1895. The four different black-
and-white, single panel cartoons were deemed popular and, one of
them, Fourth Ward Brownies, was reprinted on 17 February 1895 in Joseph
Pulitzer's New York World, where Outcault worked as a technical drawing
artist. The World published another, but new, Hogan's Alley cartoon less

7. than a month later, and this was followed by the strip's first color printing
on 5 May 1895.[4]
Hogan's Alley gradually became a full-page Sunday color
cartoon with the Yellow Kid as its lead character, which was also appearing
several times a week
Although a cartoon, the humor and social commentary in Outcault's
work was aimed at Pulitzer's adult readership.
The Yellow Kid's head was drawn wholly shaved as if having been
recently ridden of lice, a common sight among children in New
York's tenement ghettos at the time. His nightshirt, a hand-me-down from
an older sister, was white or pale blue in the first color strips.[6]
The strip has been described as "... a turn-of-the-century theater of
the city, in which class and racial tensions of the new urban, consumerist
environment were acted out by a mischievous group of New York City kids
from the wrong side of the tracks." The yellow kid was also a suitable
character.
Maxwell Charles Gaines: was a pioneering figure in the creation of the
modern comic book. Born Maxwell Ginsburg or Maxwell Ginzberg, he was
also known as Max Gaines, M.C. Gaines and Charlie Gaines.
In 1933, Gaines devised the first four-color, saddle-stitched
newsprint pamphlet, a precursor to the color-comics format that became
the standard for the American comic book industry. He was co-publisher
of All-American Publications, a seminal comic-book company that
introduced such enduring fictional characters as Green Lantern, Wonder
Woman and Hawkman. He went on to found Educational Comics,
producing the series Picture Stories from the Bible. He authored one of the
earliest essays on comic books, a 1942 pamphlet titled Narrative Illustration,
The Story of the Comics.
After Max Gaines' death, Educational Comics was taken over by his
son Bill Gaines, who transformed the company (now known as EC Comics)
into a pioneer of horror, science fiction and satirical comics.
Rudolph Dirks: was one of the earliest and most noted comic strip artists,
well-known for The Katzenjammer Kids (later known as ―The Captain and
the Kids”).
Dirks was born in Heide, Germany to Johannes and Margaretha
Dirks. When he was seven years old, his father, a woodcarver, moved the
family to Chicago, Illinois. After having sold various cartoons to local
magazines Rudolph moved to New York City and found work as a
cartoonist. His younger brother Gus soon followed his brother's
example. He held several jobs as an illustrator, culminating in a position
with William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal.
The circulation war between the Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New
York World was raging. The World had a huge success with the full-color

8. Sunday feature, Down in Hogan's Alley, better known as the Yellow Kid,
starting in 1895. Editor Rudolph Block asked Dirks to develop a Sunday
comic based on Wilhelm Busch's cautionary tale, Max und Moritz. When
Dirks submitted his sketches, Block dubbed them The Katzenjammer Kids,
and the first strip appeared on December 12, 1897. Gus Dirks assisted his
brother with The Katzenjammer Kids during the first few years, until his
suicide on June 10, 1902.
Dirks took time off from his Journal work to serve his country in
the Spanish-American War and on other occasions. In 1912, he requested a
year's leave to tour Europe with his wife. The request led to a rupture with
the Journal. After a lengthy and notorious legal battle, the federal courts
ruled that Dirks had the right to continue to draw his characters for a rival
newspaper chain but that the Journal retained the right to the title The
Katzenjammer Kids. Dirks thereupon began drawing a comic strip
titled Hans and Fritz for the World, beginning in 1914. Anti-German
sentiment during World War I led to the strip being renamed The Captain
and the Kids. The Journal chose H. H. Knerr to continue The Katzenjammer
Kids, and he and his successors have carried it on to the present day. The
Captain and the Kids was distributed by United Feature
Syndicate while King Features Syndicate handled The Katzenjammer Kids.
The success of The Katzenjammer Kids was due to more than just
lucky circumstances. Dirks was a very gifted cartoonist with superb timing
and a colorful gallery of different characters, including Hans and Fritz, Der
Captain, Der Inspector and Mama. In the mid-1950s, a romantic swindler
named Fineas Flub was introduced to the strip. Characters such as Rollo
never appeared in Dirks' version of the strip.
Jerry Siegel: was the American co-creator of Superman (along with Joe
Shuster), the first of the great comic book superheroes and one of the most
recognizable of the 20th century.
He was inducted (with Shuster posthumously) into the comic
book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack
Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993.
Siegel was a fan of movies, comic strips, and especially science
fiction pulp magazines. He became active in what would become known
as fandom, corresponding with other science fiction fans, including the
young future author Jack Williamson. In 1929, Siegel published what might
have been the first SF fanzine, Cosmic Stories, which he produced with a
manual typewriter and advertised in the classified section of Science
Wonder Stories. He published several other booklets over the next few years.
Siegel attended Glenville High School in Cleveland, Ohio and
worked for its weekly student newspaper, The Torch. He was a shy, not
particularly popular student, but he achieved a bit of fame among his peers
for his popular Tarzan parody, "Goober the Mighty." At about age 16,
while at Glenville, he befriended his later collaborator, Joe Shuster. Siegel

9. described his friendship with the similarly shy and bespectacled Shuster:
"When Joe and I first met, it was like the right chemicals coming
together."[1]
The writer-artist team broke into comics with Major Malcolm
Wheeler-Nicholson's landmark New Fun, debuting with
the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval" and the supernatural-
crimefighter strip Doctor Occult in issue #6 (Oct. 1935).
Joe Shuster: was a Canadian cartoonist who, together with Jerome Siegel,
created in the 1930s, the famous character Superman.
Shuster was born in Toronto and moved to Cleveland for nine years
in the United States. Fascinated by history in Comic Little Nemo and
science fiction magazines, began designing rockets and interplanetary
spacecraft. Still young, he published his first strip in the school newspaper.
Between 1932 and 1933 he edited and published his own fanzine
science fiction, Science Fiction, and at age 17, she met Jerry Siegel, with
whom he had a long partnership. After a few years, by 1938, the pair
created Superman, one of the most famous character of Comics.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Shuster drew Comics erotic, with some
characters that resembled his most famous creations, Superman and his
eternal girlfriend, Lois Lane.
Stan Lee: is an American comic book writer, editor, publisher, media
producer, television host, actor, voice actor and former president and
chairman of Marvel Comics.
In collaboration with several artists, most notably Jack
Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men,
the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and many other fictional characters,
introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared
universe into superhero comic books. In addition, he headed the first major
successful challenge to the industry's censorship organization, the Comics
Code Authority, and forced it to reform its policies. Lee subsequently led
the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house
to a large multimedia corporation.
He was inducted into the comic book industry's The Will Eisner
Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995.
Jack Kirby: was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded
by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential
creators in the comic book medium.
Growing up poor in New York City, Kurtzberg entered the nascent
comics industry in the 1930s. He drew various comics features under

10. different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, ultimately settling on Jack
Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly
successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics,
predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby, generally teamed
with Simon, created numerous characters for that company and for
National Comics, the company that later became DC Comics.
After serving in World War II, Kirby returned to comics and
worked in a variety of genres. He produced work for a number of
publishers, including DC, Harvey Comics, Hillman
Periodicals and Crestwood Publications, where he and Simon created the
genre of romance comics. He and Simon also launched their own short-lived
comic company, Mainline Publications. Kirby ultimately found himself at
Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, soon to become Marvel. There, in
the 1960s, he and writer-editor Stan Lee co-created many of Marvel's
major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk.
Despite the high sales and critical acclaim of the Lee-Kirby titles, however,
Kirby felt treated unfairly, and left the company in 1970 for rival DC.
Alex Raymond: was an American cartoonist, best known for creating Flash
Gordon for King Features in 1934. The strip was subsequently adapted into
many other media, from a series of movie serials (1936–1940) to a
1970s television series and a 1980 film.
Raymond's father encouraged his love of drawing from an early age,
leading him to become an assistant illustrator in the early 1930s on strips
such as Tillie the Toiler and Tim Tyler's Luck. Towards the end of 1933,
Raymond created the epic Flash Gordon science-fiction comic strip to
compete with the popular Buck Rogers comic strip and, before
long, Flash was the more popular strip of the two. Raymond also worked on
the jungle adventure saga Jungle Jim and spy adventure Secret Agent X-
9 concurrently with Flash, though his increasing workload caused him to
leave Secret Agent X-9 to another artist by 1935. He left the strips in 1944 to
join the Marines, saw combat in the Pacific Ocean Theater in 1945 and was
demobilized in 1946. Upon his return from serving during World War II,
Raymond created and illustrated the much-heralded Rip Kirby, a private
detective comic strip. In 1956, Raymond was killed in a car crash at the age
of 46; he was survived by his wife and five children.
Alan Moore: is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic
books, a medium where he has produced series including Watchmen, V for
Vendetta, and From Hell. Frequently described as the best graphic novel
writer in history, he has also been described as "one of the most important
British writers of the last fifty years". He has occasionally used such
pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon.
Moore started out writing for British underground and alternative
fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in

11. such magazines as2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by
the American DC Comics, and as "the first comics writer living in Britain
to do prominent work in America", he worked on big name characters such
as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman (Whatever Happened
to the Man of Tomorrow?), substantially developed the character Swamp
Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade,
Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for the medium in
the United States and United Kingdom. He prefers the term "comic" to
"graphic novel." In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic
industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on
experimental work such as the epic From Hell, the pornographic Lost Girls,
and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the
mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before
developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published
works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the occult-
based Promethea.
Bob Kane: was an American comic book artist and writer, credited as the
creator of the DC Comics superhero Batman, along with Bill Finger. He
was inducted into both the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of
Fame in 1994 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1996.
He entered the comics field two years later, in 1936, freelancing
original material to editor Jerry Iger's comic book Wow, What A Magazine!,
including his first pencil and ink work on the serial Hiram Hick. The
following year, Kane began to work at Iger's subsequent studio, Eisner &
Iger, which was one of the first comic book "packagers" that produced
comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium during its late-
1930s and 1940s Golden Age. Among his work there was the funny
animal feature "Peter Pupp" (which belied its look with overtones of
"mystery and menace"), published in the U.K. comic magazine Wags and
later reprinted in Fiction House's Jumbo comics. Kane also produced work
through Eisner & Iger for two of the companies that would later merge to
form DC Comics, including the humor features "Ginger Snap" in More
Fun Comics, "Oscar the Gumshoe" for Detective Comics, and "Professor
Doolittle" for Adventure Comics. For that last title he went on to do his first
adventure strip, "Rusty and his Pals".
Winsor McCay: was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best
known for the comic strip Little Nemo (1905–14; 1924–26) and the animated
film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). For contractual reasons, he worked under
the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.
Since a young age, McCay was a prolific, technically dextrous artist.
He began as a professional by making posters and performing for dime
museums, and began illustrating newspapers and magazines in 1898. He
joined the New York Herald in 1903, where he created popular comic strips
such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905, his

12. signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted, a work which
demonstrated McCay's mastery of color and perspective. At the same time,
McCay was doing chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit. Between 1911 and
1921 he produced ten animated films; these included Gertie the Dinosuar,
which he used as an interactive part of his vaudeville act. McCay
joined William Randolph Hearst's chain of newspapers in 1911, after which
his comic strip, vaudeville and animation work was gradually curtailed as
Hearst expected him to devote his energies to editorial cartooning.
The technical level of McCay's animation was not matched
until Walt Disney's feature films arrived in the 1930s. He
pioneered inbetweening, the use of registration marks, cycling, and other
animation techniques that became standard. His comic strip work has
influenced generations of artists, including William Joyce, André
LeBlanc, Moebius, Maurice Sendak, Chris Ware and Bill Watterson.
Will Eisner: was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was
one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry,
and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in
content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with
the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early
contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential
Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in Eisner's honor, and is given to
recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the
three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Robert Crumb: is an American cartoonist and musician. His work displays
nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, and sharp satire of contemporary American culture. His work
has attracted controversy, especially for his depiction of women and racial
minorites.
Crumb first rose to prominence after the 1968 debut of Zap Comix,
which was the first successful publication of the underground comix era.
Countercultural characters such as Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural, and the
images from his Keep on Truckin' strip were among his popular creations.
Following the decline of the underground, he moved towards biographical
and autobiographical subjects, while refining his drawing style, a
heavily crosshatched pen-and-ink style inspired by late 19th– and early
20th-century cartooning. Much of his work appeared in a magazine he
founded, Weirdo (1981–1993), which was one of the most prominent
publications of the alternative comics era. He is married to cartoonist Aline
Kominsky-Crumb, with whom he has frequently collaborated.
In 1991, Crumb was inducted into the comic book industry's Will
Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

13. Neil Gaiman: is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic
books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include
the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American
Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards,
including Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Newbery Medal, and Carnegie
Medal. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie
medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008).
Hal Foster: was a Canadian—American illustrator best known as the
creator of the comic strip Prince Valiant. His drawing style is noted for a
high level of draftsmanship and attention to detail.
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Foster moved to the United
States in 1919. In 1929, he began one of the earliest adventure comic strips,
an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan. In 1937, he created his
signature strip, the weekly Prince Valiant, a fantasy adventure set in
mediaeval times. The strip featured Foster's dextrous, detailed artwork;
Foster eschewed word balloons, preferring to have narration and dialogue
in captions.
Hergé: was a Belgian comic book writer and artist. His best known and
most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of
Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in
1983. Also responsible for two other well-known series, Quick &
Flupke (1930–1940) and Jo, Zette and Jocko (1936–1957), his works were
executed in his distinct ligne claire drawing style.
Born to a lower-middle-class family in Etterbeek, Brussels, Hergé
took a keen interest in Scouting, producing both illustrations and
the Totor series for Scouting and Catholic magazines. In 1925 he started
work for conservative newspaper Le XXe Siècle, where under the influence
of Norbert Wallez, in 1929 he began serialising the first of his stories to
feature boy reporter Tintin, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Domestically
successful, he continued with further Adventures of Tintin and the Quick &
Flupke series at the paper, but from The Blue Lotus onward placed a far
greater emphasis on background research. After Le XXe Sièclewas closed
during the occupation by Nazi Germany, Hergé continued work for Le Soir;
after liberation, he faced accusations of being a collaborator, but was
exonerated, and proceeded to oversee the creation of Tintin magazine,
through which he remained artistic director over Studio Hergé until his
death.
Hergé's works have been widely acclaimed for their clarity of
draughtsmanship and meticulous, well-researched plots, and have been the
source of a wide range of adaptations. Remaining a strong influence on the
comic book medium, particularly in Europe, he is a prominent national
symbol in his native country, to the extent where he has been described as

14. the "personification of Belgium". Since 2009, a Hergé Museum has been
open in Louvain-La-Neuve.
Ângelo Agostini: was an illustrator, journalist and founder of several
publications, and although born in Italy, is considered the first Brazilian
cartoonist.
Agostini was born in Vercelli, Italy, but following adolescence
and art studies in Paris, he arrived in Brazil in 1859 with his mother the
singer Raquel Agostini, and settled.
At an early age he published drawn work in the São
Paulo publication Diabo Coxo on September 17, of 1864. Following more
work published in Cabrião and Revista Arlequim, Agostini produced a
sequential image story serialised in Vida Fluminense titled As Aventuras de
Nhô Quim (The Adventures of Nhô Quim). The first chapter published on
January 30, 1869, the story involved themes of conflict between the
agricultural and urban culture, and political commentary through visual
storytelling capable of reaching a largely illiterate population.
During the 1880s Agostini started the periodical Revista Ilustrada,
which became noted for its illustrated coverage of the annual Carnival. On
January 27, 1883, the first chapter of As Aventuras do Zé Caipora (The
Adventures of Zé Caipora) was published, starting a successful publication
run of 35 episodes spread out over many years. Achieving a multimedia
impact, the series was printed in four editions, and inspired a popular song
and two silent films.
Agostini established the magazine Don Quixote in 1895, which lasted
until 1906, and with Luiz Bartolomeu de Sousa e Silva founded the
influential youth magazine O Tico Tico in 1905 where the tales of Zé
Caipora were continued. During his final years he worked for the
magazine O Malho, until his death in 1910.
Lee Falk: was an American writer, theater director and producer, best
known as the creator of the popular comic strips The
Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. At the height of their popularity,
these strips attracted over 100 million readers every day. Falk also wrote
short stories and he contributed to a series of pulp novels about The
Phantom.
A playwright and theatrical director/producer, Falk directed actors
such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Chico
Marx and Ethel Waters.
Frank Miller: is an American writer, artist, and film director best known
for his dark, film noir-style comic book stories and graphic novels such
as Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Sin

15. City, and 300. He also directed the film version of The Spirit, shared
directing duties with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and produced the
film 300.
Charles Schulz: was an American cartoonist, creator of the serie Peanuts
and the characters Charlie Brown and his dog beagle named Snoopy,
among others.
He began the series of drawings of Snoopy (Peanuts) on October 2,
1950 and drew more than 50 years until retiring due to his illness on
December 14, 1999. Schulz died on February 12, 2000, victim of a heart
attack at 21.45, with 77 years. His last strip was published the day after,
February 13, a strip in which he said goodbye to their fans and their
beloved characters.
Schulz's drawings were first published by Robert Ripley in his
column Ripley's Believe It or Not! His first regular comic strip, Li’l Folks,
was published between 1947 and 1949 by St. Paul Pioneer Press. This
vignette also had a dog in appearance very similar to Snoopy. In 1948,
Schulz sold his story to the Saturday Evening Post.
Still in 1948, Schulz tried to market the Li'l Folks to Newspaper
Enterprise Association. The following year, Schulz joined the United
Features Syndicate with his best comic strip Li'l Folks.
His characters had great success because depicted everyday life and
every one of your characters hiding behind a message.
On June 28, 1996, he received a star on the Walk of Fame
Hollywood.
Don Heck: was an American comic book artist best known for co-creating
the Marvel Comics character Iron Man, and for his long run penciling the
Marvel superhero-team series The Avengers during the 1960s Silver Age of
comic books.
New Yorker artist (born in Queens) and one of the "founding
fathers" of the called Marvel Universe. He began his career in 1949 as
editor Harvey. But only since 1963, working for the superheroes of Marvel
that started getting popular (his name appears in the end credits of the end
of the cartoon TV - the "Marvel Club" in Brazil - in 1966). In fact, he
worked for that publisher since September 1954 but at the time, she was
called Atlas Comics and had a different line of comics.
Alongside Stan Lee and Larry Lieber, created to Marvel the look for
the "Iron Man". Also in the editor, worked on "The Avengers," "Thor,"
"Captain Marvel", "X-Men", "Spider-Man" (here as inker) etc.. During

16. his tenure at Marvel, drew attention by drawing beautiful women, earning
him an invitation from rival DC to work on "Wonder Woman," "Batgirl,"
"The Flash" and others. Also quadrinized TV series for Dell / Western (as
"Agent from U.N.C.L.E" and "Voyage to the bottom of the sea").
Heck also worked for comics published in newspapers, being
assistant Sy Barry strips daily (black and white) "The Phantom". Episodes
and precise dates have not yet been possible to identify. Some say it was
between 1966-71, during which Heck was taking turns with George Olesen
and some more "ghost" Barry. A more precise date was provided by
Norwegian researcher Jostein Hansen: according to him, would have done
the Heck daily "Ghost" from 1972-73.
Quino: Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known by his pen
name Quino (born 17 July 1932) is an Argentine cartoonist. His comic
strip Mafalda (which ran from 1964 to 1973) is very popular in Latin
America and many parts of Europe.
Quino's daily newspaper strip Mafalda was his most successful
cartooning venture. Mafalda ran from 1964 to 1973. The comic was
translated into more than 30 languages. However, it never received much of
an audience in the English-speaking world, perhaps because, as Quino put
it, the strip was "too Latin American." In 1976, the character Mafalda was
chosen by UNICEF to be a spokesperson for the Convention on the Rights
of the Child. Mafalda is still translated in book collections. Argentine
director Daniel Mallo translated 260 Mafalda strips into 90-second cartoons
that aired in Argentina, starting in 1972.
Dik Browne: he was a popular cartoonist, best known for writing and
drawing Hägar the Horrible and for drawing Hi and Lois.
Browne attended Cooper Union and got his start at the New York
Journal American as a copy boy and later worked in the art department. He
joined the army, producing work for the engineering unit and created Jinny
Jeep, a comic strip about the Women's Army Corps.[1]
In the 1940s, he worked as an illustrator for Newsweek as well as for
an advertising company, where he created the trademark logo for Chiquita.
In 1954, Browne and cartoonist Mort Walker co-created the comic
strip Hi and Lois, a spin-off of Walker's popular Beetle Bailey strip,
featuring Beetle's sister, brother-in-law and their family. Walker wrote the
strip, which Browne illustrated until his death. The series is now drawn by
his son Chance and written by Walker's sons. In 1973, Browne
created Hägar the Horrible about an ill-mannered red-bearded
medieval viking. The comic is now produced by his son Chris. Both strips
have been successful, appearing in hundreds of newspapers for decades.

17. 2.3…And the first comic books.
After newspapers, comic books began to be published in specific
journals that were very successful and across generations, attracting fans
and readers worldwide. It is no coincidence that today's comics can be a
tool for the dissemination of ideas mass more comprehensive and culturally
more advanced than other forms of dissemination. Below are listed the first
magazine of comics that has news.
―The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck‖: Histoire de M. Vieux Bois,
published in English as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, and also
known as Les amours de Mr. Vieux Bois or simply Monsieur Vieuxbois, is a
19th-century publication written and illustrated by the
Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer. Published first in Europe as Histoire
de M. Vieux Bois, and then in the United States as
a newspaper supplement, The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, it is
sometimes said to be the first comic book.
The format consists of sequential pictures with captions, rather than
utilizing the staple of word-balloons, a convention that would later be
developed in newspaper comic strips. In Understanding Comics, comics
theorist Scott McCloud says Töpffer's work is in many ways "the father of
the modern comic." McCloud emphasizes Töpffer's use of "cartooning and
panel borders" along with "the first interdependent combination of words
and pictures seen in Europe." [3]
Töpffer described comics as a medium appealing particularly to
children and the lower classes and this is evident in the style of the work. It
is notable that the story was never intended for publication but rather as an
idle "diversion" for his close friends; however, the story achieved
widespread popularity in the United States and its original France.
Töpffer used a method called autography, in which the pen draws on
specially prepared paper, allowing a freer line than the engraving of the
time.
―The Yelow Kid‖ (―Hogan’s Alley‖): The Yellow Kid was the name of a
lead comic strip character that ran from 1895 to 1898 in Joseph
Pulitzer's New York World, and later William Randolph Hearst's New
York Journal.
The Yellow Kid's image was an early example of lucrative
merchandising and appeared on mass market retail objects in the greater
New York City area such as "billboards, buttons, cigarette packs, cigars,
cracker tins, ladies’ fans, matchbooks, postcards, chewing gum cards, toys,
whiskey and many other products".

18. In 1896 Outcault was hired away at a much higher salary to William
Randolph Hearst's New York Journal American where he drew the Yellow
Kid in a new full-page color strip which was significantly violent and even
vulgar compared to his first panels for Truth magazine. Pulitzer, who had
retained the copyright to Hogan's Alley, hired George Luks to continue
drawing the original (and now less popular) version of the strip for
the World and hence the Yellow Kid appeared simultaneously in two
competing papers for about a year. Outcault produced three subsequent
series of Yellow Kid strips at the Journal American, each lasting no more
than four months:
McFadden’s Row of Flats (18 October 1896 – 10 January 1897)
Around the World with the Yellow Kid - a strip that sent the Kid on a
world tour in the manner of Nellie Bly (17 January - 30 May 1897)
A half-page strip which eventually adopted the title Ryan’s Arcade (28
September 1897 – 23 January 1898).
With the Yellow Kid's merchandising success as an advertising icon
the strip came to represent the crass commercial world it had originally
lampooned, and publication of both versions stopped abruptly after only
three years in early 1898, as circulation wars between the rival papers
dwindled. Moreover, Outcault may have lost interest in the character when
he realized he couldn't retain exclusive commercial control over it. The
Yellow Kid's last appearance is most often noted as 23 January 1898 in a
strip about hair tonic. On 1 May 1898, the character was featured in a
rather satirical cartoon called Casey Corner Kids Dime Museum but he was
drawn ironically, as a bearded, balding old man wearing a green nightshirt
which bore the words: "Gosh I've growed old in making dis collection."
The two newspapers which ran the Yellow Kid, Pulitzer's World and
Hearst's Journal American, quickly became known as the yellow kid papers.
This was contracted to the yellow papers and the term yellow kid
journalism was at last shortened to yellow journalism, describing the two
newspapers' editorial practices of taking (sometimes even fictionalized)
sensationalism and profit as priorities in journalism.
The Yellow Kid appeared now and then in Outcault's later cartoon
strips, most notably Buster Brown.
Outcault's word balloons in the Yellow Kid influenced the basic
appearance and use of balloons in subsequent newspaper comic strips
and comic books. Word balloons containing characters' speech had
appeared in political cartoons since at least the 18th century, including
some published by Benjamin Franklin. Their origins can be traced back to
speech scrolls, painted ribbons of paper which trailed from the mouths of
speaking subjects, depicting their words. These were in common European
use by the early 16th century and similar devices had appeared in Mayan
art between 600 and 900 AD.

19. ―The Funnies‖: was the name of two American publications from Dell
Publishing, the first of these a seminal, 1920s precursor of comic books, and
the second a standard 1930s comic book.
In 1929, George T. Delacorte Jr.'s Dell Publishing, founded eight
years earlier, began publishing The Funnies, described by the Library of
Congress as "a short-lived newspaper tabloid insert". Comics historian Ron
Goulart describes the 16-page, four-color, newsprint periodical as "more a
Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic
book. But it did offer all original material and was sold on newsstands".
The magazine ran 36 weekly issues, published Saturdays from
January 16, 1929, to October 16, 1930. The cover price rose from 10¢ to 30¢
with issue #3. This was reduced to a nickel from issue #22 to the end.
The Funnies helped lay the groundwork for two subsequent
publications in 1933: Eastern Color Printing's similar proto-comic book,
the eight-page newsprint tabloid Funnies on Parade, and the Eastern Color
/ Dell collaboration Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, considered by
historians the first true American comic book.
―Funnies on Parade‖: is an American publication of 1933 that was a
precursor of comic books.
The creation of the modern American comic book came in
stages. Dell Publishing in 1929 published a 16-page, newsprint periodical of
original, comic strip-styled material titled The Funnies and described by
the Library of Congress as "a short-lived newspaper tabloid insert". (This
is not to be confused with Dell's later same-name comic book, which began
publication in 1936.) Historian Ron Goulart describes the four-
color, newsstand periodical as "more a Sunday comic section without the
rest of the newspaper than a true comic book".
In 1933, salesperson Maxwell Gaines, sales manager Harry I.
Wildenberg, and owner George Janosik of the Waterbury, Connecticut,
company Eastern Color Printing — which among other things printed
Sunday-paper comic-strip sections — produced Funnies on Parade.
Like The Funnies but only eight pages this, too, was a newsprint magazine.
Rather than using original material, however, it reprinted in color several
comic strips licenced from the McNaught Syndicate and the McClure
Syndicate. These included such highly popular strips as cartoonist Al
Smith's Mutt and Jeff, Ham Fisher's Joe Palooka, and Percy
Crosby's Skippy. This periodical, however, was neither sold nor available
on newsstands, but rather sent free as a promotional item to consumers who
mailed in coupons clipped from Procter & Gamble soap and toiletries
products. Ten-thousand copies were made. The promotion proved a success,
and Eastern Color that year produced similar periodicals for Canada
Dry soft drinks, Kinney Shoes, Wheatena cereal and others, with print runs
of from 100,000 to 250,000.

20. ―New Fun‖( ―The Big Comic Magazine‖ or ―New Fun Comics‖): was a
1935-1947 American comic book anthology that introduced several
major superhero characters and was the first American comic-book series
to feature solely original material rather than reprints of newspaper comic
strips. It was also the first publication of the company that would
become DC Comics.
In the fall of 1934, having seen the emergence of Famous
Funnies and other oversize magazines reprinting comic strips,
Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications
and published New Fun #1 (Feb. 1935). A tabloid-sized, 10-inch by 15-inch,
36-page magazine with a card-stock, non-glossy cover, it was an anthology
of humor features, such as the funny animal comic "Pelion and Ossa" and
the college-set "Jigger and Ginger", mixed with such dramatic fare as
the Western strip "Jack Woods" and the "yellow peril" adventure "Barry
O'Neill", featuring a Fu Manchu-styled villain, Fang Gow.
Most significantly, however, whereas some of the existing
publications had eventually included a small amount of original material,
generally as filler, New Fun#1 was the first comic book containing all-
original material.
The first four issues were edited by future Funnies
Inc. founder Lloyd Jacquet, the next by Wheeler-Nicholson himself. Issue
#6 (Oct. 1935) brought the comic-book debuts of Jerry Siegel and Joe
Shuster, the future creators of Superman, who began their careers with the
musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval" (doing the first two installments
before turning it over to others) and, under the pseudonyms "Leger and
Reuths", the supernatural adventurer Doctor Occult. They would remain
on the latter title through issue #32 (June 1938), following the magazine's
retitling as More Fun (issues #7-8, Jan.-Feb. 1936), and More Fun
Comics (#9-on).
In issue #101 (Jan.-Feb. 1945), Siegel and Shuster
introduced Superboy, a teenage version of Superman, in a new feature
chronicling the adventures of the Man of Steel when he was a boy growing
up in the rural Midwestern United States.
With issue #108 (March 1946), all the superhero features were
moved from More Fun into Adventure Comics. More Fun became
a humor title that spotlighted the children's fantasy feature "Jimminy and
the Magic Book". The book was canceled with issue #127 (Nov.-Dec 1947).
―Punch‖ or ―The London Charivari‖: was a British weekly magazine
of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and
engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the
1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern
sense as a humorous illustration. It became a British institution, but after
the 1940s, when its circulation peaked, it went into a long decline, finally
closing in 1992. It was revived in 1996, but closed again in 2002.

21. Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and
engraver Ebenezer Landells, on an initial investment of £25. It was jointly
edited by Mayhew and Mark Lemon. Initially it was subtitled The London
Charivari in homage to Charles Philipon's earlier French satirical humour
magazine Le Charivari. Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the
two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet,
Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy; the name also referred to a joke made early
on about one of the magazine's first editors, Lemon, that "punch is nothing
without lemon". Mayhew ceased to be joint editor in 1842 and became
"suggestor in chief" until he severed his connection in 1845. The magazine
initially struggled for readers, except for an 1842 "Almanack" issue which
shocked its creators by selling 90,000 copies. In December 1842 due to
financial difficulties the magazine was sold to Bradbury and Evans, both
printers and publishers. Bradbury and Evans capitalised on newly evolving
mass printing technologies and also were the publishers for Charles
Dickens and Thackeray.
The term "cartoon" to refer to comic drawings was first used
in Punch in 1843; the Houses of Parliament were to be decorated with
murals, and "carttons" for the mural were displayed for the public; the
term "cartoon" then meant a finished preliminary sketch on a large piece
of cardboard, or cartone in Italian. Punch humorously approriated the term
to refer to its political cartoons and the popularity of the Punch cartoons led
to the terms widespread use.
The illustrator Archibald Henning designed the cover of the
magazine's first issues. The cover design varied in the early years,
though Richard Doyle designed what became the magazine's masthead in
1849. Artists who published in Punch during the 1840s and 50s
included John Leech, Richard Doyle, John Tenniel and Charles Keene. This
group became known as "The Punch Brotherhood", which also included
Charles Dickens who joined Bradbury and Evans after leaving Chapman
and Hall in 1843. Punch authors and artists also contributed to another
Bradbury and Evans literary magazine called Once A Week (est.1859),
created in response to Dickens' departure from Household Words.
In the 1860s and 1870s, conservative Punch faced competition from
upstart liberal journal Fun, but after about 1874, Fun's fortunes faded. At
Evans's café in London, the two journals had "Round tables" in
competition with each other.
After months of financial difficulty and lack of market
success, Punch became a staple for British drawing rooms because of its
sophisticated humour and absence of offensive material, especially when
viewed against the satirical press of the time. The Time sand the Sunday
paper News of the World used small pieces from Punch as column fillers,
giving the magazine free publicity and indirectly granting a degree of
respectability, a privilege not enjoyed by any other comic
publication. Punch would share a friendly relationship with not only The
Times but journals aimed at intellectual audiences such as the Westminster

22. Review, which published a fifty-three page illustrated article
on Punch's first two volumes. Historian Richard Altick writes that "To
judge from the number of references to it in the private letters and memoirs
of the 1840s...Punch had become a household word within a year or two of
its founding, beginning in the middle class and soon reaching the pinnacle
of society, royalty itself".[5]
Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder
of the 1840s and 1850s, Punch was the success story of athreepenny weekly
paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed
periodicals. Punch enjoyed an audience including: Elizabeth
Barrett, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Edward FitzGerald, Charlotte
Brontë, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily
Dickinson, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James
Russell Lowell. Punch gave several phrases to the English language,
including The Crystal Palace, and the "Curate's egg" (first seen in an 1895
cartoon). Several British humour classics were first serialised in Punch,
such as the Diary of a Nobody and 1066 and All That. Towards the end of the
nineteenth century, the artistic roster included Harry Furniss, Linley
Sambourne, Francis Carruthers Gould, and Phil May. Among the
outstanding cartoonists of the following century were Bernard Partridge, H.
M. Bateman, Bernard Hollowood who also edited the magazine from 1957
to 1968, and Norman Thelwell.
Circulation broke the 100,000 mark around 1910, and peaked in
1947-48 at 175,000 to 184,000. Sales declined steadily thereafter; ultimately,
the magazine was forced to close in 1992 after 150 years of publication.
2.4The different eras of comics.
Throughout the history of comics, the division had these in ages,
because some significant respects, as creations of magazines and characters.
Thus, conventionally divided the comics into four eras, which are: Golden
Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age and Modern Age. Below are explanations of
each era.
Golden Age
The Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history
of American comic books, generally thought of as lasting from the late
1930s until the late 1940s or early 1950s. During this time, modern comic
books were first published and enjoyed a surge of popularity;
the archetype of the superhero was created and defined; and many of the
most famous superheroes debuted, among
them Superman, Batman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, and Captain
Marvel.
Publishing of comic books became a major industry. The period also
saw the emergence of the comic book as a mainstream art form, and the

23. defining of the medium's artistic vocabulary and creative conventions by its
first generation of writers, artists, and editors.
Silver Age
The Silver Age of Comic Books was a period of artistic advancement
and commercial success in mainstream American comic books,
predominantly those in the superhero genre. Following the Golden Age of
Comic Books and an interregnum in the early to mid-1950s, the Silver Age
is considered to cover the period from 1956 to circa 1970, and was
succeeded by the Bronze and Modern Ages. A number of important comics
writers and artists contributed to the early part of the era, including
writers Stan Lee, Gardner Fox, John Broome, and Robert Kanigher, and
artists Curt Swan, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, Mike
Sekowsky, Gene Colan, Carmine Infantino, John Buscema, and John
Romita, Sr. By the end of the Silver Age, a new generation of talent had
entered the field, including writers Denny O'Neil, Gary Friedrich, Roy
Thomas, and Archie Goodwin, and artists such as Neal Adams, Herb
Trimpe, Jim Steranko, and Barry Windsor-Smith.
The popularity and circulation of comic books about superheroes
declined following World War II, and comic books about horror, crime and
romance took larger shares of the market. However, controversy arose over
alleged links between comic books and juvenile delinquency, focusing in
particular on crime and horror titles. In 1954, publishers implemented
the Comics Code Authority to regulate comic content. In the wake of these
changes, publishers began introducing superhero stories again, a change
that began with the introduction of a new version of DC Comics's The
Flash in Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956). In response to strong demand, DC began
publishing more superhero titles including Justice League of America,
which prompted Marvel Comics to follow suit beginning with Fantastic
Four #1. Silver Age comics have become collectible, with a copy of Amazing
Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962), the debut of Spider-Man, selling for $1.1 million in
2011.
Comics historian and movie producer Michael Uslan traces the
origin of the "Silver Age" term to the letters column of Justice League of
America #42 (Feb. 1966), which went on sale December 9, 1965. Letter-
writer Scott Taylor of Westport, Connecticut wrote, "If you guys keep
bringing back the heroes from the [1930s-1940s] Golden Age, people 20
years from now will be calling this decade the Silver Sixties!" According to
Uslan, the natural hierarchy of gold-silver-bronze, as in Olympic medals,
took hold. "Fans immediately glommed onto this, refining it more directly
into a Silver Age version of the Golden Age. Very soon, it was in our
vernacular, replacing such expressions as ... 'Second Heroic Age of Comics'
or 'The Modern Age' of comics. It wasn't long before dealers were ...
specifying it was a Golden Age comic for sale or a Silver Age comic for
sale".

24. Bronze Age
The Bronze Age of Comic Books is an informal name for a period in
the history of mainstream American comic books usually said to run from
1970 to 1985. It follows the Silver Age of Comic Books.
The Bronze Age retained many of the conventions of the Silver Age,
with traditional superhero titles remaining the mainstay of the industry.
However, a return of darker plot elements and more socially relevant
storylines (akin to those found in the Golden Age of Comic Books) featuring
real-world issues, such as drug use, alcoholism, and environmental
pollution, began to flourish during the period, prefiguring the later Modern
Age of Comic Books.
Wizard originally used the phrase "Bronze Age" in 1995 to denote
the Modern Horror age. But as of 2009 historians and fans use "Bronze
Age" to describe the period of American mainstream comics history that
begins with a period of concentrated changes to comic books circa 1970.
Unlike the Golden/Silver Age transition, the Silver/Bronze transition
involved many continually published books, making the transition less
sharp; not every book entered the Bronze Age at the same time.
Changes commonly considered marking the transition between
Silver and Bronze ages include:
A reshuffling of popular creators, including the retirement of Mort Weisinger,
editor of the Superman books, and the movement of Jack Kirby to DC.
A boom in non-superhero and borderline superhero comics such as Conan the
Barbarian, Tomb of Dracula, Kamandi, Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, Ghost Rider,
and the revived Doctor Strange and Phantom Stranger.
"Relevant" comics who attempted to address serious social issues, such as the
drug-abuse issues of The Amazing Spider-Man and Green Lantern/Green Arrow.
The Comics Code Authority's first update, in 1971 — prompted by Stan Lee's
defiance of the code for a story on narcotics at the behest of the United States
Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
Revamping of several popular characters, including a "darker" Batman closer
to the original 1930s conception, several changes to Superman such as the
disappearance of Kryptonite, and a temporary non-powered era for Wonder
Woman.
The death of major characters such as Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen Stacy,
the Doom Patrol, and several members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Modern Age
The development of a non-returnable "direct market" distribution
system in the 1970s coincided with the appearance of comic-book specialty
stores across North America. These specialty stores were a haven for more
distinct voices and stories, but they also marginalized comics in the public

25. eye. Serialized comic stories became longer and more complex, requiring
readers to buy more issues to finish a story. Between 1970 and 1990, comic-
book prices rose sharply because of a combination of factors: a nationwide
paper shortage, increasing production values, and the minimal profit
incentive for stores to stock comic books (due to the small unit price of an
individual comic book relative to a magazine).
In the mid-to-late 1980s, two series published by DC
Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, had a profound
impact upon the American comic-book industry. Their popularity, along
with mainstream media attention and critical acclaim, combined with
changing social tastes, led to a considerably darker tone in comic books
during the 1990s nicknamed by fans as the "grim-and-gritty" era. The
growing popularity of antiheroes such as the Punisher and Wolverine
underscored this change, as did the darker tone of some independent
publishers such as First Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and (founded in the
1990s) Image Comics. This tendency towards darkness and nihilism was
manifested in DC's production of heavily promoted comic book stories such
as "A Death in the Family" in the Batman series (in which The
Joker brutally murdered Batman's sidekick Robin), while at Marvel the
continuing popularity of the various X-Men books led to storylines involving
the genocide of super powered "mutants" in allegorical stories about
religious and ethnic persecution.
Though a speculator boom in the early 1990s temporarily increased
specialty store sales — collectors "invested" in multiple copies of a single
comic to sell at a profit later — these booms ended in a collectibles glut, and
comic sales declined sharply in the mid-1990s, leading to the demise of
many hundreds of stores. In the 2000s, fewer comics sell in North America
than at any time in their publishing history. The large superhero-oriented
publishers like Marvel and DC are still often referred to as the
"mainstream" of comics and are still considered a mass medium like in
previous decades.
While the actual publications are no longer as widespread,
however, licensing and merchandising have made many comic-book
characters, aside from such perennials as Superman and Batman, more
widely known to the general public than even. In particular,
several movies and videogames based on comic-book characters have been
released, and such heavily promoted events as Spider-Man's wedding,
the death of Superman, and the death of Captain America received
widespread media coverage.
In addition, the graphic novel publishing format, and its related
form of the trade paperback, enabled the comic book medium to gain
respectability as literature. As such, such books are now common items
in book retail and in the collections of public libraries.
Independent and alternative comics

26. Comic specialty stores did help encourage several waves of
independently-produced comics, beginning in the mid-1970s. Some of the
early example of these - generally referred to as "independent" or
"alternative" comics - such as Big Apple Comix, continued somewhat in the
tradition of underground comics, while others, such as Star Reach,
resembled the output of mainstream publishers in format and genre but
were published by smaller artist-owned ventures or by a single artist; a few
(notably RAW) represented experimental attempts to bring comics closer to
the world of fine art.
The "small press" scene continued to grow and diversify, with a
number of small publishers in the 1990s changing the format and
distribution of their books to more closely resemble non-comics publishing.
The "minicomics" form, an extremely informal version of self-publishing,
arose in the 1980s and became increasingly popular among artists in the
1990s, despite reaching an even more limited audience than the small
presses.
3. Comentários.
As histórias em quadrinhos são, desde o princípio, uma ferramenta
muito importante para disseminação de ideias e conceitos. Elas são um
veículo de comunicação tão importante que foram consideradas até uma
Arte (Nona Arte) e são capazes de chegar ao público de maneira mais fácil e
rápida, por vezes diariamente, como nas tiras de jornais.
Desde o início, as histórias em quadrinhos atraem os mais diferentes
públicos e contam com artistas renomados, com mentes e ideias
privilegiadas e criativas, sendo capazes de inventar personagens e heróis
que marcam o cotidiano e o imaginário de muitas pessoas.
Convencionou-se até em dividir as histórias em quadrinhos em eras,
como apresentadas anteriormente, para apresentar ao público o que cada
história em quadrinhos nos fornece em termos de linguagem e personagens.
Também tivemos os artistas que, por suas obras, marcaram época no
universo dos quadrinhos.
Concluo assim observando o quão importante as histórias em
quadrinhos são para o mundo. Elas permitiram a ampliação dos horizontes
e do pensamento das pessoas. A visão de mundo que se tinha foi ampliada
junto ao horizonte das pessoas. A leitura é o símbolo máximo de uma
sociedade desenvolvida e capaz de observar e solucionar seus problemas.
Os quadrinhos não trazem apenas boas histórias e personagens
envolventes... Trazem EDUCAÇÃO, a arma mais poderosa que se tem para
mudar o mundo!