Platinum Age (1897-1937)

Comics (or, less commonly, sequential art) is a form of visual art consisting of images which are commonly combined with text, often in the form of speech balloons or image captions. more...

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Originally used to illustrate caricatures and to entertain through the use of amusing and trivial stories, it has by now evolved into a literary medium with many subgenres.

The most common forms of printed comics are comic strips (most commonly four panels long) in newspapers and magazines, and longer comic stories in comic books, graphic novels and comic albums. In the first two forms the comics are secondary material usually confined to the entertainment sections, while the latter consist either entirely or primarily of comics.

Depending on the definition of the term, the origin of comics can be traced back to 15th century Europe. However, today's form of comics (with panels, and using text within the image in speech balloons, etc.), as well as the term comics itself, originated in the late 19th century.

Defining comics

Note: Although it takes the form of a plural noun, the common usage when referring to comics as a medium is to treat it as singular.

Scholars disagree on the definition of comics; some claim its printed format is crucial, some emphasize the interdependence of image and text, and others its sequential nature. The term as a reference to the medium has also been disputed.

In 1996, Will Eisner published Graphic Storytelling, in which he defined comics as "the printed arrangement of art and balloons in sequence, particularly in comic books." Eisner's earlier, more influential definition from 1985's Comics and Sequential Art described the technique and structure of comics as sequential art, "...the arrangement of pictures or images and words to narrate a story or dramatize an idea."

In Understanding Comics (1993) Scott McCloud defined sequential art and comics as: "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer"; this definition excludes single-panel illustrations such as The Far Side, The Family Circus, and most political cartoons from the category, classifying those as cartoons. By contrast, The Comics Journal's "100 Best Comics of the 20th Century", included the works of several single panel cartoonists and a caricaturist, and academic study of comics has included political cartoons.

R.C. Harvey, in his essay Comedy At The Juncture Of Word And Image, offered a competing definition in reference to McCloud's: "...comics consist of pictorial narratives or expositions in which words (often lettered into the picture area within speech balloons) usually contribute to the meaning of the pictures and vice versa." This, however, ignores the existence of wordless comics.

Read more at Wikipedia.org