comic strip

 

combination of cartoon with a story line, laid out in a series of pictorial panels across a page and concerning a continuous character or set of characters, whose thoughts and dialogues are indicated by means of “balloons” containing written speech. The comic strip form can be employed to convey a variety of messages (e.g., advertisements).

History

Elements of the form can be found in antiquity, where Vergil in the Aeneid describes a tapestry that retraces the events of the Trojan War. The Bayeux tapestry, from the Middle Ages, retraces the hostilities leading to the Battle of Hastings. Narrative strips, usually in the form of woodcuts, became a popular medium for the expression of religious and political ideas during the Reformation.

The immediate ancestor of the newspaper comic strip was the cartoon, especially popular in the late 19th cent. In the 18th and early 19th cent., the cartoons of William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson regularly included balloons; continuity was utilized by Rowlandson in his Tours of Dr. Syntax (1812–21). In France, Rudolph Töpffer, a contemporary of Rowlandson, created albums of long, rambling strips. In the late 19th cent. the strips of Christophe (Georges Colomb) were published throughout the country in pamphlet form. The first strip with a regular cast of characters was Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz (1865), which appeared originally in periodicals and later as separate publications. The first British strip with a recurrent character was Ally Sloper, by Charles Ross and Marie Duval (1867–76); Tom Browne's Weary Willie and Tired Tim reached the British public in the 1890s.

American Comic Strips

During their early days comic strips were published exclusively as weekly features in the Sunday supplement of American newspapers. The term “comic strip” in its strictest sense now refers to a syndicated newspaper feature that appears daily in a single row of three or four panels, together with other comic strips that form a page, and is printed in black and white, except on Sunday, when it appears in two to four consecutive rows and is printed in color in the comic section.

Although there is evidence of comic strips appearing in American newspapers as early as 1892, it is the year 1896 that commonly marks the birth of the genre in the American press, with Richard Felton Outcault's The Yellow Kid as its first true representative, appearing in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. The popularity of The Yellow Kid resulted in an immediate increase in the World's circulation and paved the way for succeeding comic strips.

Rudolph Dirks, in the Katzenjammer Kids (1897), was the first to make consistent use of a sequence of panels to tell his stories. With the creation of such pioneering strips as Happy Hooligan (1899), by Frederick Burr Opper, Charles (“Bunny”) Schultze's Foxy Grandpa (1900), Outcault's Buster Brown (1902), and James Swinnerton's Little Jimmy (1905), all the essential components of the comic strip (e.g., regularity of cast, use of sequence of panels, and speech-balloons) were refined and securely established.

In 1907 Bud Fisher created the first successful daily strip with his Mutt and Jeff. With syndicates distributing plates of their comic features to many newspapers, the characters acquired national readership. The enormous influence of comic strips on the public was first demonstrated by “Buster Brown” fashions early in the 20th cent. It was evidenced later in the century by the proliferation of “Peanuts,” “Doonesbury,” and “Garfield” products; many comic strip characters have also made the transition to television, film, and the theater via animation or live actors.

Adventure and suspense had been elements of comic strips since Charles W. Kahles's popular strip Hairbreadth Harry (1906), but they appeared in the form of burlesque. In 1924 Roy Crane, with Wash Tubbs (later retitled Captain Easy), was the first to add these features to a strip in a strictly dramatic format. Some of the earliest examples of this new genre—invariably drawn in a more realistic style than the early “funnies”—were Tim Tyler's Luck (1928), by Lyman Young, Tarzan (1929), first drawn by Harold Foster, and Buck Rogers (1929), by Phil Nowlan and Dick Calkins. These led to such classics as Chester Gould's Dick Tracy (1931), Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates (1934), and Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon (1934), and culminated in the most consciously artistic strip of all, Harold Foster's Prince Valiant (1937).

International Comic Strips

Many American comic strips were published in Europe, where for a long time their popularity hindered the development of European contributions to the strip form. John Millar Watt's Pop (1921), aimed at an adult audience, was one of the first daily comic strips in Britain and was eventually published in U.S. newspapers; another British strip to reach a large American audience was Reginald Smythe's Andy Capp (1957).

Tintin, created by the Belgian artist Hergé (Georges Remi) c.1930, emerged as the most important French-language comic strip of the 20th cent.; it continued to enjoy an international readership into the 1990s. The leading French comic strip of the succeeding generation has been Astèrix (c.1965), set in ancient Gaul; created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, it is noted for its verbal wit. The first Italian comic strip appeared in 1908. Italian strips proliferated after World War II; Guido Crepax's Valentina (1965) has won acclaim for its visual artistry.

Ideological Slants

Some comic strips have proved effective vehicles for political messages: Little Orphan Annie (1924), by Harold Gray, extolled free enterprise and conservatism, while the satirical Pogo (1949), by Walt Kelly, aimed barbs at the enemies of liberalism. Uninhibited political and social satire has been the hallmark of Mad (1952), a monthly magazine of original strips that parodied contemporary comic strips.

Satire and intellectual humor made some strips favorites with adults and university students. Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland (1906) and George Herriman's Krazy Kat (1911) were forerunners of these, and they led in turn to Al Capp's Li'l Abner (1934), Kelly's Pogo, Charles Schulz's Peanuts (1950), Johnny Hart's B.C. (1958), Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury (1970), Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County (1980), and Gary Larson's The Far Side (1980). Trudeau's Doonesbury directly lampoons political figures and controversial current events. Some newspapers refuse to run the strip when it touches on contentious social issues; others regularly run it in the editorial pages instead of in the comics section. Another controversial strip, The Boondocks by African-American cartoonist Aaron McGruder, which began widespread syndication in 1999, features black characters and displays a cynical, confrontational attitude toward political and social issues.

Comic Books

In the 1930s renewed interest in book-length strips, of the sort produced in Europe in the 19th cent. by Töpffer and Busch, led to the modern comic book, a magazine printed in color and aimed primarily at a juvenile audience—unlike comic strips, which are intended for the entire family. At first comic books reprinted entire episodes of newspaper strips, but eventually they evolved their own characters, e.g., Superman (1938), by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Batman (1939), by Bob Kane, and Captain America (1941), by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. In the United States adventure, crime, and war comics eventually elicited complaints from parents, teachers, and clergymen about the portrayal of violence in a product intended for children. In 1954 publishers formed a Comics Code Authority to administer self-censorship standards, thus averting government action.

Modern Trends

Beginning with the pop art movement of the early 1960s, comics have been appropriated in the works of Roy Lichtenstein, Kenny Scharf, Art Spiegelman, and others. At about the same time, underground comics, aimed primarily at an adult audience, began to be published. Their controversial humor is directed at such diverse topics as sex, violence, politics, art, and music. Erotic comic strips found a place in some alternative publications; Robert Crumb's lewd, finely drawn strips, which have included the adventures of Fritz the Cat, his most famous character, attracted a limited but enthusiastic readership.

Meanwhile, the superhero genre, which first flourished in the mid-20th cent. in such characters as Superman, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman, was revived in later strips with, for instance, the surreal chiaroscuro of Steve Ditko's Spiderman and, further afield, in the multimedia antics of such characters as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Power Rangers. In addition, the 1960s and subsequent decades saw the international popularity of comic strip clubs and associations, whose members collect vintage strips, write critical studies about them, and publish the results of their research in specialized journals.

Book-length fiction in comic strip form has acquired a sizable adult readership in Japan, in the “novelas” of many Spanish-speaking countries, and in the wide variety of “graphic novels” now popular in the United States. In the United States, the genre is considered by many to have begun with Will Eisner's A Contract with God (1978) and continued in the 1980s with autobiographical strips written by Harvey Pekar and drawn by R. Crumb and others. The graphic novel achieved considerable notice in the early 1990s with the publication of Spiegelman's Maus, a strip about the Holocaust that originally appeared in the American Jewish press, where it generated controversy for its treatment of such a serious subject in comic strip form; Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize (1992) for the Maus books. Among the practitioners of the graphic novel form who have achieved notable success in the United States during the early 2000s are Chris Ware, Marjane Satrapi, Daniel Clowes, and Joe Sacco.

Bibliography

See W. Herdeg and D. Pascal, ed., The Art of the Comic Strip (1972); D. Kunzle, History of the Comic Strip (1973); M. Horn, ed., World Encyclopedia of Comics (6 vol., 1976, repr. 1984); T. Robbins, Women and the Comics (1985); R. Marschall, America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989); B. Blackbeard, R. F. Outcault's The Yellow Kid (1995); B. Walker, The Comics since 1945 (2002) and The Comics before 1945 (2004); J. Carlin et al., ed., Masters of American Comics (2005).

A comic strip is a drawing or sequence of drawings that tells a story. Written and drawn by a cartoonist, such strips are published on a recurring basis (usually daily or weekly) in newspapers and on the Internet. In the UK and the rest of Europe they are also serialized in comic magazines, with a strip's story sometimes continuing over three pages or more. Comic strips have also appeared in US magazines such as Boys' Life.^{[citation needed]}.

Storytelling using pictures has existed at least since the ancient Egyptians, and examples exist in 19th Century Germany and England. American comic strip developed this format into the 20th century. It introduced such devices as the word balloon for speech, the hat flying off to indicate surprise, and specific typographical symbols to represent cursing. The first comic books were anthologies of newspaper comic strips.

As the name implies, comic strips can be humorous (for example, "gag-a-day" strips such as Blondie, Bringing Up Father and Pearls Before Swine). Starting circa 1930, comic strips began to include adventure stories. Buck Rogers, Tarzan and The Adventures of Tintin were some of the first. Soap-opera continuity strips such as Judge Parker and Mary Worth gained popularity in the 1940s. All are called, generically, "comic strips", though cartoonist Will Eisner has suggested that "sequential art" would be a better name for them.^{[citation needed]}

Newspaper comic strip

Newspaper comic strips are comic strips that are first published in newspapers, instead of, for example, on the web, or in comic books or magazines. The first newspaper comic strips appeared in America in the early years of the twentieth century. The Yellow Kid is usually credited as being the very first newspaper comic strip, but the artform, mixing words and pictures, evolved gradually, and there are many examples of proto-comic strips. Newspaper comic strips are divided into daily strips and Sunday strips. Most newspaper comic strips are syndicated; that is, a syndicate hires people to write and draw the strip, and then distributes the strip to many newspapers for a fee. A few newspaper strips are exclusive to one newspaper. For example The Louisiana Purchase by John Chase ran only in the New Orleans Times Picayune.^{[citation needed]}

Daily strips

A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip that appears in newspapers Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip which appears on Sunday. Daily strips are usually in black and white, though a few newspapers, beginning in the later part of the twentieth century, published them in color. The major formats are strips, which are wider than they are tall, and panels, which 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. Panels usually, but not always, are not broken up and lack continuity. The daily Peanuts is a strip, and the daily Dennis the Menace is a panel.

Early daily strips were large, often running the entire width of the newspaper, and were sometimes three or more inches in height.^{[citation needed]} At first, one newspaper page only included one 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. Over the years, the size of daily strips became smaller and smaller, until by 2000 four standard daily strips could fit in the area once occupied by a single daily strip.

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.

In Flanders, the two-tier strip is the standard publication style of most daily strips like Spike and Suzy and Nero. They appear Monday through Saturday, as until recently there were no Sunday papers in Flanders. In the last decades, they have switched from black and white to color.

Sunday strips

Sunday strips appear in Sunday newspapers, usually in a special color section. Early Sunday strips, such as Thimble Theatre and Little Orphan Annie, filled an entire newspaper page, a format known to collectors as full page. Later strips, such as The Phantom and Terry and the Pirates, were usually only half that size, with two strips to a page in full size newspapers, such as the New Orleans Times Picayune, or with one strip on a tabloid page, as in the Chicago Daily News. When Sunday strips began to appear in more than one format, it became necessary for the cartoonist to allow for rearranged, cropped, or dropped panels. During World War II, because of paper shortages, the size of Sunday strips began to shrink. After the war, strips continued to get smaller and smaller, to save the expense of printing so many color pages. The last full page comic strip was the Prince Valiant strip for 11 April 1971. Today, most Sunday strips are smaller than the daily strips of the 1930s.

Webcomic

Main article: Webcomic

Webcomics, also known as online comics and internet comics, are comics that are available to read on the Internet. Many are exclusively published online, while some are published in print but maintain a web archive for either commercial or artistic reasons. With the Internet's easy access to an audience, webcomics run the gamut from traditional cartoon strips to graphic novels and beyond.

Origins

In America, the great popularity of comics sprang from the newspaper war between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. The Little Bears was the first American comic with recurring characters, while the first color comic supplement was published by the Chicago Inter-Ocean sometime in the latter half of 1892; Mutt and Jeff was the first successful daily comic strip, first appearing in 1907.

Proto-comic strips exist from the time of ancient Egypt, and include medieval manuscript illumination and English cartoons. The 1865 German strip Max and Moritz, about two trouble-making boys, had a direct influence on the American comic strip. Max and Moritz was a series of severely moralistic tales in the vein of German children's stories such as Struwwelpeter ("Shockheaded Peter"); in one, the boys, after perpetrating some mischief, are tossed into a sack of grain, run through a mill, and consumed by a flock of geese. Max and Moritz provided an inspiration for German immigrant Rudolph Dirks, who created the Katzenjammer Kids in 1897. Familiar comic-strip iconography such as stars for pain, speech and thought balloons, and sawing logs for snoring originated in Dirks' strip.

Hugely popular, Katzenjammer Kids was responsible for one of the first comic-strip copyright ownership suits in the history of the medium. When Dirks left Hearst for the promise of a better salary under Pulitzer (unusual, since cartoonists regularly deserted Pulitzer for Hearst) Hearst, in a highly unusual court decision, retained the rights to the name "Katzenjammer Kids", while creator Dirks retained the rights to the characters. Hearst promptly hired a cartoonist named Harold Knerr to draw his own version of the strip. Dirks renamed his version Hans and Fritz (later, The Captain and The Kids). Thus, two versions distributed by rival syndicates graced the comics pages for decades. Dirks' version, eventually distributed by United Feature Syndicate, ran until 1979.

Hundreds of comic strips followed, with many running for decades.

Conventions and genres

Most comic strip characters are unageing throughout the strip's life, but in some strips, like Lynn Johnston's award-winning For Better or For Worse, characters age. 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 dramatic story. Examples include The Phantom, Prince Valiant, Dick Tracy, Mary Worth, Modesty Blaise and Tarzan. Sometimes these are spin-offs from comic books, for example Superman, Batman, and The Amazing Spider-Man.

A number of strips have featured animals as main characters. Some are non-verbal (Marmaduke, The Angriest Dog in the World), some have verbal thoughts but aren't understood by humans, (Garfield, Snoopy in Peanuts), and some can converse with humans (Bloom County, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, Calvin and Hobbes,and Pooch Cafe). Other strips are centered entirely on animals, as in Pogo and Donald Duck. Gary Larson's The Far Side was unusual, as there were no central characters. Instead The Far Side used a wide variety of characters including humans, monsters, aliens, chickens, cows, worms, amoebas and more. John McPherson's Close to Home also uses this theme, though the characters are mostly restricted to humans and real-life situations. Wiley Miller not only mixes human, animal and fantasy characters, he does several different comic strip continuities under one umbrella title, Non Sequitur. Bob Thaves's Frank & Ernest began in 1972 and paved the way for some of these strips as its human characters were manifest in diverse forms — as animals, vegetables, and minerals.

Major issues in American newspaper comic strips

Since around the 1960s, comic strip presentation in newspapers and the business itself has considerably changed.

In the past few decades, many cartoonists have voiced their concern about the present and future of comic strips, most notably Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist, Bill Watterson.

Size

The issue most commonly addressed was the swiftly declining size of newspaper comic strips. In the early decades of the 20th century, all Sunday comics received a full page and daily strips were generally the width of the page, today only one newspaper, the Reading Eagle, continues to run many strips in the largest available size. In most papers, most strips drop several panels so that more strips can fit on a page.

Bill Watterson has written extensively on the issue, claiming that size reduction and dropped panels reduce both the potential and freedom of a cartoonist. When Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes grew to fame, he insisted that his Sunday strip be published without cropping and at a half-page size, a move criticised by newspaper editors and a few cartoonists, including Family Circus cartoonist, Bill Keane.

Format

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 rarely put much effort into these panels.

Second author

Many older strips are no longer drawn by the original cartoonist, who has either died or retired. A cartoonist, paid by the syndicate, or sometimes a relative of the original cartoonist continues writing the strip, a tradition that was commonplace in the early half of the 20th century. Hägar the Horrible and Frank and Ernest are both drawn by the son of the creator. Also, many strips, some of which are still in affiliation with the original creator, are drawn or written by multiple people or entire companies, such as Jim Davis' Garfield and Lynn Johnston's For Better or for Worse.

This act is commonly criticised by, primarily modern, cartoonists including Bill Watterson and Pearls Before Swine's Stephan Pastis. The issue was in fact addressed in six consecutive Pearls strips. Charles Schulz, of Peanuts fame, requested that the strip was not continued by another cartoonist upon his retirement. Schulz also rejected the idea of hiring an inker or letterer, comparing it to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts.

The problems cited with attaining a second cartoonist state that the second cartoonist is generally less funny or compelling than the creator, and also the cartoonist is not as familiar with the characters. Also, many have said that continuing retired strips stops newer cartoonists from breaking through.

Censorship

A more recent and less spoken issue is that of censorship in comics. Stephan Pastis has stated that the "unwritten" censorship code is "stuck somewhere in the 1950s." Generally, comics are not allowed to include such words as "damn," "sucks," "screwed," and "hell," although there are exceptions. In addition, many images such as naked backsides, and shooting guns can not be shown, as stated by Dilbert cartoonist, Scott Adams.

Many issues including sex, drugs and terrorism cannot, or can very rarely, be openly discussed in strips. This has led many cartoonists to resort to double entendre and, as in the case of Luann cartoonist Greg Evans on several occasions, speak in a manner that could not be understood by youths.

Many of these words, images and issues are common in every day life, a reason that numerous young cartoonists have claimed they should be allowed in the comics. In addition, many of the censored words and topics are mentioned daily on television, as well as in other forms of visual media.

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 staunch conservative values of Little Orphan Annie to the unabashed liberalism of Doonesbury. 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.

Some comic strips, such as Doonesbury and The Boondocks, are often printed on the editorial or op-ed page rather than the comics page, because of their regular political commentary. Conservatives have long warred against Doonesbury, and were recently successful in convincing a major printer of Sunday comics sections to refuse to print the strip. In another case, Dilbert is sometimes found in the business section of a newspaper instead of the comics page because of the strip's commentary about office politics.

Publicity and recognition

The world's longest comic strip is 88.9 metres long and on display at Trafalgar Square as part of the London Comedy Festival. The record was previously 81 metres and held in Florida. The London Cartoon Strip was created by fifteen of Britain's best known cartoonists and depicts the history of London.

The Reuben, named for cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is the most prestigious award for U.S. comic strip artists. Reuben awards are presented annually by the National Cartoonists' Society (NCS).

Today's comic-strip artists, with the help of the NCS, enthusiastically promote the medium, which is considered to be in decline due to fewer markets and ever-shrinking newspaper space. One particularly humorous example of such promotional efforts is the Great Comic Strip Switcheroonie, held on April Fool's Day, 1997. For that day, dozens of prominent comic-strip 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). Even the United States Postal Service got into the act, issuing a series of commemorative stamps marking the comic-strip centennial in 1996.

While the Switcheroonie was a one-time publicity stunt, for one artist to take 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 decades-spanning longevity of some of the genre's most popular strips. Examples include Little Orphan Annie (drawn and plotted by Harold Gray from 1924-44 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 a string of successors, most notably George Wunder.)

A business-driven variation on the "switch" has sometimes led to the same feature continuing under a different name. In one case, in the early '40s, 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 as drawn by Jay Allen, who aped Flowers' style to a tee.)

The majority of traditional newspaper comic strips now have some internet presence. Syndicates often provide archives of recent strips on their websites. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, started a trend by including his e-mail address in each strip.

Underground comic strips

The decade of the 1960s saw the rise of underground newspapers, which often carried comic strips, such as Fritz the Cat and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. College newspapers also began to carry their own strips. Bloom County and Doonesbury began as strips in college papers, and later moved to national syndication.

Underground comic strips covered subjects that are usually taboo in newspaper strips, such as sex and drugs. Many underground artists, notably Vaughn Bode, Dan O'Neill, and Gilbert Shelton went on to draw comic strips for magazines such as Playboy, The National Lampoon, and Pete Miller's Drag Cartoons.

Syndication

See also

• List of comic strips
• Cartoon Research Library

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