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How Have We Changed Our Definition of the Comic Form Over Time?

Comics have been a part of the history of humans for thousands of years. Comics can date back to the ancient eygptians telling stories with hieroglyphics, or even cave paintings. This is the earliest form of sequenced story telling, and is essentially the root of all comic forms. The acctual comic form that we think of now didn't really come about until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, we know comics as either strips in the newspaper or comic books sold in stores.
When comics first came out, they were found in the newspaper as very short strips that told a short and simple story. These first comics, such as The Yellow Kid, had little to no words in them, and the words in them were very simple and to the point. As time progressed, however, comics began to get more detailed and contained more depth. They started to tell stories that were longer and contained more content.
This type of comic form is what helped the comic world to transition in to what we now call the golden age. This is where many of the superheroes we know and love today came from, such as superman and batman. Essentially, the type of comics that were made in this era is not too far off from the definition of the comic form we think of today.
The comic form we think of today has much more detail than anyone from the early 20th century could have imagined. The author almost makes the reader interpret the story by his or her self. Yes, there are transitions and emotions that the author puts in the comic, but for the most part, we as the reader are left to intepret what is actually happening in the comic. For me, the fact that the author leaves room for the reader's thought while still depicting a story is the best thing aboout comic forms today.







Comments

J Chambliss said…
We always want to be precise in our descriptions of comics. While Golden Age can be use to refer to superhero comics in the 1930s and 1940s, the same terms would not be used to describe newspaper strips. Keep these distinctions in mind.

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