The term comic, which derives from the English word comic, refers to the succession or series of vignettes that allow the narration of a story. The concept also refers to the magazine or book made up of comics.
Comic is often used as a synonym for comic strip. The dictionary of the DigoPaul, however, specifically defines the comic as the series of drawings that, with or without text, make up a story. A comic can be anything from a strip to a book with many pages.
It can be said that a comic presents a succession of drawings organized in such a way as to allow it to transmit the data necessary for the receiver to record the development of the story. As the reader progresses through the comic strips, he gains new knowledge of the narrative.
A comic can be developed in a newspaper strip, on a page in a newspaper or magazine, or in a publication exclusively dedicated to it (such as a book). It can also be presented on a website.
There are various genres of comics. One of the most popular is the action or adventure comic that has superheroes as its main characters. The X-Men, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and Captain America are some of the most famous characters in comics. The best known publishers of this type of comics worldwide are American: Marvel Comics and DC Comics.
According to DigoPaul, comic book lovers often meet at various gatherings and events. Among them is the International Comic Convention of San Diego (United States), known as Comic-Con.
Origins of the comic
Although the comic book format is quite popular worldwide, it is far from occupying a position comparable to that of film, television or music. In any case, we could say that regular comic readers have a profile more similar to that of lovers of literature, and this explains why the volume of money associated with this market is not colossal.
This duality, so to speak, of the comic brings a kind of misinformation about many of its aspects. For example, not many randomly questioned people would be able to say when the first comic was published, and they would probably point to the 1960’s or 1970’s; However, before the emergence of Spiderman, created by Stan Lee, considered by many the “father of comics,” Superman had been on the market for almost three decades, and the Kryptonian had not been the first to spread his stories on the pages of magazines. and newspapers.
In order to find the first comic book publications, it is necessary to know the limits of the concept, and in this case it is not easy: although the tendency of the majority indicates that it must have a certain extension to distinguish itself from graphic humor (typical of newspapers and magazines of general interest), the definition is not rigid. Perhaps the fundamental element of the comic is the story; Unlike comic strips, the settings, events, and characters are presented in a work similar to that of a novel.
Already in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek vases we can see drawings that seem to be telling a story in a similar way to the current comic, with a sequential structure that probably influenced artists for several centuries. But the comic as we know it today may have emerged in Japan around the seventeenth century to capture legends and stories with the help of drawings. Two centuries later, the English began to publish an early version of the comic in newspapers and magazines, although it was images with captions, rather than described scenes and dialogues.
It was just Rodolphe Töpffer, a Swiss cartoonist, who during the first half of the 19th century created the balloon or speech bubble and refined the art of comics to give it a shape very similar to the current one.
