The Early Comic Book

The early comic books stretched across many genres, and the beginnings of the comic panels laid out in a format that wasn’t solely duplicated boxes was beginning to emerge. Text in the early comic books were still largely heavy, but the art was becoming more dynamic and synonymous to the text that was happening (nothing was just gag related or drawn out illustrations). Each panel is gaining more depth, with the drawings adding a layer of depth. The use of color as a means of storytelling becomes more experimental (especially in Tales of the Crypt as a means of injecting more horror into the story). 

The biggest difference that emerged between the comic strip and the comic book was the condensed serialized stories that came within an issue rather than waiting for the next installment each week in the paper. 

Tin Tin is an example of a contained story that mixes gags with a story that also mixes a small form of drama (or at least a conflict that provides multiple challenges for the protagonists). For example, the story Explorers on the Moon has multiple space related gags (the whiskey turning into a ball, the idea of anti-gravity, etc.) but is grounded in the rocket and the conflicts that can arise from it.  EC comics, on the other hand, rely on very little (to no) gags, and instead the conflicts are rooted in the horror genre-where non-graphic violence is depicted in a way that was not meant to be a joke (as opposed to the more rubber-hose slapstick violence of some comic strips).

The early comic book was experimental. It pushed genre, and narrative boundaries that seemed to mix the drawn-out stories of the likes of Tarzan, with the visual appeal of more humorous strips. 

The Comics Strip

The comic strip is usually about a page or a few short sequences on roughly a page length. Generally, there is a set-up, a rising action, and then the pay off. Krazy Kat, Peanuts, Little Nemo, and Calvin and Hobbes, are four examples of popular comics news strips of the 20^th century. It should be noted that the comics news strip is largely reprinted stories today. 

The comic strip relies on a basic premise that is then exaggerated or used as a joke within the story. An example of exaggeration would be Calvin and Hobbes and Little Nemo (in Slumberland), with both of which focusing on a mundane aspect of life (In Little Nemo’s case, sleeping, and consequentially dreaming) and using surrealism to capture a childlike-or dreamlike moment. On the flip side, stories like Krazy Kat and Peanuts, while uses some form of exaggeration (especially with Krazy Kats surrealism), relies on structure to tell a joke. Krazy Kat is structured around the same joke with variations, while Peanuts uses simple aspects of life to form a punchline by the end.

These two sort of groups of comic strips are kind of what makes up the appeal of the comic strip. Many of these strips were placed in newspapers, and cultivated this appeal of the everyman, or at least it finds some grounding in the real world. The comic strip was, in some cases, a place where dry humor and wit could find a home, and where the characters can exist in a world vaguely our own, thus allowing us to place ourselves in their shoes.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

  Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics explores how to read and process the visual narratives of comics. Towards the end it also explains the creation process, essentially the idea and fundamentals of a comic outweighs the technical skills of writing or drawing. This process is very similar to animation (in which story is king).

  However, a major point that McCloud made (though much of what he talked about is inherently important to the functionality of comics) is the “visual iconography”. McCloud explains visual iconography as a way we view and distill images through a sequence of events. Our brains are able to connect two similar events within two separate panels. The idea of visual iconography also relates to how we perceive what a face is, with the simplest version being the most appealing-if not the most iconic. A reasoning for this is because our own conditioning to see faces in everything (all of which we put our personal selves into to relate, as Scott McCloud states), and from a modern perspective, growing up watching cartoons has impacted how we expect faces to be drawn. The way we interpret visual imagery is described by McCloud as, “received information”, in that we can instinctively understand what we may be looking at (as long as it’s clear and iconic). This is contrasted by writing, which is “perceived information”. Whereas art is a more universal construct, writing depends on language-context-and even social norms.

  This point that McCloud makes is important to understanding comics because it’s a concept that isn’t really thought about as being a way to reach an audience, or which audience you would want to reach out to. Knowing whether your story should be rendered realistically, or not can determine how your audience will relate to the characters (i.e. watching the character, or placing themselves into the character). It is also important to know how to bridge the gap between the written word and the visual language of comics. Communicating how simply a drawing should be done, for instance, can make the comic more cohesive as a whole.