Historical Comic

[bunnygrenade]

So I have this project due or history. We have to pick a topic and come up with the ten most important events of that topic through 1860-1990 that really had a impact on history (sticking to only having one event per decade) I chose COMICS! :D Unfortinatly though, I have only come up with 1 event that may be of any use to my cause. I was thinking that maybe someone here with a kind soul and a good mind for historical events, could lend a helping hand, or I may have to abandon my topic and find a new one :( No one wants that.

So what I have so far, Superman defeating the KKK.

[prince hal]

Hw about the Congressional investigations into comics in the 50s that led to the Comics Code Authority?

Marvel's printing of the Spider-Man "drug" issues in the 1970s without the CCA imprint and the broader issue of comics' "Relevance Era"?

Art Spiegelman's Maus?

How about Nast's cartoons from the 1860s-70s?

Underground comics?

Now, enough hints: go look into these the way a researcher should!

[Sir Tim Drake]

There are any number of ways in which comics and history have affected each other. If you can't think of any others off the top of your head, that's not a reason to give up the project-- it's a reason to do some outside research, so you can learn more about an interesting subject.

I recommed you look for a good general history of comics, like Roger Sabin's "Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels" or maybe R.C. Harvey's "Art of the Comic Strip." You can get these books through interlibrary loan if they're not available locally.

[MajinShenron]

Captain America beating the Nazis.

[Jonathan Bogart]

So what I have so far, Superman defeating the KKK.
Um, how did Superman defeat the KKK? In the real world, I mean; I'm sure there have been stories about him fighting racists.

But, yes, Thomas Nast's political cartoons in the 1870s brought down a corrupt political empire in New York; the first major continuing comic strip, Hogan's Alley, was a key factor in the newspaper wars of the 1890s, one result of which was the Spanish-American war (and the phrase "yellow journalism" was coined in reference to the Yellow Kid, the star of the strip); the unending-serial format of the adventure strips of the 1920s and 30s like Little Orphan Annie and Dick Tracy were the primary impetus for situation comedy and soap operas on radio, which gave us a great deal of the modern entertainment industry; Walt Kelly's Pogo was criticizing Senator Joseph McCarthy's Communist witchhunts long before it became politically safe to do so in the 1950s; in the later 50s, Mad, both the comic book and the magazine, was a formative influence on an entire generation of comedy, satire, and entertainment; David Levine's brutal caricatures of Richard Nixon have often been cited as a catalyst for growing public disapproval of our most vilified president; underground comics like Robert Crumb's and Victor Moscoso's were part of the same cultural revolution that 60s' acid rock, psyechedelia, and country-rock fomented; both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were sophisticated literary/artistic responses to the Reagan/Thatcher political world of the 80s; the rise of indie/alternative comics such as Love & Rockets, Eightball, and Hate in the late 80s and 90s parallels the same thing in music, creating a subcultural space where it's okay to reject the mainstream and still survive; and just in the past six months, a handful of supposedly anti-Muslim cartoons published in a Danish magazine sparked riots and bloodshed throughout the Muslim world, doing untold amounts of damage to East-West relations and forever putting the lie to the idea that "they're only pictures."

That's ten; anyone with access to Google and Wikipedia can get enough material to make a forty-page paper out of it. You're welcome.

[Hintermann]

In November 1928, Walt Disney released his first Mickey Mouse cartoon "Steamboat Willie" at a local theater. The rest is history. :)

Also, looks at these links. There is some useful info there which you might find is historical eg the very first newspaper comic strip and so on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_strip

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/5537/hist.htm

[bunnygrenade]

Um, how did Superman defeat the KKK? In the real world, I mean; I'm sure there have been stories about him fighting racists.




I actually lied about that one. It was a radio show at the time I believe (I was thinking it was a comic) But basicly he somwhere in the 1940's-early 50's this guy infiltrated the KKK and handed over secret codes to the producers of Superman, which resulted in Superman taking on the KKK a couple times.

[joe bloke]

How about Gilbert Dalziel's ALLY SLOPER'S HALF HOLIDAY in 1884? not quite what would be recognised as comics by today's standards, but pretty much widely accepted as the first ever regularly published comic BOOK.

or, even better, 1938's ACTION COMICS # 1. 'Nuff said.

[Agentum]

If we should stick to superheroes i think the birth of Superman is important he started this.
Otherwise the comic code is intresting to talk about, why it was forced upon the publishers and so on.

Superheroes fighting Hitler is not as important of comic histrory i think, if that should be intresting it should be abouit the racial portraits of the enemy in wartime too(the enemy looks like vampires or apes and so on).

And the drug issues of both Marvel and DC, both was important really, the DC one was not first but a lot more controversal and about an leading character.

But this is amrican comic history that is not the only comics in the world, so maybe you should look outside of US to see what has happened too, at least aknowledge that other country do have a comic history as you sometimes can wonder if that is known.

[T GUy]

Jonathan Bogart: Walt Kelly's Pogo was criticizing Senator Joseph McCarthy's Communist witchhunts long before it became politically safe to do so in the 1950s;

I bet there's at least one EC story re McCarthy.

in the later 50s, Mad, both the comic book and the magazine, was a formative influence on an entire generation of comedy, satire, and entertainment

In fact, I think McC may even have been parodied in Mad. It would be worth researching in tandem with this whether EC's war books had any influence on the late-'sixties anti-war movement in the U. S. Also, it's just occurred to me, whether the decline in comics publishing in the 'eighties onwards has led to the shift away from the liberal in U. S. politics.