American Comic Books

An American comic book is a thin periodical originating in the United States, on average 32 pages, containing comics. While the form originated in 1933, American comic books first gained popularity after the 1938 publication of ''Action Comics'', which included the debut of the superhero Superman. This was followed by a superhero boom that lasted until the end of World War II. After the war, while superheroes were marginalized, the comic book industry rapidly expanded and genres such as horror, crime, science fiction and romance became popular. The 1950s saw a gradual decline, due to a shift away from print media in the wake of television and the impact of the Comics Code Authority. The late 1950s and the 1960s saw a superhero revival and superheroes remained the dominant character archetype throughout the late 20th century into the 21st century.

Since 1934 and since 1939 two most comic book publishers of DC Comics and Marvel Comics. DC and Marvel comic book publishers, when, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and many of the company's heroes began appearing in stories together, DC and Marvel characters inhabited a shared continuity that, decades later, was dubbed the "DC Universe" and "Marvel Universe" by fans.

Some fans collect comic books, helping drive up their value. Some have sold for more than 1 million. Comic shops cater to fans, selling comic books, plastic sleeves ("bags") and cardboard backing ("boards") to protect the comic books.

An American comic book is also known as a floppy comic. It is typically thin and stapled, unlike traditional books. American comic books are one of the three major comic book schools globally, along with Japanese manga and the Franco-Belgian comic books.

Format

The typical size and page count of comics have varied over the decades, generally tending toward smaller formats and fewer pages.

Historically, the size was derived from folding one sheet of Quarter Imperial paper (), to print 4 pages which were each . This also meant that the page count had to be some multiple of 4.

In recent decades, standard comics have been about , and usually 32 pages.

The format of the American comic book has been adapted periodically outside the United States, especially in Canada and the United Kingdom.

Creating comics

While comics can be the work of a single creator, the labor of creating them is frequently divided between a number of specialists. There may be a separate writer and artist, or there may be separate artists for the characters and backgrounds.

Particularly in superhero comic books, the art may be divided between:
* a writer, who plots the story and writes the dialogue
* a penciller (usually termed the artist), who, working exclusively in pencils, generally lays out the panel breakdown on the page, and draws the actual artwork in each panel (but layouts may be handled by a separate artist), and who, particularly at Marvel Comics, may also co-plot the storyline
* an inker, working exclusively in ink, who finishes the artwork ready for the printing press.
* a colorist, who adds the color to the pages (but this usually involves preparing four individual separations in cyan, magenta, yellow and black for the CMYK printing process, not a literal application of those colors to the inked pages)
* a letterer, who adds the captions and speech balloons (from the script prepared by the writer).

The process begins with the writer (often in collaboration with one or more others, who may include the editor and/or the penciller) coming up with a story idea or concept, then working it up into a plot and storyline, finalizing it with a script. After the art is prepared, the dialogue and captions are lettered onto the page from the script, and an editor may have the final say (but, once ready for printing, it is difficult and expensive to make any major changes), before the comic is sent to the printer.

The creative team, the writer and artist(s), may work for a comic book publisher who handles the marketing, advertising, and other logistics. A wholesale distributor, such as Diamond Comic Distributors, the largest in the US, distributes the printed product to retailers.

Another aspect of the process involved in successful comics is the interaction between the readers/fans and the creator(s). Fan art and letters to the editor were commonly printed in the back of the book, until, in the early 21st century, various Internet forums started to replace this tradition.

Independent and alternative comics

The growth of comic specialty stores helped permit several waves of independently-produced comics, beginning in the mid-1970s. Some early examples of these – generally referred to as "independent" or "alternative" comics – such as ''Big Apple Comix'', continued somewhat in the tradition of the earlier underground comics, while others, such as '' Star Reach'', resembled the output of mainstream publishers in format and genre but were published by smaller artist-owned ventures or by a single artist.

This so-called "small press" scene (a term derived from the limited quantity of comics printed in each press-run) continued to grow and diversify, with a number of small publishers in the 1990s changing the format and distribution of their comic books to more closely resemble non-comics publishing. The "minicomics" form, an extremely informal version of self-publishing, arose in the 1980s and became increasingly popular among artists in the 1990s, despite reaching an even more limited audience than the small presses.

History

Proto-comic books

The development of the modern American comic book happened in stages. Publishers had collected comic strips in hardcover book form as early as 1842, with '' The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck'', a collection of English-language newspaper inserts originally published in Europe as the 1837 book ''Histoire de M. Vieux Bois'' by Rodolphe Töpffer.

The G. W. Dillingham Company published the first known proto-comic-book magazine in the US, ''The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats'', in 1897. A hardcover book, it reprinted material—primarily the October 18, 1896, to January 10, 1897, sequence titled "McFadden's Row of Flats"—from cartoonist Richard F. Outcault's newspaper comic strip '' Hogan's Alley'', starring the Yellow Kid. The 196-page, square-bound, black-and-white publication, which also includes introductory text by E. W. Townsend, measured and sold for 50 cents. The neologism "comic book" appears on the back cover. Despite the publication of a series of related Hearst comics soon afterward, the first monthly proto-comic book, Embee Distributing Company's ''Comic Monthly'', did not appear until 1922. Produced in an format, it reprinted black-and-white newspaper comic strips and lasted a year.

''The Funnies'' and ''Funnies on Parade''

In 1929, Dell Publishing (founded by George T. Delacorte, Jr.) published ''The Funnies'', described by the Library of Congress as "a short-lived newspaper tabloid insert" and not to be confused with Dell's 1936 comic-book series of the same name. Historian Ron Goulart describes the 16-page, four-color periodical as "more a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic book. But it did offer all original material and was sold on newsstands". ''The Funnies'' ran for 36 issues, published Saturdays through October 16, 1930.

In 1933, salesperson Maxwell Gaines, sales manager Harry I. Wildenberg, and owner George Janosik of the Waterbury, Connecticut, company Eastern Color Printing—which printed, among other things, Sunday-paper comic-strip sections – produced ''Funnies on Parade'' as a way to keep their presses running. Like ''The Funnies'', but only eight pages, this appeared as a newsprint magazine. Rather than using original material, however, it reprinted in color several comic strips licensed from the McNaught Syndicate, the Ledger Syndicate, and the Bell-McClure Syndicate. These included such popular strips as cartoonist Al Smith's ''Mutt and Jeff'', Ham Fisher's '' Joe Palooka'', and Percy Crosby's '' Skippy''. Eastern Color neither sold this periodical nor made it available on newsstands, but rather sent it out free as a promotional item to consumers who mailed in coupons clipped from Procter & Gamble soap and toiletries products. The company printed 10,000 copies. The promotion proved a success, and Eastern Color that year produced similar periodicals for Canada Dry soft drinks, Kinney Shoes, Wheatena cereal and others, with print runs of from 100,000 to 250,000.

''Famous Funnies'' and ''New Fun''

Also in 1933, Gaines and Wildenberg collaborated with Dell to publish the 36-page ''Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics'', which historians consider the first true American comic book; Goulart, for example, calls it "the cornerstone for one of the most lucrative branches of magazine publishing". Distribution took place through the Woolworth's department-store chain, though it remains unclear whether it was sold or given away; the cover displays no price, but Goulart refers, either metaphorically or literally, to "sticking a ten-cent pricetag on the comic books".

When Delacorte declined to continue with ''Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics'', Eastern Color on its own published ''Famous Funnies'' #1 (cover-dated July 1934), a 68-page giant selling for 10¢. Distributed to newsstands by the mammoth American News Company, it proved a hit with readers during the cash-strapped Great Depression, selling 90 percent of its 200,000 print, although putting Eastern Color more than $4,000 in the red. That quickly changed, with the book turning a $30,000 profit each issue starting with #12. ''Famous Funnies'' would eventually run 218 issues, inspire imitators, and largely launch a new mass medium.

When the supply of available existing comic strips began to dwindle, early comic books began to include a small amount of new, original material in comic-strip format. Inevitably, a comic book of all-original material, with no comic-strip reprints, debuted. Fledgling publisher Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications, which would evolve into DC Comics, to release ''New Fun'' #1 (Feb. 1935). This came out as a tabloid-sized, , 36-page magazine with a card-stock, non-glossy cover. An anthology, it mixed humor features such as the funny animal comic "Pelion and Ossa" and the college-set "Jigger and Ginger" with such dramatic fare as the Western strip "Jack Woods" and the " yellow-peril" adventure "Barry O'Neill", featuring a Fu Manchu-styled villain, Fang Gow. Issue #6 (Oct. 1935) brought the comic-book debut of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the future creators of Superman. The two began their careers with the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval", doing the first two installments before turning it over to others and, under the pseudonyms "Leger and Reuths", they created the supernatural-crimefighter adventure Doctor Occult.

Superheroes and the Golden Age

In 1938, after Wheeler-Nicholson's partner Harry Donenfeld had ousted him, National Allied editor Vin Sullivan