The emergence of Comics.

"Life is a comic book, which is a chapter each day and each of us are mere

characters." (Autor Unknown)

1. Introduction to the fundamentals of comics and its various denominations, languages, characters, authors and contexts.

1.1 Initial considerations

The multiple languages addressed in the comics allow a full discussion on the subject. Since its beginnings, the "Ninth Art", as it is called, awakens the imagination and interest of many people in the world. In addition to serving as a source of inspiration and imagination, the comics are embedded in historical contexts according to each age studied.

The interaction between different languages and features a brand is present and constant in human communication process. It is interesting to observe how the comic, a support of extremely visual mass media, in which the images appear static on paper can effect so close to the cinema, for example, an art that works with moving pictures and sounds. Making use of own resources as drawing, lines, colors, texts etc…, Comics, one of the first means of mass communication to globalize even before the movie, can extrapolate the role, thus ensuring the development of narratives extremely agile and very cinematic features, at various times.

Despite his success with children and adults, comics were seen for nearly a century as an art "minor" too popular to be accepted as the "ninth art" by a society with a vision cultural elite (the other eight arts are : music, dance, painting, sculpture, literature, theater, film and photography). In the 60s, however, the emergence of Pop Art that would begin to change. And from the 80s, the advancement of pop culture and the emergence of artists who revolutionized the language of comics, as Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore and Frank Miller, the comic did finally got to be seen with an artistic value equivalent to the other arts.

Before this advance for consideration of comics as an art, they were published in newspapers like little strips, usually humorous theme, which sometimes could criticize or highlight some aspect of political, social or economic. Therefore, until the 1980s the comics were not considered an "art", but more a form of expression of content in major publications daily.

The newspapers then were important drivers of comics, since this medium reaches the most different people in different times and contexts. The comics entertained, instructed, educated and informed, and served as a complement or even as a time of rest after the reader finds the news daily newspapers.

After the newspapers, magazines, the first two comics, around 1840, in the USA. In 1842, the magazine was published "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck," considered the first comic book hardcover published in English. These magazines have revolutionized the genre and began to attract more and more readers to the comic book universe.

Many authors emphasized in the production of these stories, such as Richard Outcault, Pat Sullivan, Hergé, Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Lee Falk, Bob Kane, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster and others. These artists created famous characters that had been marked forever in the minds of people because of their cleverness, cunning, mysteries, thoughts, feelings and even super powers. Characters like Superman, Batman, Felix the Cat, Prince Valiant, Mickey Mouse, Tarzan, Captain America, Green Lantern and other heroes allowed people to imagine that they would resolve conflicts and wars, disagreements, and external threats that could, as in several stories , save the world

Today, we note the major progress that had those magazines and publications that have made multimillion dollar companies, not only producing magazines and comic strips, but also movies and cartoons. How great exponents of these companies, we have Marvel and DC Comics, and the empire assembled and designed by Walt Disney, which includes magazines, comics, movies, cartoons and amusement parks theme.

Finally, we observe that the comics have always been and will be present in people's lives. What is the person who has never opened a newspaper to see the cartoons? Or never bought a comic book that was amused to read? These questions are for children and adults, because the comics are not old, have no contraindications, is for everyone and everything. Reading is a pleasure that humans can and should enjoy, and provide reading of comics culture, comedy and produce and rational thinking beings, so can question and envision a better world for this and future generations.

1.2 Presentation of the systematic content.

Different denominatios of comics;

The early creators and the first comic books;

The different eras of comics.

2. Development of systematic content.

2.1 Different denominations of comics .

The Comic books have gained, over time, different denominations and strands assigned by authors or by scholars of the subject. Listed below are some denominations of comics and the definition of own comic strip (HQ). Besides these, we see the name of comics in different countries.

Comics (HQs): the comics are narratives told in comics, drawn one after the other, creating a sequence of actions and hence a story, with a beginning, middle and end. The teacher and cartoonist Will Eisner defined so the comics: "... is the sequential art by various elaborate designs in a logical sequence.” These narratives drawn in sequence usually present in the horizontal direction and are usually accompanied by short texts dialog and some descriptions of the situation, conventionally presented within figures called "balloons".

The term "sequential art" (translated from the original sequential art), created by comic artist Will Eisner in order to define "the arrangement of pictures or images and words to narrate a story or dramatize an idea", is commonly used to define the language used in this form of representation.

It is an art form that combines text and images in order to tell stories from many different genres and styles.

Cartoons: a cartoon, cartune or cartun (in Portuguese) is a humorous drawing with or without subtitles. It is an extremely critical, portraying quite synthesized something that involves the day-to-day society.

The term is of British origin and was first used in this context in the 1840s, when the magazine "Punch" published a series of cartoons that parodied studies for the frescoes of the Palace of Westminster, adapted to satirize the contemporary political events. The original meaning of the word cartoon is the same "study" or "outline", and is widely used in the arts.

This type of design is still considered a form of comedy and keeps your space in the press today.

Charges: charge is a style of illustration that aims to satirize through a cartoon, a current event with one or more characters involved. The word is of French origin and means load and exaggerated character traits of someone or something to make it burlesque. Widely used in critical policies in Brazil. Despite being confused with cartoon (or “cartun” in portuguese), which is a word of English origin, unlike the charge, which is always a scathing critique linked to temporality, the cartoon depicts situations most mundane day-to-day society. More than just a drawing, the charge is a critical social-political graphically where the artist expresses his views on certain everyday situations through humor and satire. To understand a charge, does not necessarily need to be an educated person, just being inside of what happens around you. The charge has a greater range than an editorial, for example, so the charge as design critic, is feared by the powerful. No wonder that when establishing censorship in any country, the charge is the first target of censors below.

The term comes from the French “charger” and it means exaggeration, or even violent attack (cavalry charge). This means here is a pictographic representation of character, as it says in the first paragraph; burlesque and caricatures. It's a cartoon that satirizes certain fact, as an idea, event, person or situation, mainly involving cases of a political nature that is public knowledge.

The cartoons were created in the early nineteenth century by people opposed to governments or political critics who wanted to express themselves never displayed, unusual. Were repressed by governments (mainly empires), but gained great popularity with the people, a fact that led to its existence until the times of today.

Comics:  is an expression of English origin which can be translated as "comical" and designating the comics (HQs) produced in the United States.

This is explained by the fact that, originally, in that country the "comics" brought only comedy in its storylines. However, nowadays they deal with different genres like action and romance. The word is used in the United States to describe any story into squares, but speaking countries is most often used when referring to American stories and his characteristic style of drawing. "Comics" are usually colorful and rich in detail.

Comic Books: are publications that bring comics, known in Brazil as "gibis" or "revistas de histórias em quadrinhos" Are usually small magazines that since 1975 had its format standardized in size 17 x 26 cm (in Brazil called the "American format", because the dimensions of the most popular magazines in the country were smaller, due to this called "formatinho"). In the past the magazines had larger dimensions. A comic book equivalent to half tabloid.

The "comic books" began circulating around 1934, with the United States leading publications. Other countries in which these magazines

reached many readers were the UK (during the interwar period and up to the 1970s) and Japan (which are popularly known as manga).

Bandes Dessinées : French designation for comics.

Fumetti:  is the name by which the comics are known in Italy.

Fumetti refers to the smoke, in reference to the aspect of balloons used to display dialogs, which look like smoke coming out of the mouths of characters. In Italy, the most common is that comics are conveyed in popular magazines, paper thin and small format and sold at newsstands, as in Brazil.

Historietas: is the designation of comics in Spanish America.

Mangas: is the word used to designate the comics made in the Japanese style. In Japan, the term designates any comics. Its origin is in Oricom Shohatsu (Shadow Theatre), which at the time ran various feudal villages telling tales through puppetry. These legends were eventually written on scrolls and illustrated, giving rise to stories in sequence, and consequently resulting in the manga. Give rise to various manga anime for television viewing, video or cinema, but there is also the reverse process in which the anime they become a print edition story in sequence or illustrations.

Tabeó: is the Spanish name for the comics.

Graphic Novels: A graphic novel is a kind of book, usually telling a story through long sequential art (comics), and is often used to define the subjective distinctions between books and other of comics.

The term is generally used to refer to any form of Manga or comic of long term, that is, the analogous sequence in the art or a novel prose. Can be applied to jobs that have been previously published comic journals, or works produced specifically for publication in book form. A graphic novel need not be geared for adult audiences, sometimes it is only necessary to have a good structure and visible philosophical level (ex: The Saga of Uncle Scrooge).

The definition of "graphic novel" was popularized by Will Eisner after appearing on the cover of his book A Contract with God (“Um contrato com Deus”), job mature and complex, focused on the lives of ordinary people in the real world. The stamp "graphic novel" was placed on the intention to distinguish it from the traditional comic book format. Eisner cited as inspiration books Lynd Ward, which produced complete novels in woodcut. The commercial success of A Contract with God helped

to stabilize the term "graphic novel", and many sources erroneously credited Eisner being the first to use it (in fact, it was Richard Kile who originally used the term in some publications of the 1960s .)

The original meaning of the term was applied to closed stories. In recent years the term has been used of synonymously to trade paperback (bound editions shaped history books serialized in magazines).

Other similar work that preceded the emergence of the term were albums franco-belgian Tintin, Asterix and Spirou, quite popular since the 1960s, the term is used synonymously album by the specialized media, both graphic novel, how to trade paperback.

2.2 The early creators …

The comics appeared inventive and creative minds in the mid-nineteenth century. Believe that have arisen in the United States and is known throughout the world. Listed below are the top names of comics and their works, as well as the first comic books.

Richard Felton Outcault:  was an American comic strip writer-artist. He was the creator of the series The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown, and he is considered the inventor of the modern comic strip.

Officially in most of the world, the character Yellow Kid by Richard Felton Outcault is considered the first comic book character to your art format designed and printed as is known in our times. But there precursors and works that discuss this fact.  Created and drawn in the comic strip Hogan's Alley (and later under other names as well), it was one of the first Sunday supplement comic strips in an American newspaper, although its graphical layout had already been thoroughly established in political and other, purely-for-entertainment cartoons. The Yellow Kid is also famous for its connection to the coining of the term Yellow Journalism.

Mickey Dugan, better known as The Yellow Kid, was a bald, snaggle-toothed boy who wore an oversized yellow nightshirt and hung around in a slum alley typical of certain areas of squalor that existed in early 20th-century New York City. Hogan's Alley was filled with equally odd characters, mostly other children. With a goofy grin, the Kid habitually spoke in a ragged, peculiar slang, which was printed on his shirt, a device meant to lampoon advertising billboards.

The character who would later become the Yellow Kid, first appeared on the scene in a minor supporting role in cartoon panel published in Truth magazine in 1894 and 1895. The four different black-and-white, single panel cartoons were deemed popular and, one of them, Fourth Ward Brownies, was reprinted on 17 February 1895 in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, where Outcault worked as a technical drawing

artist. The World published another, but new, Hogan's Alley cartoon less than a month later, and this was followed by the strip's first color printing on 5 May 1895.[4] Hogan's Alley gradually became a full-page Sunday color cartoon with the Yellow Kid as its lead character, which was also appearing several times a week

Although a cartoon, the humor and social commentary in Outcault's work was aimed at Pulitzer's adult readership.

The Yellow Kid's head was drawn wholly shaved as if having been recently ridden of lice, a common sight among children in New York's tenement ghettos at the time. His nightshirt, a hand-me-down from an older sister, was white or pale blue in the first color strips.[6]

The strip has been described as "... a turn-of-the-century theater of the city, in which class and racial tensions of the new urban, consumerist environment were acted out by a mischievous group of New York City kids from the wrong side of the tracks." The yellow kid was also a suitable character.

Maxwell Charles Gaines: was a pioneering figure in the creation of the modern comic book. Born Maxwell Ginsburg or Maxwell Ginzberg, he was also known as Max Gaines, M.C. Gaines and Charlie Gaines.

In 1933, Gaines devised the first four-color, saddle-stitched newsprint pamphlet, a precursor to the color-comics format that became the standard for the American comic book industry. He was co-publisher of All-American Publications, a seminal comic-book company that introduced such enduring fictional characters as Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Hawkman. He went on to found Educational Comics, producing the series Picture Stories from the Bible. He authored one of the earliest essays on comic books, a 1942 pamphlet titled Narrative Illustration, The Story of the Comics.

After Max Gaines' death, Educational Comics was taken over by his son Bill Gaines, who transformed the company (now known as EC Comics) into a pioneer of horror, science fiction and satirical comics.

Rudolph Dirks:  was one of the earliest and most noted comic strip artists, well-known for The Katzenjammer Kids (later known as “The Captain and the Kids”).

Dirks was born in Heide, Germany to Johannes and Margaretha Dirks. When he was seven years old, his father, a woodcarver, moved the family to Chicago, Illinois. After having sold various cartoons to local magazines Rudolph moved to New York City and found work as a cartoonist. His younger brother Gus soon followed his brother's example. He held several jobs as an illustrator, culminating in a position with William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal.

The circulation war between the Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World was raging. The World had a huge success with the full-color Sunday feature, Down in Hogan's Alley, better known as the Yellow Kid, starting in 1895. Editor Rudolph Block asked Dirks to develop a Sunday comic based on Wilhelm Busch's cautionary tale, Max und Moritz. When Dirks submitted his sketches, Block dubbed them The Katzenjammer Kids, and the first strip appeared on December 12, 1897. Gus Dirks assisted his brother with The Katzenjammer Kids during the first few years, until his suicide on June 10, 1902.

Dirks took time off from his Journal work to serve his country in the Spanish-American War and on other occasions. In 1912, he requested a year's leave to tour Europe with his wife. The request led to a rupture with the Journal. After a lengthy and notorious legal battle, the federal courts ruled that Dirks had the right to continue to draw his characters for a rival newspaper chain but that the Journal retained the right to the title The Katzenjammer Kids. Dirks thereupon began drawing a comic strip titled Hans and Fritz for the World, beginning in 1914. Anti-German sentiment during World War I led to the strip being renamed The Captain and the Kids. The Journal chose H. H. Knerr to continue The Katzenjammer Kids, and he and his successors have carried it on to the present day. The Captain and the Kids was distributed by United Feature Syndicate while King Features Syndicate handled The Katzenjammer Kids.

The success of The Katzenjammer Kids was due to more than just lucky circumstances. Dirks was a very gifted cartoonist with superb timing and a colorful gallery of different characters, including Hans and Fritz, Der Captain, Der Inspector and Mama. In the mid-1950s, a romantic swindler named Fineas Flub was introduced to the strip. Characters such as Rollo never appeared in Dirks' version of the strip.

Jerry Siegel:  was the American co-creator of Superman (along with Joe Shuster), the first of the great comic book superheroes and one of the most recognizable of the 20th century.

He was inducted (with Shuster posthumously) into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993.

Siegel was a fan of movies, comic strips, and especially science fiction pulp magazines. He became active in what would become known as fandom, corresponding with other science fiction fans, including the young future author Jack Williamson. In 1929, Siegel published what might have been the first SF fanzine, Cosmic Stories, which he produced with a manual typewriter and advertised in the classified section of Science Wonder Stories. He published several other booklets over the next few years.

Siegel attended Glenville High School in Cleveland, Ohio and worked for its weekly student newspaper, The Torch. He was a shy, not particularly popular student, but he achieved a bit of fame among his peers

for his popular Tarzan parody, "Goober the Mighty." At about age 16, while at Glenville, he befriended his later collaborator, Joe Shuster. Siegel described his friendship with the similarly shy and bespectacled Shuster: "When Joe and I first met, it was like the right chemicals coming together."[1]

The writer-artist team broke into comics with Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's landmark New Fun, debuting with the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval" and the supernatural-crimefighter strip Doctor Occult in issue #6 (Oct. 1935).

Joe Shuster : was a Canadian cartoonist who, together with Jerome Siegel, created in the 1930s, the famous character Superman.

Shuster was born in Toronto and moved to Cleveland for nine years in the United States. Fascinated by history in Comic Little Nemo and science fiction magazines, began designing rockets and interplanetary spacecraft. Still young, he published his first strip in the school newspaper.

Between 1932 and 1933 he edited and published his own fanzine science fiction, Science Fiction, and at age 17, she met Jerry Siegel, with whom he had a long partnership. After a few years, by 1938, the pair created Superman, one of the most famous character of Comics.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Shuster drew Comics erotic, with some characters that resembled his most famous creations, Superman and his eternal girlfriend, Lois Lane.

Stan Lee : is an American comic book writer, editor, publisher, media producer, television host, actor, voice actor and former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

In collaboration with several artists, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and many other fictional characters, introducing complex, naturalistic  characters and a thoroughly  shared universe into superhero comic books. In addition, he headed the first major successful challenge to the industry's censorship organization, the Comics Code Authority, and forced it to reform its policies. Lee subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

He was inducted into the comic book industry's The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995.

Jack Kirby : was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium.

Growing up poor in New York City, Kurtzberg entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s. He drew various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby, generally teamed with Simon, created numerous characters for that company and for National Comics, the company that later became DC Comics.

After serving in World War II, Kirby returned to comics and worked in a variety of genres. He produced work for a number of publishers, including DC, Harvey Comics, Hillman Periodicals and Crestwood Publications, where he and Simon created the genre of romance comics. He and Simon also launched their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications. Kirby ultimately found himself at Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, soon to become Marvel. There, in the 1960s, he and writer-editor Stan Lee co-created many of Marvel's major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk. Despite the high sales and critical acclaim of the Lee-Kirby titles, however, Kirby felt treated unfairly, and left the company in 1970 for rival DC.

Alex Raymond : was an American cartoonist, best known for creating Flash Gordon for King Features in 1934. The strip was subsequently adapted into many other media, from a series of movie serials (1936–1940) to a 1970s television series and a 1980 film.

Raymond's father encouraged his love of drawing from an early age, leading him to become an assistant illustrator in the early 1930s on strips such as Tillie the Toiler and Tim Tyler's Luck. Towards the end of 1933, Raymond created the epic Flash Gordon science-fiction comic strip to compete with the popular Buck Rogers comic strip and, before long, Flash was the more popular strip of the two. Raymond also worked on the jungle adventure saga Jungle Jim and spy adventure Secret Agent X-9 concurrently with Flash, though his increasing workload caused him to leave Secret Agent X-9 to another artist by 1935. He left the strips in 1944 to join the Marines, saw combat in the Pacific Ocean Theater in 1945 and was demobilized in 1946. Upon his return from serving during World War II, Raymond created and illustrated the much-heralded Rip Kirby, a private detective comic strip. In 1956, Raymond was killed in a car crash at the age of 46; he was survived by his wife and five children.

Alan Moore:  is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced series including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell. Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history, he has also been described as "one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years". He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon.

Moore started out writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by the American DC Comics, and as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", he worked on big name characters such as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?), substantially developed the character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for the medium in the United States and United Kingdom. He prefers the term "comic" to "graphic novel."  In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic From Hell, the pornographic Lost Girls, and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the occult-based Promethea.

Bob Kane:  was an American comic book artist and writer, credited as the creator of the DC Comics superhero Batman, along with Bill Finger. He was inducted into both the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1996.

He entered the comics field two years later, in 1936, freelancing original material to editor Jerry Iger's comic book Wow, What A Magazine!, including his first pencil and ink work on the serial Hiram Hick. The following year, Kane began to work at Iger's subsequent studio, Eisner & Iger, which was one of the first comic book "packagers" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium during its late-1930s and 1940s Golden Age. Among his work there was the funny animal feature "Peter Pupp" (which belied its look with overtones of "mystery and menace"), published in the U.K. comic magazine Wags and later reprinted in Fiction House's Jumbo comics. Kane also produced work through Eisner & Iger for two of the companies that would later merge to form DC Comics, including the humor features "Ginger Snap" in More Fun Comics, "Oscar the Gumshoe" for Detective Comics, and "Professor Doolittle" for Adventure Comics. For that last title he went on to do his first adventure strip, "Rusty and his Pals".

Winsor McCay :  was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo (1905–14; 1924–26) and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.

Since a young age, McCay was a prolific, technically dextrous artist. He began as a professional by making posters and performing for dime museums, and began illustrating newspapers and magazines in 1898. He

joined the New York Herald in 1903, where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905, his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted, a work which demonstrated McCay's mastery of color and perspective. At the same time, McCay was doing chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit. Between 1911 and 1921 he produced ten animated films; these included Gertie the Dinosuar, which he used as an interactive part of his vaudeville act. McCay joined William Randolph Hearst's chain of newspapers in 1911, after which his comic strip, vaudeville and animation work was gradually curtailed as Hearst expected him to devote his energies to editorial cartooning.

The technical level of McCay's animation was not matched until Walt Disney's feature films arrived in the 1930s. He pioneered inbetweening, the use of registration marks, cycling, and other animation techniques that became standard. His comic strip work has influenced generations of artists, including William Joyce, André LeBlanc, Moebius, Maurice Sendak, Chris Ware and Bill Watterson.

Will Eisner : was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in Eisner's honor, and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Robert Crumb: is an American cartoonist and musician. His work displays nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and sharp satire of contemporary American culture. His work has attracted controversy, especially for his depiction of women and racial minorites.

Crumb first rose to prominence after the 1968 debut of Zap Comix, which was the first successful publication of the underground comix era. Countercultural characters such as Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural, and the images from his Keep on Truckin' strip were among his popular creations. Following the decline of the underground, he moved towards biographical and autobiographical subjects, while refining his drawing style, a heavily crosshatched pen-and-ink style inspired by late 19th– and early 20th-century cartooning. Much of his work appeared in a magazine he founded, Weirdo (1981–1993), which was one of the most prominent publications of the alternative comics era. He is married to cartoonist Aline Kominsky-Crumb, with whom he has frequently collaborated.

In 1991, Crumb was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Neil Gaiman: is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Newbery Medal, and Carnegie Medal. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008).

Hal Foster: was a Canadian—American illustrator best known as the creator of the comic strip Prince Valiant. His drawing style is noted for a high level of draftsmanship and attention to detail.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Foster moved to the United States in 1919. In 1929, he began one of the earliest adventure comic strips, an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan. In 1937, he created his signature strip, the weekly Prince Valiant, a fantasy adventure set in mediaeval times. The strip featured Foster's dextrous, detailed artwork; Foster eschewed word balloons, preferring to have narration and dialogue in captions.

Hergé:  was a Belgian comic book writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983. Also responsible for two other well-known series, Quick & Flupke (1930–1940) and Jo, Zette and Jocko (1936–1957), his works were executed in his distinct ligne claire drawing style.

Born to a lower-middle-class family in Etterbeek, Brussels, Hergé took a keen interest in Scouting, producing both illustrations and the Totor series for Scouting and Catholic magazines. In 1925 he started work for conservative newspaper Le XXe Siècle, where under the influence of Norbert Wallez, in 1929 he began serialising the first of his stories to feature boy reporter Tintin, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Domestically successful, he continued with further Adventures of Tintin and the Quick & Flupke series at the paper, but from The Blue Lotus onward placed a far greater emphasis on background research. After Le XXe Sièclewas closed during the occupation by Nazi Germany, Hergé continued work for Le Soir; after liberation, he faced accusations of being a collaborator, but was exonerated, and proceeded to oversee the creation of Tintin magazine, through which he remained artistic director over Studio Hergé until his death.

Hergé's works have been widely acclaimed for their clarity of draughtsmanship and meticulous, well-researched plots, and have been the source of a wide range of adaptations. Remaining a strong influence on the comic book medium, particularly in Europe, he is a prominent national symbol in his native country, to the extent where he has been described as

the "personification of Belgium". Since 2009, a Hergé Museum has been open in Louvain-La-Neuve.

Ângelo Agostini :  was an illustrator, journalist and founder of several publications, and although born in Italy, is considered the first Brazilian cartoonist.

Agostini was born in Vercelli, Italy, but following adolescence and art studies in Paris, he arrived in Brazil in 1859 with his mother the singer Raquel Agostini, and settled.

At an early age he published drawn work in the São Paulo publication Diabo Coxo on September 17, of 1864. Following more work published in Cabrião and Revista Arlequim, Agostini produced a sequential image story serialised in Vida Fluminense titled As Aventuras de Nhô Quim (The Adventures of Nhô Quim). The first chapter published on January 30, 1869, the story involved themes of conflict between the agricultural and urban culture, and political commentary through visual storytelling capable of reaching a largely illiterate population.

During the 1880s Agostini started the periodical Revista Ilustrada, which became noted for its illustrated coverage of the annual Carnival. On January 27, 1883, the first chapter of As Aventuras do Zé Caipora (The Adventures of Zé Caipora) was published, starting a successful publication run of 35 episodes spread out over many years. Achieving a multimedia impact, the series was printed in four editions, and inspired a popular song and two silent films.

Agostini established the magazine Don Quixote in 1895, which lasted until 1906, and with Luiz Bartolomeu de Sousa e Silva founded the influential youth magazine O Tico Tico in 1905 where the tales of Zé Caipora were continued. During his final years he worked for the magazine O Malho, until his death in 1910.

Lee Falk: was an American writer, theater director and producer, best known as the creator of the popular comic strips The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. At the height of their popularity, these strips attracted over 100 million readers every day. Falk also wrote short stories and he contributed to a series of pulp novels about The Phantom.

A playwright and theatrical director/producer, Falk directed actors such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Chico Marx and Ethel Waters.

Frank Miller :  is an American writer, artist, and film director best known for his dark, film noir-style comic book stories and graphic novels such as Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and 300. He also directed the film version of The Spirit, shared

directing duties with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and produced the film 300.

Charles Schulz: was an American cartoonist, creator of the serie Peanuts and the characters Charlie Brown and his dog beagle named Snoopy, among others.

He began the series of drawings of Snoopy (Peanuts) on October 2, 1950 and drew more than 50 years until retiring due to his illness on December 14, 1999. Schulz died on February 12, 2000, victim of a heart attack at 21.45, with 77 years. His last strip was published the day after, February 13, a strip in which he said goodbye to their fans and their beloved characters.

Schulz's drawings were first published by Robert Ripley in his column Ripley's Believe It or Not! His first regular comic strip, Li’l Folks, was published between 1947 and 1949 by St. Paul Pioneer Press. This vignette also had a dog in appearance very similar to Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold his story to the Saturday Evening Post.

Still in 1948, Schulz tried to market the Li'l Folks to Newspaper Enterprise Association. The following year, Schulz joined the United Features Syndicate with his best comic strip Li'l Folks.

His characters had great success because depicted everyday life and every one of your characters hiding behind a message.

On June 28, 1996, he received a star on the Walk of Fame Hollywood.

Don Heck :  was an American comic book artist best known for co-creating the Marvel Comics character Iron Man, and for his long run penciling the Marvel superhero-team series The Avengers during the 1960s Silver Age of comic books.

New Yorker artist (born in Queens) and one of the "founding fathers" of the called Marvel Universe. He began his career in 1949 as editor Harvey. But only since 1963, working for the superheroes of Marvel that started getting popular (his name appears in the end credits of the end of the cartoon TV - the "Marvel Club" in Brazil - in 1966). In fact, he worked for that publisher since September 1954 but at the time, she was called Atlas Comics and had a different line of comics.

Alongside Stan Lee and Larry Lieber, created to Marvel the look for the "Iron Man". Also in the editor, worked on "The Avengers," "Thor," "Captain Marvel", "X-Men", "Spider-Man" (here as inker) etc.. During his tenure at Marvel, drew attention by drawing beautiful women, earning him an invitation from rival DC to work on "Wonder Woman," "Batgirl," "The Flash" and others. Also quadrinized TV series for Dell / Western (as "Agent from U.N.C.L.E" and "Voyage to the bottom of the sea").

Heck also worked for comics published in newspapers, being assistant Sy Barry strips daily (black and white) "The Phantom". Episodes and precise dates have not yet been possible to identify. Some say it was between 1966-71, during which Heck was taking turns with George Olesen and some more "ghost" Barry. A more precise date was provided by Norwegian researcher Jostein Hansen: according to him, would have done the Heck daily "Ghost" from 1972-73.

Quino: Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known by his pen name Quino (born 17 July 1932) is an Argentine cartoonist. His comic strip Mafalda (which ran from 1964 to 1973) is very popular in Latin America and many parts of Europe.

Quino's daily newspaper strip Mafalda was his most successful cartooning venture. Mafalda ran from 1964 to 1973. The comic was translated into more than 30 languages. However, it never received much of an audience in the English-speaking world, perhaps because, as Quino put it, the strip was "too Latin American." In 1976, the character Mafalda was chosen by UNICEF to be a spokesperson for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Mafalda is still translated in book collections. Argentine director Daniel Mallo translated 260 Mafalda strips into 90-second cartoons that aired in Argentina, starting in 1972.

Dik Browne: he was a popular cartoonist, best known for writing and drawing Hägar the Horrible and for drawing Hi and Lois.

Browne attended Cooper Union and got his start at the New York Journal American as a copy boy and later worked in the art department. He joined the army, producing work for the engineering unit and created Jinny Jeep, a comic strip about the Women's Army Corps.[1]

In the 1940s, he worked as an illustrator for Newsweek as well as for an advertising company, where he created the trademark logo for Chiquita.

In 1954, Browne and cartoonist Mort Walker co-created the comic strip Hi and Lois, a spin-off of Walker's popular Beetle Bailey strip, featuring Beetle's sister, brother-in-law and their family. Walker wrote the strip, which Browne illustrated until his death. The series is now drawn by his son Chance and written by Walker's sons. In 1973, Browne created Hägar the Horrible about an ill-mannered red-bearded medieval viking. The comic is now produced by his son Chris. Both strips have been successful, appearing in hundreds of newspapers for decades.

2.3 …And the first comic books.

After newspapers, comic books began to be published in specific journals that were very successful and across generations, attracting fans and readers worldwide. It is no coincidence that today's comics can be a

tool for the dissemination of ideas mass more comprehensive and culturally more advanced than other forms of dissemination. Below are listed the first magazine of comics that has news.

“The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck”: Histoire de M. Vieux Bois, published in English as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, and also known as Les amours de Mr. Vieux Bois or simply Monsieur Vieuxbois, is a 19th-century publication written and illustrated by the Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer. Published first in Europe as Histoire de M. Vieux Bois, and then in the  United States as a newspaper supplement, The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, it is sometimes said to be the first comic book.

The format consists of sequential pictures with captions, rather than utilizing the staple of word-balloons, a convention that would later be developed in newspaper comic strips. In Understanding Comics, comics theorist Scott McCloud says Töpffer's work is in many ways "the father of the modern comic." McCloud emphasizes Töpffer's use of "cartooning and panel borders" along with "the first interdependent combination of words and pictures seen in Europe." [3]

Töpffer described comics as a medium appealing particularly to children and the lower classes and this is evident in the style of the work. It is notable that the story was never intended for publication but rather as an idle "diversion" for his close friends; however, the story achieved widespread popularity in the United States and its original France.

Töpffer used a method called autography, in which the pen draws on specially prepared paper, allowing a freer line than the engraving of the time.

“The Yelow Kid” (“Hogan’s Alley”): The Yellow Kid was the name of a lead comic strip character that ran from 1895 to 1898 in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, and later William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal.

The Yellow Kid's image was an early example of lucrative merchandising and appeared on mass market retail objects in the greater New York City area such as "billboards, buttons, cigarette packs, cigars, cracker tins, ladies’ fans, matchbooks, postcards, chewing gum cards, toys, whiskey and many other products".

In 1896 Outcault was hired away at a much higher salary to William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal American where he drew the Yellow Kid in a new full-page color strip which was significantly violent and even vulgar compared to his first panels for Truth magazine. Pulitzer, who had retained the copyright to Hogan's Alley, hired George Luks to continue drawing the original (and now less popular) version of the strip for the World and hence the Yellow Kid appeared simultaneously in two

competing papers for about a year. Outcault produced three subsequent series of Yellow Kid strips at the Journal American, each lasting no more than four months:

McFadden’s Row of Flats (18 October 1896 – 10 January 1897) Around the World with the Yellow Kid - a strip that sent the Kid on a

world tour in the manner of Nellie Bly (17 January - 30 May 1897) A half-page strip which eventually adopted the title Ryan’s Arcade (28

September 1897 – 23 January 1898).

With the Yellow Kid's merchandising success as an advertising icon the strip came to represent the crass commercial world it had originally lampooned, and publication of both versions stopped abruptly after only three years in early 1898, as circulation wars between the rival papers dwindled. Moreover, Outcault may have lost interest in the character when he realized he couldn't retain exclusive commercial control over it. The Yellow Kid's last appearance is most often noted as 23 January 1898 in a strip about hair tonic. On 1 May 1898, the character was featured in a rather satirical cartoon called Casey Corner Kids Dime Museum but he was drawn ironically, as a bearded, balding old man wearing a green nightshirt which bore the words: "Gosh I've growed old in making dis collection."

The two newspapers which ran the Yellow Kid, Pulitzer's World and Hearst's Journal American, quickly became known as the yellow kid papers. This was contracted to the yellow papers and the term yellow kid journalism was at last shortened to yellow journalism, describing the two newspapers' editorial practices of taking (sometimes even fictionalized) sensationalism and profit as priorities in journalism.

The Yellow Kid appeared now and then in Outcault's later cartoon strips, most notably Buster Brown.

Outcault's word balloons in the Yellow Kid influenced the basic appearance and use of balloons in subsequent newspaper comic strips and comic books. Word balloons containing characters' speech had appeared in political cartoons since at least the 18th century, including some published by Benjamin Franklin. Their origins can be traced back to speech scrolls, painted ribbons of paper which trailed from the mouths of speaking subjects, depicting their words. These were in common European use by the early 16th century and similar devices had appeared in Mayan art between 600 and 900 AD.

“The Funnies”:  was the name of two American publications from Dell Publishing, the first of these a seminal, 1920s precursor of comic books, and the second a standard 1930s comic book.

In 1929, George T. Delacorte Jr.'s Dell Publishing, founded eight years earlier, began publishing The Funnies, described by the Library of Congress as "a short-lived newspaper tabloid insert". Comics historian Ron Goulart describes the 16-page, four-color, newsprint 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 magazine ran 36 weekly issues, published Saturdays from January 16, 1929, to October 16, 1930. The cover price rose from 10¢ to 30¢ with issue #3. This was reduced to a nickel from issue #22 to the end.

The Funnies  helped lay the groundwork for two subsequent publications in 1933: Eastern Color Printing's similar proto-comic book, the eight-page newsprint tabloid Funnies on Parade, and the Eastern Color / Dell collaboration Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, considered by historians the first true American comic book.

“Funnies on Parade”:  is an American publication of 1933 that was a precursor of comic books.

The creation of the modern American comic book  came in stages. Dell Publishing in 1929 published a 16-page, newsprint periodical of original, comic strip-styled material titled The Funnies and described by the Library of Congress as "a short-lived newspaper tabloid insert". (This is not to be confused with Dell's later same-name comic book, which began publication in 1936.) Historian Ron Goulart describes the four-color, newsstand periodical as "more a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic book".

In 1933, salesperson Maxwell Gaines, sales manager Harry I. Wildenberg, and owner George Janosik of the Waterbury, Connecticut, company Eastern Color Printing — which among other things printed Sunday-paper comic-strip sections — produced Funnies on Parade. Like The Funnies but only eight pages this, too, was a newsprint magazine. Rather than using original material, however, it reprinted in color several comic strips licenced from the McNaught Syndicate and the McClure Syndicate. These included such highly popular strips as cartoonist Al Smith's Mutt and Jeff, Ham Fisher's Joe Palooka, and Percy Crosby's Skippy. This periodical, however, was neither sold nor available on newsstands, but rather sent free as a promotional item to consumers who mailed in coupons clipped from Procter & Gamble soap and toiletries products. Ten-thousand copies were made. 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.

“New Fun”( “The Big Comic Magazine” or “New Fun Comics”): was a 1935-1947 American comic book anthology that introduced several major superhero characters and was the first American comic-book series to feature solely original material rather than reprints of newspaper comic strips. It was also the first publication of the company that would become DC Comics.

In the fall of 1934, having seen the emergence of Famous Funnies and other oversize magazines reprinting comic strips, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications and published New Fun #1 (Feb. 1935). A tabloid-sized, 10-inch by 15-inch, 36-page magazine with a card-stock, non-glossy cover, it was an anthology of humor features, such as the funny animal comic "Pelion and Ossa" and the college-set "Jigger and Ginger", mixed 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.

Most significantly, however, whereas some of the existing publications had eventually included a small amount of original material, generally as filler, New Fun#1 was the first comic book containing all-original material.

The first four issues were edited by future Funnies Inc. founder Lloyd Jacquet, the next by Wheeler-Nicholson himself. Issue #6 (Oct. 1935) brought the comic-book debuts of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the future creators of Superman, who 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", the supernatural adventurer Doctor Occult. They would remain on the latter title through issue #32 (June 1938), following the magazine's retitling as More Fun (issues #7-8, Jan.-Feb. 1936), and More Fun Comics (#9-on).

In issue #101 (Jan.-Feb. 1945), Siegel and Shuster introduced Superboy, a teenage version of Superman, in a new feature chronicling the adventures of the Man of Steel when he was a boy growing up in the rural Midwestern United States.

With issue #108 (March 1946), all the superhero features were moved from More Fun into Adventure Comics. More Fun became a humor title that spotlighted the children's fantasy feature "Jimminy and the Magic Book". The book was canceled with issue #127 (Nov.-Dec 1947).

“Punch” or “The London Charivari ”:  was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration. It became a British institution, but after the 1940s, when its circulation peaked, it went into a long decline, finally closing in 1992. It was revived in 1996, but closed again in 2002.

Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells, on an initial investment of £25. It was jointly edited by Mayhew and Mark Lemon. Initially it was subtitled The London Charivari in homage to Charles Philipon's earlier French satirical humour magazine Le Charivari. Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet,

Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy; the name also referred to a joke made early on about one of the magazine's first editors, Lemon, that "punch is nothing without lemon". Mayhew ceased to be joint editor in 1842 and became "suggestor in chief" until he severed his connection in 1845. The magazine initially struggled for readers, except for an 1842 "Almanack" issue which shocked its creators by selling 90,000 copies. In December 1842 due to financial difficulties the magazine was sold to Bradbury and Evans, both printers and publishers. Bradbury and Evans capitalised on newly evolving mass printing technologies and also were the publishers for Charles Dickens and Thackeray.

The term "cartoon" to refer to comic drawings was first used in Punch in 1843; the Houses of Parliament were to be decorated with murals, and "carttons" for the mural were displayed for the public; the term "cartoon" then meant a finished preliminary sketch on a large piece of cardboard, or cartone in Italian. Punch humorously approriated the term to refer to its political cartoons and the popularity of the Punch cartoons led to the terms widespread use.

The illustrator Archibald Henning designed the cover of the magazine's first issues. The cover design varied in the early years, though Richard Doyle designed what became the magazine's masthead in 1849. Artists who published in Punch during the 1840s and 50s included John Leech, Richard Doyle, John Tenniel and Charles Keene. This group became known as "The Punch Brotherhood", which also included Charles Dickens who joined Bradbury and Evans after leaving Chapman and Hall in 1843. Punch authors and artists also contributed to another Bradbury and Evans literary magazine called Once A Week (est.1859), created in response to Dickens' departure from Household Words.

In the 1860s and 1870s, conservative Punch faced competition from upstart liberal journal Fun, but after about 1874, Fun's fortunes faded. At Evans's café in London, the two journals had "Round tables" in competition with each other.

After months of financial difficulty and lack of market success, Punch became a staple for British drawing rooms because of its sophisticated humour and absence of offensive material, especially when viewed against the satirical press of the time. The Time sand the Sunday paper News of the World used small pieces from Punch as column fillers, giving the magazine free publicity and indirectly granting a degree of respectability, a privilege not enjoyed by any other comic publication. Punch would share a friendly relationship with not only The Times but journals aimed at intellectual audiences such as the Westminster Review, which published a fifty-three page illustrated article on Punch's first two volumes. Historian Richard Altick writes that "To judge from the number of references to it in the private letters and memoirs of the 1840s...Punch had become a household word within a year or two of its founding, beginning in the middle class and soon reaching the pinnacle of society, royalty itself".[5]

Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder of the 1840s and 1850s, Punch was the success story of athreepenny weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals. Punch enjoyed an audience including: Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Edward FitzGerald, Charlotte Brontë, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell. Punch gave several phrases to the English language, including The Crystal Palace, and the "Curate's egg" (first seen in an 1895 cartoon). Several British humour classics were first serialised in Punch, such as the Diary of a Nobody and 1066 and All That. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the artistic roster included Harry Furniss, Linley Sambourne, Francis Carruthers Gould, and Phil May. Among the outstanding cartoonists of the following century were Bernard Partridge, H. M. Bateman, Bernard Hollowood who also edited the magazine from 1957 to 1968, and Norman Thelwell.

Circulation broke the 100,000 mark around 1910, and peaked in 1947-48 at 175,000 to 184,000. Sales declined steadily thereafter; ultimately, the magazine was forced to close in 1992 after 150 years of publication.

2.4 The different eras of comics.

Throughout the history of comics, the division had these in ages, because some significant respects, as creations of magazines and characters. Thus, conventionally divided the comics into four eras, which are: Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age and Modern Age. Below are explanations of each era.

Golden Age

The Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought of as lasting from the late 1930s until the late 1940s or early 1950s. During this time, modern comic books were first published and enjoyed a surge of popularity; the archetype of the superhero was created and defined; and many of the most famous superheroes debuted, among them Superman, Batman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel.

Publishing of comic books became a major industry. The period also saw the emergence of the comic book as a mainstream art form, and the defining of the medium's artistic vocabulary and creative conventions by its first generation of writers, artists, and editors.

Silver Age

The Silver Age of Comic Books was a period of artistic advancement and commercial success in mainstream American comic books, predominantly those in the superhero genre. Following the Golden Age of Comic Books and an interregnum in the early to mid-1950s, the Silver Age is considered to cover the period from 1956 to circa 1970, and was succeeded by the Bronze and Modern Ages. A number of important comics writers and artists contributed to the early part of the era, including writers Stan Lee, Gardner Fox, John Broome, and Robert Kanigher, and artists Curt Swan, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, Mike Sekowsky, Gene Colan, Carmine Infantino, John Buscema, and John Romita, Sr. By the end of the Silver Age, a new generation of talent had entered the field, including writers Denny O'Neil, Gary Friedrich, Roy Thomas, and Archie Goodwin, and artists such as Neal Adams, Herb Trimpe, Jim Steranko, and Barry Windsor-Smith.

The popularity and circulation of comic books about superheroes declined following World War II, and comic books about horror, crime and romance took larger shares of the market. However, controversy arose over alleged links between comic books and juvenile delinquency, focusing in particular on crime and horror titles. In 1954, publishers implemented the Comics Code Authority to regulate comic content. In the wake of these changes, publishers began introducing superhero stories again, a change that began with the introduction of a new version of DC Comics's The Flash in Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956). In response to strong demand, DC began publishing more superhero titles including Justice League of America, which prompted Marvel Comics to follow suit beginning with Fantastic Four #1. Silver Age comics have become collectible, with a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962), the debut of Spider-Man, selling for $1.1 million in 2011.

Comics historian and movie producer Michael Uslan traces the origin of the "Silver Age" term to the letters column of Justice League of America #42 (Feb. 1966), which went on sale December 9, 1965. Letter-writer Scott Taylor of Westport, Connecticut wrote, "If you guys keep bringing back the heroes from the [1930s-1940s] Golden Age, people 20 years from now will be calling this decade the Silver Sixties!" According to Uslan, the natural hierarchy of gold-silver-bronze, as in Olympic medals, took hold. "Fans immediately glommed onto this, refining it more directly into a Silver Age version of the Golden Age. Very soon, it was in our vernacular, replacing such expressions as ... 'Second Heroic Age of Comics' or 'The Modern Age' of comics. It wasn't long before dealers were ... specifying it was a Golden Age comic for sale or a Silver Age comic for sale".

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age of Comic Books is an informal name for a period in the history of mainstream American comic books usually said to run from 1970 to 1985. It follows the Silver Age of Comic Books.

The Bronze Age retained many of the conventions of the Silver Age, with traditional superhero titles remaining the mainstay of the industry. However, a return of darker plot elements and more socially relevant storylines (akin to those found in the Golden Age of Comic Books) featuring real-world issues, such as  drug use, alcoholism, and environmental pollution, began to flourish during the period, prefiguring the later Modern Age of Comic Books.

Wizard originally used the phrase "Bronze Age" in 1995 to denote the Modern Horror age. But as of 2009 historians and fans use "Bronze Age" to describe the period of American mainstream comics history that begins with a period of concentrated changes to comic books circa 1970. Unlike the Golden/Silver Age transition, the Silver/Bronze transition involved many continually published books, making the transition less sharp; not every book entered the Bronze Age at the same time.

Changes commonly considered marking the transition between Silver and Bronze ages include:

A reshuffling of popular creators, including the retirement of Mort Weisinger, editor of the Superman books, and the movement of Jack Kirby to DC.

A boom in non-superhero and borderline superhero comics such as Conan the Barbarian, Tomb of Dracula, Kamandi, Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, Ghost Rider, and the revived Doctor Strange and Phantom Stranger.

"Relevant" comics who attempted to address serious social issues, such as the drug-abuse issues of The Amazing Spider-Man and Green Lantern/Green Arrow.

The Comics Code Authority's first update, in 1971 — prompted by Stan Lee's defiance of the code for a story on narcotics at the behest of the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Revamping of several popular characters, including a "darker" Batman closer to the original 1930s conception, several changes to Superman such as the disappearance of Kryptonite, and a temporary non-powered era for Wonder Woman.

The death of major characters such as Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen Stacy, the Doom Patrol, and several members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Modern Age

The development of a non-returnable "direct market" distribution system in the 1970s coincided with the appearance of comic-book specialty stores across North America. These specialty stores were a haven for more distinct voices and stories, but they also marginalized comics in the public eye. Serialized comic stories became longer and more complex, requiring readers to buy more issues to finish a story. Between 1970 and 1990, comic-book prices rose sharply because of a combination of factors: a nationwide paper shortage, increasing production values, and the minimal profit

incentive for stores to stock comic books (due to the small unit price of an individual comic book relative to a magazine).

In the mid-to-late 1980s, two series published by DC Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, had a profound impact upon the American comic-book industry. Their popularity, along with mainstream media attention and critical acclaim, combined with changing social tastes, led to a considerably darker tone in comic books during the 1990s nicknamed by fans as the "grim-and-gritty" era. The growing popularity of antiheroes such as the Punisher and Wolverine underscored this change, as did the darker tone of some independent publishers such as First Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and (founded in the 1990s) Image Comics. This tendency towards darkness and nihilism was manifested in DC's production of heavily promoted comic book stories such as "A Death in the Family" in the Batman series (in which The Joker brutally murdered Batman's sidekick Robin), while at Marvel the continuing popularity of the various X-Men books led to storylines involving the genocide of super powered "mutants" in allegorical stories about religious and ethnic persecution.

Though a speculator boom in the early 1990s temporarily increased specialty store sales — collectors "invested" in multiple copies of a single comic to sell at a profit later — these booms ended in a collectibles glut, and comic sales declined sharply in the mid-1990s, leading to the demise of many hundreds of stores. In the 2000s, fewer comics sell in North America than at any time in their publishing history. The large superhero-oriented publishers like Marvel and DC are still often referred to as the "mainstream" of comics and are still considered a mass medium like in previous decades.

While the actual publications are no longer as widespread, however, licensing and merchandising have made many comic-book characters, aside from such perennials as Superman and Batman, more widely known to the general public than even. In particular, several movies and videogames based on comic-book characters have been released, and such heavily promoted events as Spider-Man's wedding, the death of Superman, and the death of Captain America received widespread media coverage.

In addition, the graphic novel publishing format, and its related form of the trade paperback, enabled the comic book medium to gain respectability as literature. As such, such books are now common items in book retail and in the collections of public libraries.

Independent and alternative comics

Comic specialty stores did help encourage several waves of independently-produced comics, beginning in the mid-1970s. Some of the early example of these - generally referred to as "independent" or

"alternative" comics - such as Big Apple Comix, continued somewhat in the tradition of 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; a few (notably RAW) represented experimental attempts to bring comics closer to the world of fine art.

The "small press" scene continued to grow and diversify, with a number of small publishers in the 1990s changing the format and distribution of their 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.

3. Comentários.

As histórias em quadrinhos são, desde o princípio, uma ferramenta muito importante para disseminação de ideias e conceitos. Elas são um veículo de comunicação tão importante que foram consideradas até uma Arte (Nona Arte) e são capazes de chegar ao público de maneira mais fácil e rápida, por vezes diariamente, como nas tiras de jornais.

Desde o início, as histórias em quadrinhos atraem os mais diferentes públicos e contam com artistas renomados, com mentes e ideias privilegiadas e criativas, sendo capazes de inventar personagens e heróis que marcam o cotidiano e o imaginário de muitas pessoas.

Convencionou-se até em dividir as histórias em quadrinhos em eras, como apresentadas anteriormente, para apresentar ao público o que cada história em quadrinhos nos fornece em termos de linguagem e personagens. Também tivemos os artistas que, por suas obras, marcaram época no universo dos quadrinhos.

Concluo assim observando o quão importante as histórias em quadrinhos são para o mundo. Elas permitiram a ampliação dos horizontes e do pensamento das pessoas. A visão de mundo que se tinha foi ampliada junto ao horizonte das pessoas. A leitura é o símbolo máximo de uma sociedade desenvolvida e capaz de observar e solucionar seus problemas.

Os quadrinhos não trazem apenas boas histórias e personagens envolventes... Trazem EDUCAÇÃO, a arma mais poderosa que se tem para mudar o mundo!