AOB 1 - History of Sequential art

Graphic novels have long been enjoyed by many people and most often, people were introduced to them as a child in the form of comic books (eg. Beano, Dandy ect)

Sequential art - Pictures/images layed out in a decided sequence with the intent to convey a story, inform or produce a reaction from the viewer/reader.

Early cave paintings are probly the earliest form of sequential art as they were a way of telling a story about the live cave dwellers lived and there surroundings, the vegetation within there area and how they may have used things.


Hiyrogliphs such as The scribe of Menna which was produced roughly 4000 bc is another form of sequential art which again tells a story about farming the fields around the nile and the rule of the land.


The Bayeux tapestry, detailing the battle of Hastings in 1066 and the norman invasion of england is yet another form of sequential art throughout history.


William Hogarth's Marriage à-la-mode is a renaissance painting from between 1743 and 1745 and it is a series of 6 individual painting making a statement about the upper classes of the 18th Century. This is an example of how individual images, if viewed in a particular sequence, can tell a story, in this case its a story heavy drinking, adultery, gambling and much more.


Rodolphe Töpffer's was a swiss cartoonist and caricature artist who worked in the 1820's and could perhaps be called the "grandfather of modern day comics" as he introduced frame boarders which divided each single image but still allowed it to be on the same page, simplification of execution which was basically reducing each 'shot' in the story to the bare minimum needed and this was also aided by technological advances as his works were printed, not painted as they would have been before (such as Marriage à-la-mode by William Hogarth) and also inter-dependance of text allowed writing to go with the image to aid the storytelling.

Rodolphe Töpffer

Hogan's Alley was a sunday supplement cartoon strip which appeared in 'Truth' During the 1890's and was writen/drawn by Richard F. Outcault. Cartoon strips by now had already been used for political reasons as well as other forms of entertainment but its main character 'Yellow Kid' was eccentially the first cartoon character, he was a bald, snaggle-toothed child with a goofy grin in a yellow nightshirt who hung around in a ghetto alley filled with equally odd characters


It is understood that comics and cartoons are very different, cartoons are a single image with a caption whereas comics are a number of images, each in single frames, with speech bubbles.

in 1935, Max Gaines came up with the thoughtful idea of taking daily/weekly comics and comic strips and publishing them alltogether in the sequence they should be read in, this was called a comic anthology which would eventually turn into the modern day comic. Publishers of these anthologys were such as National and they would soon become DC Comics, a major comic book company in the states.

DC Comics were soon to be the headliners of comics as in 1938 with the publication of Action Comics #1, the genisis of the superhero genre began as superman was first introduced, the creation of Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel. After supermans success came Batman, Wonder woman, Captain america and many others, all of which found success.

by the early 1950s, most superhero comics had died out and DC comics only produced batman, superman and wonder woman. After superhero's, the only successful comic genre was horror. The Leading horror publisher was EC Comics. EC Comics was pushing the bounderies as the content got more and more adult orientated. Remember Max Gaines? well EC Comics was run by his son, Bill.

During the 1950s, comics became blamed for mentally effecting children.


'Seduction of the innocent' by Fredric Wertham was an example of how people thought comics were corrupting the innocent(the children). Prolonged exposure to the filth and disgraceful and distateful comics were responcible for the bad behaviour from youth.


Soon after CCA or comics code authority was brought in to regulate comic book content under the obscene publications act. This led to a steep drop in EC comics sales as shops wanted nothing to do with this provayor of filth.

in 1952, EC comics proclaimed 'Mad' magazine soon became the leader as this was changed to a black and white publication, exempt from the CCA regulations. MAD magazine is known throughout the US and Monty Python's Terry Gilliam once said.... "Mad became the Bible for me and my whole generation."

Classic MAD Cover


Modern day MAD Cover


Say hello to the sixties! This decade saw the 'teenager' being created, a young, productive member of society still under legal drinking age, meaning they have nothing to do but work meaningless jobs like McDonald's and read their old childish reading material like superman.......BOR-ING!

This decade saw an attempt to widen the range of comic material and change the typical conventions of comic readers, which were generally seen as children, simply meaning 'Lets make a comic for the adults' and these comics still used the same language, layout and things like speech and thought bubbles. Many of the adult comics or graphic novels or whatever you want to call them were still comics but did tend to follow the general themes seen in the melodrama films of the1960's, such as Spartacus or All that heaven allow's.

Teenagers or 'Young adults' as their sometimes called, have money and still want to read comics but maybe something abit more atune to their own thinking which is where the alternative comics genre arose from, producing such comics as......


It Rhymes With Lust - published originally in 1950 by St. John Publications (a magazine and comic book publishing company) and was written by Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller and the Black and white artwork was done by Matt Baker. The story is influenced by Pult fiction and film noir and features a empowered female lead character called Rust.

Then not much happened till the release of....

His name is...Savage, first published by Adventure House Press in 1968. This was a comic that took the whole consept of a comic in an entirely new direction, disgusing kidnap, cyborgs (robot with living tissue) and world wars, going along with the whole cold war fears people were struggling with.

Ok now tell me, What exactly IS a graphic novel?

The term wasnt used until Will Eisner used it as a way to describe the new way of telling a comicbook story. This involves being produced not on a weekly or monthly basis, but in a book, dealing with adult themes such as relationships (good or bad), politics, graphic violence and so on. These books used the typical conventions of the comic book, meaning they used panel boxes, speech and thought bubbles but also the language of the audience its trying to reach.
Although, Eisner didnt create the term originally :-(
Richard Kyle came up with the name 'Graphic Story' which then developed into 'Graphic Novel' in a 1964 fanzine manifesto because he felt calling such stories 'Comics' limited them somewhat in the titles apeal to its audience, because 'comic' suggests childishness and simplistic humour.

But sometimes superhero's get a 'makeover' taking them from the clean streets and dumping them in the crime ridden gotham city (as an example) for one reason or another.
Original >> << face="georgia">Before the use of Graphic novel was widespread, previous titles of the artform were 'Picto-fiction', 'Sequential Art' or ‘bande dessinee’ (French for Drawn Strip) to name just a few.
Some artists such as Daniel Clowes believe that his own works are ‘comic book novels’ and think's there's no harm done in calling them 'comics' because thats what he grew up with, he has a life long enjoyment of them and he profits from them.

However, now were back to William Eisner, who has a fairly interesting story of how he volentarily took time off work(unpaid) at the grand old age of 50 to take a story, extend it and form it around the comic book connotations (panel boxes, speech bubbles and language ect.) with no help and no publisher in sight, taking the artform to new heights.
His reason for doing so? Well at the time, radical artists such as Robert Crumb were involved with Underground Comix (not comic's because there not hip anymore).
Up until the late 1960's, all comics were produced by large companies with control in the market, meaning only seemingly profitable comics were made and not always by the same artist('s) or writer('s) (who's skills were questionable at times) as these were knocked up in a rush and were designed to sell the image, personality and adventures of the character (eg. Spiderman) which greatly contrasts the world of graphic novels which intentionally sell the artist/writers personal style and USP (Unique Selling Point) over the subject matter of the material.

Examples of this are:
Maus by Art Spiegelman, in which he details his fathers life in Nazi occupied europe.


and Black hole by Charles Burns, a fictional story about sexualy transmitted desieses amongst teenagers who develope mutations from their desieses.


Underground Comix
These fella's arose in the later 1960's and were more commonly found in 'Head shops' (no sniggering now, its not what you think!) Head shops were stores which stocked drug related products and hippy related stuff, given to the huge rise in the counterculture of the hippy.
People involved with the underground comix, either directly as artists, editors or publishers were Robert Crumb, Jay lynch, Gilbert sheldon, Rick Griffin and Art Spiegelman.

ZAP! comix was first published in 1968, featuring “Fair warning - for adults and intellectuals only” on the cover so you cant say you wernt warned.

Artwork inspired by LSD trips, storylines so dirty you feel your eyes require scrubbing with bleach and a brilopad afterwords and YET still a masterpiece, challenging social normalities and beliefes. Taking the style of MAD and catapulting the comics genre into new, experimental terriotries. People who read Zap could get a feeling of being rebelious because this style of publication was new exciting and also highly explicit. Zap can be believed to be a milestone in the development of comics.

Welcome to the 1970's and a time when the direct market was introduced, opening the doors to new, more stylish and stranger comics into the published world.
By the early 1980's, comics such as:

'Elfquest' by Wendy and Richard Pini in 1978

And


'Cerebus' by Dave sim in 1977
proved to be a stunning suceess for black and white, self published comics.

In 1980 Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly devised 'RAW'

A groundbreaking anthology that was published by Mouly, the first of the alternative comics to come from the 1980's, a true Avant-garde piece. This is where art spiegelman first showed 'Maus' before producing it as a graphic novel. The comic was printed on much better quality paper than others and spiegelman encouraged the artists of 'RAW' to throw the consept of 'good drawing' away and focus more on a rough style, giving a sense of individuality to the piece.

Remember the CCA? well it was during this time that DC and Marvel published some works without CCA approval such as 'Moon Knight' and 'Camelot 3000'





Since their dawn as damp cave painting, all the way to monthly published comics and then to definitavly Graphic novels, there popularity is as strong as ever and seemingly never to end, were stuck with the graphic novels so you may was well like them.