History of Comic books

Forgive me, but this post is going to be a lot of set up and while it may be informative.. you may not find it remotely informative at all. But I am amazed, regularly, at the number of people I talk to who are avid comic  book fans and yet know nothing of the history of comics and so, in order to make recommendations to the library staff on ways to combat this (and maybe offer a wider variety of titles from different periods since every patrons needs are different).. I have to explain the history of comic books for those that know nothing or little.

The Golden Age of Comics (1938- c. 1950)
When comic books started, they were a way to reprint and collect daily comic strips into books. National Periodicals Publication, one of the companies that would become DC comics, was one of the early publishers to jump on board with this method. Early in the 1930's, DC realized they could create their own materials for vastly cheaper, so they started with Funny Animal books (which were basically talking cartoon animals doing funny stuff kinda like the much later Looney Tunes). In 1935, DC had a working relation with two young Jewish men, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and they created DC's oldest characters that they still use today Doctor Occult and Rose Psychic. The duo would work together on a number of things and eventually after several attempts, they would create Superman who would appear in 1938 in Action Comics #1, which like many books in this era was an anthology and contained several superhero stories and characters with Superman as the main draw. Superman was, obviously, an instant hit and countless people tried to capitalize on this new craze for Superheroes. National Periodicals Publications created a number of heroes rather quickly including well known heroes like Batman, Green Arrow, Aquaman and more. National convinced another group to start producing comics as well as All-American Publications. They created  Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern. The two companies quickly tied themselves together with a logo D.C. Comics which stood for Detective Comics, the comic Batman first debuted in. The two companies would later merge and the logo would remain.

Meanwhile, Timely Publications, the company that would go through a few changes and end up as Marvel comics, was launching their first title Marvel Comics #1 and creating the Captain America, Namor, the Human Torch and others. Around the same time groups of businessmen and comic creators realized they didn't need to also be the publisher of the actual book to create the books. They set up shops where groups of artists and writers would work on the house's titles that they would then sell to various publishers to publish their books. This proved to be a rather lucrative business model for the time, but not a sustainable one as none of these shops survived.

After the end of World War II, superhero comics slowly lost their appeal, though many were still trying to capitalize on them. Slowly, crime, sci-fi, westerns, romance, and other genres began to dominate. Some superhero comics, like the risque Phantom Lady, were able to weather this change well and adapt and change, but most just died out. Eventually the only superhero comics really running were the mainstays of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman.

The Silver Age of Comics (1955 - c. 1970)
In 1954, a psychiatrist named Fredrick Wertham released a scandalous book called The Seduction of the Innocent. In it, he basically made the claim that comics turn children gay or into delinquents or even to a life of crime. He created such a storm and witch hunt that Comics, fearing that Congress would create a regulating body and censor them, created an in house regulation called The Comics Code of Authority. It basically said no swearing, nudity, violence, drugs, ect and sanitized comics greatly. Before this, there were no limits on what creators could do. After it's creation though, comic creators decided to make their comics tamer and more kid friendly.

In 1955, DC gathered a group of creators who had worked on the previous Flash and decided to relaunch the title and concept, but this time with a new character and a more science edge. They created Barry Allen, the second Flash, and launched the silver age of comics. DC took this approach to a number of heroes and relaunched new versions of Green Lantern, Hawkman, and others.

A few years later in 1961, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would launch the Fantastic Four and Marvel would in rapid succession launch more titles like The Amazing Spider-Man and The X-men. Lee, while being Editor-in-Chief, created a style of creating comic books known as The Marvel Method. Basically Lee would talk with the artist first and that could be a detailed conversation or simply "The Fantastic Four will fight Doctor Doom." and then the artist would put that together and Lee would come back and add dialogue, though sometimes an artist would suggest dialogue. This method allowed Lee to "write" a number of books simultaneously, but muddied creative waters a lot when an artist like Jack Kirby, a veteran in the field, was basically creating the plot and even suggesting dialogue and only getting credit as the artist.

Through the efforts of the creators at DC and the new Marvel comics, superheroes became immensely popular again and became the dominate genre of comics, which continues for the most part to today.

The Bronze Age of Comics (1970-1985)
With superhero comics still dominate, stories began to become repetitive and even boring. New creators began coming into the field, many of them growing up reading stories of the Silver Age and wanting to take the genre in new directions. With this new crop of creators, comics changed and began to move slowly away from the kids fantasies of the Silver Age. With Marvel leading the way, but DC not that far behind, comics began exploring concepts that were taboo like racism, drugs, poverty and more. They even sometimes would drop the Comic Code label from a comic to tell stories.

Also at this point, DC and Marvel began to explore more diverse heroes. During this time, Luke Cage would star in his own title with Black Panther following shortly after. John Stewart would take over reigns as Green Lantern. New black heroes like Storm, Bumblebee, Black Lighting and Vixen would all appear. Also the first female Captain Marvel, who was also Black, Monica Rambeau would appear with no connection to the original Captain Marvel in any way.

With the martial arts craze hitting America in the 70s, Marvel decided to create some heroes of mixed Asian ancestry like Shang-Chi, Colleen Wing, and Mantis. Also Iron Fist and the Sons of the Tiger appeared during this time.

DC and Marvel would try a number of different things during this time, all trying to find something that would stick. Marvel even had several lines of Magazines including the martial arts magazine Deadly Hands of Kung Fu which also included Shang-Chi and Iron Fist stories.

While superhero comics still dominated the scene, DC and Marvel did have successful horror, sword & sorcery, and science fiction titles.

The Modern Age of comics (1985-present)

This is a huge chunk of time and it's not really all the same, so I'm going to break it down into smaller chunks.

The 80's (85-early 90s)
This era basically started with the release of The Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. While both of these works are built off what was already happening in comics a lot of ways, these two changed comics for most readers from fun comics with some social issues now and again, to deep complex works. From these, the comic industry began to create darker and more complex heroes and even anti-heroes like Deadpool. DC also began to allow writers to write more sophisticated titles without the Comic Code of Authority and put them under a brand new imprint called Vertigo. This gave creators an ability to write stories that they wanted.

The 90's (early 90s to mid-90s)
The 90's began the huge boom of comics. X-Men began the big mega franchise it is today and X-Men #1 sold over a million copies. For the first time in a long time, comics became a feeding frenzy of new companies and ideas. Hundreds of new companies popped up, seemingly over night and began churning out comics. This also created a speculative market and comic companies decided to push it and take full advantage of these new collectors. Thousands of limited special hydro-foil magical pixie dust variants of every comic came out some even with a certificate of authenticity. Variants or variant covers would be alternate covers of the same comic that typically have a smaller print run. These types of comics were everywhere.

Image Comics also appeared at this time, dissatisfied with the direction of DC and Marvel, Image promised to do things differently. They would allow comic creators to actually own their own comics and keep their own properties. There would be no massive multiverse that every hero had to play into (or anti-hero) and creators could do whatever they wanted. Image was just a vehicle to publish their books and Image did amazing at the beginning.

During this mass of speculation, a small company called Milestone Media popped up and began a line of comics with a diverse line up. At Milestone, almost every hero was a person of color with the few white heroes that popped up all being gay or lesbian. Milestone partnered with DC comics for publishing purposes and eventually Milestone's most popular character, Static, would appear in a TV show by DC's parent company, WB. sadly though, Milestone, like most of the 90's companies, would not last, though there are attempts to revive it today.

Also during the 90s, comics had a major shift. Story and writers became secondary to the artists, many of whom made huge names for themselves on their unique styles. Artists would become the main driving sales force and even better if they could sustain multiple monthly books. On top of that there was an over saturation of this idea that everything needed to be extreme, bigger, badder, more macho. This became so prevalent, that DC launched a parody of all this in their character Lobo, who was the ultimate macho man.

For most comic fans, however, the 90s are known for their lack of quality in books. Everything was a gimmick from the Death of Superman to replacing Batman to Spider-Man being a clone. Most of Marvel's major heroes were killed in an event only to be brought back a few years later in another major event Even Wonder Woman was briefly replaced in the 90s. The status quo of characters was in constant flux, which would have been fine, except the writing was taking a back seat to art that, while popular at the time, hasn't aged well for most fans. That is not to say there weren't great books in the 90s even with amazing art and story, but by in large most comic book fans do not talk highly of this period.

The 00's (1998-2010)
In 1996, Marvel was facing bankruptcy. Higher ups in the business were funneling money into various projects and things were just not looking good. Marvel was in trouble and their attempts to garner sales were feeling like gimmicks to the majority of their fanbase. Marvel began to slowly turn things around, switching focus back to a collaboration of artist and writers and launched an adult-orientated imprint called Marvel Knights, which was hugely successful both commercially and critically.

At the same time, Marvel began to shop around to sell their properties to movie studios. As the movies started rolling out which were by in large successful, Marvel began to capitalize on this. They even had a brief attempt at a X-Men live action TV show, that was changed due to a suit with Fox into Mutant X. Either way, Marvel's star was rising again. They were able to sell good comics, do events that comic fans genuinely enjoyed like Civil War, which was turned into a successful movie. Marvel was back on top.

The 10's (2011-today)
While Marvel was being bought by Disney and churning out new movies, DC was just doing DC. Same things it'd always done, regular events and while there were some great comics, DC wasn't really shaking anything up. In 2011 that all changed as DC cancelled their entire line of comics and relaunched everything, with a mostly new direction and 52 new individual titles. This was dubbed The New 52. Initially DC saw huge success with this, even over taking Marvel for market share and having some of the top selling books for months, but fans and the comic media hated it. It didn't help that DC kept having one PR disaster after another behind the scenes. Everything DC did at this point, with a few exceptions, were viewed as absolute crap often before the book had even been released. DC experimented with a number of different genres and ideas, but most failed miserably. Marvel, meanwhile, was still riding high and enjoying the constant love and adoration (and even taking pot shots at DC whenever they could).

Starting in the 00s and moving to the present, there has also been more of a push for digital comics and a rise of independent publishers in a way that hasn't been seen in a while. Image, Dark Horse, Valiant, and Boom Studios all are actively growing in sales, sometimes at the expense of DC and Marvel. Creators rights are becoming more and more of an issue and talked about openly their right to own their characters and stories.

In 2016, DC changed things up again with DC Rebirth, relaunching their line, this time smaller with more of a nod to the past. New and old fans loved it and DC again began to over take Marvel. Meanwhile, Marvel was trying it's own experiment. They'd been riding high for so long, they decided they needed to shake things up and begin, slowly at first, but then even more rapidly, replacing many of their main heroes with more diverse characters. At the same time, Marvel sped up their event plans going from 1 a year to now 2-3 in a year and even having little mini-events in between the big events. Marvel fans began to become more and more wary with Marvel's approach. Add on top of all this PR disasters and Marvel is pretty much in the same place DC was in 2012.

So that's a quick over view of the history of comics..