Portal:Comics

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Introduction

Comics is a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically takes the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information. There is no consensus amongst theorists and historians on a definition of comics; some emphasize the combination of images and text, some sequentiality or other image relations, and others historical aspects such as mass reproduction or the use of recurring characters. Cartooning and other forms of illustration are the most common image-making means in comics; fumetti is a form that uses photographic images. Common forms include comic strips, editorial and gag cartoons, and comic books. Since the late 20th century, bound volumes such as graphic novels, comic albums, and tankōbon have become increasingly common, while online webcomics have proliferated in the 21st century.

The English term comics is used as a singular noun when it refers to the medium itself (e.g. "Comics is a visual art form."), but becomes plural when referring to works collectively (e.g. "Comics are popular reading material."). (Full article...)

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Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) is an annual promotional effort by the North American comic book industry to attract new readers to independent comic book stores. It usually takes place on the first Saturday of May and is often cross-promoted with the release of a superhero film. Over two thousand participating stores give away millions of comic books annually. The event was proposed by Joe Field in the August 2001 issue of Comics & Games Retailer magazine and Free Comic Book Day was launched in 2002, coordinated by the industry's single large distributor, Diamond Comic Distributors. FCBD has become an official Children's Book Week event and has inspired similar events for German- and Dutch-language comics industries. The twentieth edition of FCBD was held on May 7, 2022.

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Anniversaries for July 2

1907: birth of Eppo Doeve, Dutch painter and cartoonist of Indo descent
1918: birth of Wim Boost, Dutch comics author who worked in the studios of Marten Toonder
1930: birth of Al Wiesner, American comic creator, known for creating Shaloman
1971: birth of Christopher B. Wright, American webcomic author known for Help Desk
1996: death of Mike Parobeck, American comic book artist best known for his work on The Batman Adventures
2004: death of John Cullen Murphy, American comics artist best known for his work on Prince Valiant

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General images

The following are images from various comics-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Comic Con crowds in 2011 as seen from a helicopter (from San Diego Comic-Con)
Image 2Japanese wood block illustration from 19th century (from History of manga)
Image 3Image of bathers from the Hokusai manga. (from History of manga)
Image 4Cover of Illustrated Chips in 1896 featuring the first appearance of the long-running comic strip of the tramps Weary Willie and Tired Tim. (from British comics)
Image 5A page by Rodolphe Töpffer, whose work is considered influential in shaping the comics form. (from History of comics)
Image 6The French comic Les Pieds Nickelés (1954 book cover): an early 20th-century forerunner of the modern Franco-Belgian comic (from Bande dessinée)
Image 7Cover to 27 December 1884 edition of Ally Sloper's Half Holiday. (from British comics)
Image 8Maurice De Bevere, also known as "Morris" (from Bande dessinée)
Image 9Convention crowd outside of Golden Hall in 1982 (from San Diego Comic-Con)
Image 10Close Hergé collaborator and magazine contributor Bob de Moor (from Bande dessinée)
Image 11The San Diego Convention Center during Comic-Con in 2013 (from San Diego Comic-Con)
Image 12Hokusai Manga (early 19th century) (from History of manga)
Image 13
Comics artist Mœbius (2008), who achieved international renown through Métal Hurlant
(from Bande dessinée)
Image 14Chōjū-giga (12th century), traditionally attributed to a monk-artist Kakuyū (Toba Sōjo) (from History of manga)
Image 15A Fallout Cosplayer photographed at a Comic Con in a Fallout Themed area. (from Comic book convention)
Image 16Comic-Con crowd inside the second floor of the convention center in 2011 waiting for the exhibition hall to open (from San Diego Comic-Con)
Image 17During panels at comic book conventions, the audience is sometimes invited to line up and ask questions using a dedicated microphone. (from Comic book convention)
Image 18Sequential depictions on Trajan's Column in Rome, Italy (from History of comics)

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that open depictions of sexual acts were a defining trait of early works of josei manga ('women's comics')?
... that Kake has been described as "a sort of Johnny Appleseed ... spreading the seeds of liberated, mutually satisfying, ecstatically explicit gay sex"?
... that the character of Felicity Smoak, from The CW's Arrowverse franchise, first appeared in the DC Comics series The Fury of Firestorm in 1984?
... that according to one source, The Embroidered Couch is "most likely China's earliest vernacular pornographic novel"?
... that Japanese artist Macoto Takahashi stopped making girls' comics in the 1960s because he considered himself incapable of adopting the point of view of a girl?
... that Shueisha, the publisher of Weekly Shōnen Jump, has produced a manga series in collaboration with Marvel Comics?
... that although its publisher Dark Horse Comics is American, a significant proportion of artists involved with the comic book series The Witcher have been Polish?
... that Hikaru Natsumi contributed to adult comic magazines while still in high school?

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Credit: Richard Felton Outcault

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. Created and drawn by Richard F. Outcault in a strip entitled 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.

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...that while Al Jaffee (pictured) created the comics character Ziggy Pig, it was Stan Lee who named him?

...that after 25 years of aging in real time, John Constantine is getting younger?

...that The Punisher can be distinguished from other beat 'em up games by its frequent use of firearms?

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The comics medium is a very specialized area of the Arts, home to many rare and talented blooms and flowering imaginations and it breaks my heart to see so many of our best and brightest bowing down to the same market pressures which drive lowest-common-denominator blockbuster movies and television cop shows. Let's see if we can call time on this trend by demanding and creating big, wild comics which stretch our imaginations. Let's make living breathing, sprawling adventures filled with mind-blowing images of things unseen on Earth. Let's make artefacts that are not faux-games or movies but something other, something so rare and strange it might as well be a window into another universe because that's what it is.

— Grant Morrison

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