The best comics of all time. Just look what they turned Batman into

The advent of modern comics was preceded by 18th-century political cartoons by William Hogarth. They were a series of drawings united by a common idea.

Next important stage the development of the art of creating comics has become an activity Rodolphe Tepffer and Wilhelm Busch. The first one became famous " The story of Monsieur Villeux-Bois", the popular poetic series " Max and Moritz”, which tells the story of two tomboys.

« Teddy bear and tiger" - that was the name of the first one American comics, which was published in 1892. The story “ Yellow Kid"about a little boy from China who arrived in search of adventure America..

Famous comic book creator is Rudolf Derks. It was he who came up with " bubbles", the frames in which the speech of the characters is placed.

Entire publishing companies specializing in publishing comics are being created: Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Image Comics. One of the largest is the Marvel company. She produced such masterpieces as "Fantastic Four", "The Incredible Hulk", "X-Men", "Iron Man", "Spider-Man".

And now some crazy numbers:

The first issue of the comic about Superman was purchased this year for 1 million dollars, in the distant 1938 it could be purchased for 10 cents.

For 100 thousand euros purchased the original title image of the comic book "".

First edition of comics about Spider-Man cost about 40 thousand dollars, V 1963 its cost was 12 cents.

USA Comics.

From the middleXIXcentury, American newspapers introduced an innovation: on their pages there was much more illustrative material than in newspapers of the Old World. In America, a whole system of visual symbols is emerging, many of which were created by Thomas Nast, the author of “Uncle Sam.” The emergence of the American comic book occurred during the period of struggle between two famous newspaper magnates: Hungarian immigrant Joseph Pulitzer and Californian William Randolph Hearst. The fight for readers required the use of new printing technology, introducing color on a newspaper page. Yellow color turned out to be the most technologically advanced in many respects. It was first used by Richard Outcault.

Richard Outcault, one of the artists of Pulitzer's New York Wall newspaper, created on its pages funny stories in pictures about the adventures of a kid in a yellow shirt. In 1896, Hearst lured Outcault to his New York Journal and invited him to change the appearance of the series: now, under the name “The Yellow Boy,” it began to develop frame by frame into a comic strip that occupied from half to a whole page of the newspaper. The story told about the adventures of a little Chinese boy and the inhabitants of the poor street of Hogan's Alley. According to the owner of the newspaper, satirical stories were supposed to attract the attention of illiterate immigrants and significantly increase the newspaper's circulation. Along the way, this comic led to the emergence of the term “yellow press.”

Both Hearst and Pulitzer competed, poaching each other's artists to develop new comic strips. But it is important to note that the final formal form of the American comic was given to the artist Rudolf Derks in his less than twenty years. He introduced lines in "bubbles" into the comic book series "Katzenjemer's Children" (1897). According to the American M. Horn, Durks made the “bubble” the trademark of the American comic book.

The heroes of the series by R. Derks are two young, cheerful hooligans. The setting is an imaginary, very conventional Africa. Bullies don't want to grow up or become real Americans. They speak, like most immigrants, in wild German-American slang.

Hooligans and slang are the trademarks of the comic. From its very birth, comics stand in spontaneous opposition to the established social and linguistic values of bourgeois society.

The Durks series continues to this day. Of course, other artists continue it, and this is another significant feature of the comic. It can be inherited from one author to another. A comic is stronger than its author. Indifference to his personality creates a special type of anonymity, which distinguishes comics from all other forms of art of modern times and brings them closer to “folk art.”

In parallel with "Katzenjemer's Children", in the same 1897, the first series of "animal" comics "Tiger Cub" appeared, authored by James Swinterson.

From 1905 to 1910, artist Winsor McCay, in the pages of the home supplement to the New York Harald, published the series “Little Nemo in Dreamland,” dedicated to the boy’s magical dreams, and made comics a serious and high art. He painted fine decorative graphics in the Art Nouveau style: he was a master of fantastic landscapes and castles in the air, attentive to small details and precious “stained glass” tints of color. But McKay's greatest merit is that he discovered such a feature of the comic book as the composition of its sheet. He began to use the multidimensionality that the reader can see when he does not turn the page, but freely glides over it with his gaze.

The emergence of American comics, characterized by simple drawing (with the exception of the virtuoso technique of Winsor McCay), lasts until the 20s. Some of the heroes of the first comics are animals, some are people, but all of them are united by the social consciousness of immigration and belief in the “American Dream.” Some immigrants experience disappointment from the inability to assert themselves (due to mediocrity), which, as a rule, translates into social sphere and is experienced as disappointment from a collision with reality. The motives of loneliness, alienation, and orphanhood are important. The morality of the heroes is dominated by elements of the village mentality.

The second generation of American comics (20-50s) gives birth to heroes - carriers of ideas. Thus, the idea of kindness is embodied by the dog Snoopy. The culturalization of comics is taking place. It is adapted to the needs of society. Political conservative Walt Disney gently teaches the art of cheerful survival. His comic didactically and entertainingly spoke the language of humanoid animals, providing each of them with a stable mental code. Having highlighted aggression as an inevitability of life, he contrasted it with imagination and ingenuity, which transform weakness into strength.

In the 20s, the direction of everyday comics (with elements of satire) emerged, reflecting the events of everyday life and family stereotypes. The most popular heroine of this type of comic is Blondie - the “typical American girl.” Only Little Orphan Annie can compete with Blondie, who stands up for traditional American values in any situation.

During these years, American comics acquired genre diversity. Under the influence of cinema, adventure comics with quite realistic drawings arose (in 1929 the first comic book about Tarzan was published). “Secular” comics are becoming popular, playing on the attributes of the luxurious life of high society, as well as melodrama comics (the “Mary Worth” series). Comics began to be published in separate books of monthly issues ("comics magazine", then "comics book"), for which they were writtenfull-length stories.

But the main characters of the second generation of comics were developed in series about heroes endowed with “superhuman” traits: Flash Gordon, Superman and Batman. Fictional characters and even prototypes of an artificially created “humanoid race” have become an integral and necessary part of the spiritual world of the American. Conformist comics are turning into a modern version of a fairy tale.

Having become an important part of US popular culture, comics were at the same time, until the advent of television, a powerful instrument of hegemony. It can be said that the entire history of modern American ideology is inextricably intertwined with the history of comic books.

How necessary “spiritual bread” comics have become for Americans is demonstrated by this incident. Shortly before the Second World War, a strike by printing workers caused interruptions in the supply of comics to kiosks. The indignation of residents was so great that the mayor of New York personally read comics on the radio during these few days to calm his beloved city. Residents of one town in Illinois held a referendum and renamed their city Metropolis, the fictional city in which Superman operated.

It is clear that alongside the conformist comics a dissident alternative had to arise. It was discovered in particular in the “Pogo” series by W. Kelly. He has various political forces operating under the masks of animals. At the height of McCarthyism, the author of Pogo scathingly satirized spy mania in a special comic book called We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us.

American comics are too destructive and antisocial. In 1946, about one tenth of all comic books were crime comics. However, already in 1949, comics of this kind accounted for half of all production, and in 1954 - the overwhelming majority. Crime comics emphasize violence as an element of entertainment. The words “crime” and “murder” are typed in bold to attract the buyer’s attention. Using police chronicles, such comics emphasize their documentary nature.

There is a powerful anti-comics opposition in the United States. Historically, the books by J. Legman “Love and Death” (1948) and F. Wertheim’s “The Mark of Cain” (1964) especially stand out in the anti-comics movement. The American Senate established a special subcommittee, as a result of which the American Comics Magazine Association, in a country where there is no censorship, adopted a “self-limiting” code, the so-called “Comics Code,” in October 1954. The Code did not federal law, but, for example, the authorities of the state of New York, relying on the provisions of the code, introduced legal restrictions on the sale of objectionable comics. Supporters of the code believed that it gave comics a more “respectable” look and gave them the status of an artistic product.

As a result of restrictions, “educational” comics have become widespread in the United States.

Not all American artists submitted to the provisions of the "self-limiting" code. Publishers like Dell defied him, citing the First Amendment, and began publishing underground comics in the 60s. This is where the third generation of comics begins. Breaking with the traditions of American puritanism, the underground comics openly spoke about taboo topics: ecology, police, racism, and a little later - about the Vietnam War.

The center of the underground comics was the Californian publishing house Rip-off Press. The coolest authors, R. Kremb, S. Wilson, J. Shelton and M. Rodriguez, who performed under the pseudonym Spain, created the group “Zep”. Young people were crazy about R. Kremb's comic book series "Mr. Natural" ("The Simpleton"). In it, a crazy guru talked about the problems of modern civilization. The comic books of S. Wilson, who most provocatively mocked moral taboos, were repeatedly confiscated by the authorities.

Large studies using a range of independent methods have shown that in the mid-1960s, between 80 and 100 million people read newspaper comics every day in the United States. 58% of men and 57% of women read almost exclusively comics in the newspaper. Even during World War II, the average newspaper reader read the comic strip first and the war report second. People aged 30-39 years show the greatest interest in comics. And all school-age children (99%) read comics regularly. Discussion of comics they have read is the main topic of conversation among schoolchildren, which makes this genre of culture the most important mechanism for the socialization of children.

When the author of the famous "Lil Abner" series, Al Capp, introduced a new character, Lena the Hyena, "the ugliest woman in the world," he asked readers to send in suggestions describing her facial features. More than a million letters with drawings came from readers. In the late 1970s, Lil Abner comics were published in more than a thousand newspapers in the United States and had 80 million daily readers. John Steinbeck nominated Al Capp for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Such an unusually effective "capture" of a mass audiencecomics were able to provide precisely by combining text with a visual image.

Comics played a large role in the formation and preservation of the mass consciousness of the American nation. They created a sense of community sustainability. Comics “led” the average American family from generation to generation, setting a stable “system of coordinates” and cultural norms. One of the books on the history of comics, published in 1977, provides data on the famous series, which by that time had been published without interruption for 80 years! A French comics researcher writes about their characters: “An American spends his entire life in the company of the same heroes, and can build his life plans based on their lives. These heroes are intertwined with his memories from early childhood, they are his oldest friends. Going through wars, crises, job changes with them, comic book characters turn out to be the most stable elements of his existence."

The advent of modern comics was preceded by 18th-century political cartoons by William Hogarth.They were a series of drawings united by a common idea.

The next important stage in the development of the art of creating comics was the activity Rodolphe Tepffer and Wilhelm Busch. The first one became famous " The story of Monsieur Villeux-Bois", the popular poetic series " Max and Moritz”, which tells the story of two tomboys.

« Teddy bear and tiger" - this was the name of the first American comic book, which was published in 1892. The story “ Yellow Kid"about a little boy from China who arrived in search of adventure America.

Famous comic book creator is Rudolf Derks. It was he who came up with " bubbles", the frames in which the speech of the characters is placed.

Golden Age of Comics

This period in the history of American comics, which lasted (according to various estimates) from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s. The first serious steps in the development of the art of graphic novels were made at the beginning of the 20th century, in search of new ways of graphic and visual communication and self-expression. At first, comics were purely humorous. This is largely explained by the etymology of the English word that determined their name. This situation changed radically in June 1938, when the character Superman(English) Superman).

The beginning of the golden age is considered to be the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics, published in 1938 and published by DC Comics. The appearance of Superman was very popular, and soon superheroes literally filled the pages of comic books. Other characters who have been popular for a long time include Plastic(English) Plastic Man), published by Quality Comics, as well as Detective Spirit, by cartoonist Will Eisner, which was originally published as a supplement combined with the Sunday edition of the newspaper.

In total, more than 400 superheroes were created during this period. Most of them strongly resembled Superman and did not survive to this day, but it was then that heroes such as Batman And Captain America.

Second world war had a serious influence on the content of superhero comics - now the heroes fought against the Axis powers, and the covers depicted superheroes fighting the leader of the Nazi movement, Adolf Hitler. After the victory over fascism, superheroes with nuclear abilities began to appear, for example Atomic Thunderbolt and Atomic Man . Historians of the time credit the children's characters with helping to ease young readers' fears about the prospects of nuclear war. In addition, the heroes began to fight the communists, and some were involved in the Korean War.

However, after the end of World War II, the popularity of superheroes began to decline. In general, it was during the golden age that a new and to this day main direction in comics emerged - superheroes and new worlds.

Along with super heroes, cartoon characters also appear in comics. For example, stories about Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse. They conquer not only children's but also adult audiences.

IN 1970 - 1980 Great competition began in the comics industry between the two largest printing companies, Marvell and Dell. Dell begins reprinting comics from the 30s to 50s, and Marvel Comics responds with a series of new adventures Spiderman.

IN 1977 - three months before the release of George Lucas's sensational science fiction film " Star wars"The Marvel Comics company is taking revenge by starting to publish a series of comics based on the film. Star Wars exceeded all expectations, breaking all record sales. Warner Communications engages readers with characters Hulk, Doctor Strange, Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon. Subsequently, feature and animated films were made based on these comics.

1989 the year was the fifteenth anniversary Batman. A comic book series was dedicated to this year and the feature film “Batman” was shot, in which such first-class actors as Michael Keaton (Bruce Wayne) and Jack Nicholson (Joker) participated, everything was thought out to the smallest detail, and the film became the highest grossing film of all time cinema (at that time), and comics brought in a lot of money.

IN 1990 In 2006, the series “Classics in Illustrations” was published, which included “Moby Dick”, “The Raven”, Poe’s poems, “Great Expectations” by Dickens, “Alice Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll. A real sensation was created by “Mutant Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” which was released by Mirage Studios and written by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.

A variety of comics exist around the world, from Chinese manhua to Japanese manga, comic books in the United States, and comic strip collections in Europe. Despite all the variety of styles and genres, the main task of comics is to evoke feelings and emotions in the reader. Elements such as dialogue bubbles or text frames are used to display dialogue and convey to the reader necessary information. The drawings and their arrangement, as well as various auxiliary elements, are designed to support the sequence of events in the story.

The most famous form of printed comics is the so-called strips, or miniatures. They usually consist of four small drawings one after another and are published in newspapers and magazines. Longer comics are published as separate magazines, books or albums.

Figures and facts:

In New York, at Heritage Auctions in February 2012, a collection of rare comics that belonged to Billy Wright was sold. The comics reportedly sold for $3.5 million.

The top lot among the auctions was the 27th issue of the collection Detective Comics (1939), on the pages of which Batman first appeared. The publication was bought for 523 thousand dollars. In 1939, Detective Comics No. 27 cost the late Billy Wright of Virginia 10 cents. The auction also included the first collection of Action Comics (1938), where Superman debuted. They paid 299 thousand dollars for it.

A collection of unique comics was sold at auction in the French capital for 650 thousand euros. According to the auction organizer, Sotheby's auction house, about a hundred of the most popular pictures and drawings by famous European, American and Japanese artists among collectors went under the hammer.

Among the most expensive lots is an original illustration for the comic book “The Mysterious Star” from the “The Adventures of Tintin” series, published in the Soir newspaper, which was sold for more than 234 thousand euros. This famous picture, which depicts how the faithful dog of a fearless journalist, Milou, got his paws dirty in tar, was painted by the Belgian artist Georges Remy, who worked under the pseudonym Hergé, in 1941.

For 100 thousand euros purchased the original title image of the comic " Black Island" And the first edition of comics about Spider-Man cost about 40 thousand dollars, V 1963 its cost was 12 cents.

The most famous images of communists in Western comics.

Mark Millar's comic book "Superman - Son of the Reds" has been republished in the USA. This is an alternate history where a rocket carrying baby Kal-El from the planet Krypton lands not in the heart of Kansas, but in one of the collective farms of Soviet Russia. The world's greatest super hero is being raised by communists! In American comics there are other, both positive and negative, images of Soviet heroes.

Black Widow

One of the earliest examples of a positive Russian hero, Black Widow was originally a Soviet spy, an opponent of Iron Man. She then defected to the US side and quickly became one of the most complex legends in Marvel comics history. Former ballerina Natalia Romanova was recruited into the KGB, where she received spy training. Also, with the help of chemicals in her body, aging was slowed down. Natalya Romanova could well be the heiress of the overthrown tsar.

Colossus

In 1975, the X-Men comic debuted. To the X-Men team decided to give international character. This is how the heroes Storm, Banshee, the little-known Canadian mutant Wolverine and Colossus appeared in it - perhaps the most famous Russian hero in comics. His image is very stereotypical. These stereotypes were most evident when Colossus was recruited by Arcadia and became a proletarian, wearing a red jumpsuit with a hammer and sickle and a portrait of Vladimir Lenin.

Red Ghost and his super monkeys

Like many of Marvel's early creations, Fantastic Four has its origins in Stan Lee's anti-communist propaganda. Reed Richards launches his ship into a stream of cosmic rays to land on the moon before the Russians. He is opposed by evil rivals from the Soviet space program- an astronaut with three gorillas with superpowers.

Deadshot (Death Shot)

This character's political beliefs are not entirely clear. He is terrified of Batman, grows a mustache and shoots people. But in one of the early issues it is said that Deadshot joined the party and learned Russian to spite his father, a wealthy industrialist.

Collective man

As a result of the mutation, the five brothers gained the ability to merge into one, collective person. This Collective Man not only possessed the power of all five, but could further increase his power at the expense of the entire population of the Republic of China - the living embodiment of the power of communism.

Like the Collective Man, the Soviet super-soldiers represented various aspects of the USSR. Among them is the character Big Bear - a major in the Red Army.

Omega Red

Omega Red was created already in the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR. Omega Red is a product of genetic engineering by the KGB. He was encased in ice and then thawed out to fight the X-Men. It was assumed that the Omega Red image was created to frighten young children.

Red Rocket

Red Rocket was a member of the Justice League, but then turned into Manhunter - one of the intergalactic robots. They were created by the Guardians of the Universe, who waited a thousand years and then betrayed their heroes.

Red Trinity

Anatoly, Bebek and Cassiopeia are three Russian super-agents who received superpowers as a result of an experiment. They could move at crazy speed.

KGBist

In one of the Batman comics, KGBiste appears, a Russian assassin who tries to kill the President.

Today, at a time when information is making the world smaller and smaller, shuffling cultures, mentalities, nationalities - we will try to look at one of the spoons of such a mix. Namely, what the world of comics looks like east of the prime meridian, all the way to the west, circling the globe. For anyone who is interested in comics more than those who have the opinion that some “pictures for children” seem to be regularly published, and then even sometimes films are made based on them, there are obvious three different schools (methods, styles – can be called differently) comics. American, European schools and manga. Let's figure out what they are, how they are sold, and what they are eaten with.

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American Comic School

Our first landing will be deep into the American continent - from the perspective of a comic book to the homeland of heroism, latex panties on latex leggings and superpowers that imply super responsibility. Here the comic is emotional due to the action, in which main character, as a rule, carries its internal problems and experiences to the end (“Uncle Beeeen!”; “Mr. and Mrs. Wayne!”), and the plot often inevitably moves towards the final distribution of slaps to the supervillain. They gave Otto Octavius a hard time - the end of the chapter, they prevented his plans - it’s time for a break.

It may seem that this opinion is formed from reading the pilot issues about this or that hero (the author is talking nonsense, the author does not understand the issue), but for now we are talking only about the canons, any deviation from which sets the interest and novelty for the comic. It's the dive into the deeper plot that keeps us speculating about Captain America as a Hydra agent in Civil War 2, and the broader character reveal that has fans debating what happens at the climax of The Killing Joke—whether he's choking the Joker or groping the Joker holds by the shoulders.

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In terms of drawing, the American comic is the “golden mean” of the amount of information on the page. Bubbles with text and onomatopoeia (bang; pow; blam; puff, etc.) are read relatively equally as the image itself. That is, the carrier information is supplied in a balanced manner. The backgrounds in the frames are mostly conventional. The color in the fill does not go far from a slight gradient.

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Surprisingly, looking at this entire pantheon of characters and saying this... But there are few unique heroes in American comics. Let me explain what I mean. Let's imagine ourselves as an enterprising comics artist who came to the publishing house here. If the stars align, performance, talent and a bunch of other things - congratulations, we are accepted - we are working on existing ones periodicals. We draw (or come up with a script) Batman, Thor, Hulk. But at the first stage there is most likely something less popular, however, the essence is not ours. The ideas brought into our portfolio (and even more so the new characters) are of no interest to the publishing house. This is a huge industry in which the scriptwriters, storyboarders, inkers, and colorists of the same comic may not even know each other. The result is strong stories of heroes with more than half a century of fame.

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European School of Comics

Well, let's move on. We cross the Atlantic Ocean to land at our next observation point. European comics. School of deep plot and complex detailed drawing. Stylistics differ from one author to another, or even from one work to another. The image here is precisely read. There can be an extremely large amount of information in a frame. At times it can be a whole battle with a lot of action.

Artist - Mobius

To release comics in different genres, you need to go to the appropriate publishing houses. Fantasy - in one place, adventure - another, Science fiction- third, action movie - fourth and the like. The author brings the publisher 5 pages of the comic, a cover and a synopsis of his plot. And the editor decides whether to give the green light to this idea, style, and characters.

European comics are works of visual and literary art that are not about “looking through.” These are mostly large-format hardcover books for reading in more than one sitting.

For a Russian person to perceive comics as a form of art - this particular school is easier than others. A good drawing for us subconsciously is like Repin’s, to hang on the wall. Above the fireplace.

Japanese manga

This is a comic book primarily in a format barely larger than A5. The amount of information that is on one page of an American comic or in one frame of a European one can take up a dozen pages here. Manga is a feeling comic, not an action comic. In a large frame there may be a hero’s face or a huge fur, and the action associated with them is in small quick frames, and most of the backgrounds are prepared standard patterns. The drawings are mainly done by one author (aka screenwriter, storyboard artist, etc.). Sometimes with a couple of assistants. On average, 3 pages a day - crazy productivity by the standards of Americans and Europeans.

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The plot also has a pattern feel to it (as do the backgrounds). It is not the events that are important, but the emotional peaks. The main character gets worse and worse and worse from something. All this tearful overcoming of difficulties invented by the author ends with the last emotional peak, when the protagonist finally feels “good.”

Nowhere does comics cover such a proportion of the population in its popularity as manga in Japan. Nowhere else is the path of an aspiring comic artist (here, mangaka) from idea, talent and enthusiasm to publication so organized. And, perhaps, nowhere is it so difficult to truly become popular among thousands of authors.

An aspiring mangaka with his idea and a “one-shot” (30 finished pages) goes to the publishing house Jump (a thick weekly magazine with new manga on pages made of thin newsprint). If the editor is satisfied with everything, the same race with deadlines and competition with an abundance of other authors for popularity in various polls and competitions begins. When popularity is achieved, it becomes possible to release various merch (posters, art books, action figures), and then the peak itself - the release of anime. All this in close work with the publisher.