Monday 24 January 2011

AOB1

History of Graphic Novels

The earliest sequential art that known to us is cave paintings, the main difference between cave paintings and pictures is that cave paintings are made up of scenes, this shows us that the story would have lasted a lot longer than a picture would have.



Tombs and hieroglyphics are next on the list, we know that these were created by the Egyptians. A good example of one of these would be the scribe of menna. This is a picture of 3/4 people and it tells a story between them, to me and you it could now be known as a story book without words. Egyptians read the tombs and hieroglyphics different to what we do they read it with in an S shape e.g see the picture below, and follow the arrows.


Bayeux Tapestry is similar to hieroglyphics, it is different due to the fact that it is sewn it also tells a story, this is the most famous Tapestry, it is the one that tells the story of the Norman conquest of England. The main character of the tapestry is William the Conqueror.



William Hogarth was famous for this painting, it tells a story and in telling it his intention was to mock the upper class, this was shown usually as 6 of his paintings next to each other that were read as a sequence, which were designed to be shown side by side to tell the story.



In the Early 1800s Rodolph Toppffer created sequential art, it is bordering on being a comic but it is lacking speech bubbles, this makes it an image and not being the start of a comic. We can see  that this is sequential art because there is a lack of framed borders, there is writing on the image, the fact they are small, there is no colour, and it is mass produced.


The Gutenburg press changed society massively by printing books, this meant that people got everything they wanted to read in the comfort of their own home, this made things so much easier for people and it boosted sales of books as people could read them from their home.


Yellow Kid emerged as a main character in Hogan's alley it was one of the first Sunday supplement comics in an American newspaper.  Yellow Kid was bald, gap toothed, and always in a yellow nightshirt.  He also hung around in a ghetto alley filled with equally odd characters, mostly other children. He was drawn by Richard F. Outcalt. It first appeared in 1894 in black and white, and on the 5th May 1895 it was first published in colour.  Although the idea of graphics had been used previously it was a new and major thing to have been published as a supplement to a newspaper and being mass produced.





CCA (comic code authority), then had to investigate, (They are a little similar to the film world and their rules (BBFC). The CCA were checking to see that everything was legitimate in the comics, so that children weren't seeing anything that would be seen as too horrific. This was due to the fact that they didn't want the children's minds being corrupted.

Mad Magazine was groundbreaking as it made a move from being a typical comic into being a magazine.  The rules previously set by the CCA did not include what Mad Magazine was trying to do and therefore they had to change the rules to include this new way of thinking.   This lead the way for magazines as we know them today. And to this day, Mad magazine is still running successfully.