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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.

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In the graphic novel 'Maus' Art Speiglman makes the different aces and nationality's into animals examples would include The Jewish as mice, the German's as cats, polish people are represented by pigs and americans as dogs. In the graphic novel speiglman shows the chain of how people are thought of the example would be the germans are more important and of a higher class than the Jewsish and Cats Kill Mice as the Germans Killed the Jews.
He ristricts us from seeing the individual personalitys of the characters so we only see each nationality as a whole instead of each to their own.

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This is a comic front page I created reminiscent of the 1950s when the CCA was in full swing.  The brief was to produce a cover that would be banned.

The CCA (The comics code authority) was first introduced in 1954 as a system to filter out any material in comic books that people believe would offend children. The CCA was created shortly after the release of the Frederick Wertham book Seduction of the Innocent, stating how comic books influenced the minds of children. The CCA was based on the Association of comics magazine publishers (ACMP) founded in 1948, but was rarely enforced. The CCA was much stricter than its predecessors. A few examples of the CCA rules include:

1. In every instance the hero must win and the villain punished for his evil deeds.
2. No comic can have the words "horror", "crime", or "terror" in the title of the comic
3. Profanity , obscenity and any words or symbols that have undesirable meaning can not be placed in a comic
4. Any attack on any religious or racial group is prohibited

While the CCA was an optional route for the comic industry, many magazine distributors would only sell comics that had the CCA seal on them. Some companies were able the survive well through the CCA while others had to adapt their comics in order to make the money they needed. However, William Gaines, owner of EC comics, believed that the banning of the words horror, crime and terror, on the front cover on a comic was deliberately targeting his own best-selling comics Crime SuspenStories, The Vault of Horror, and The Crypt of Terror. Because of these restrictions, EC comics had to cancel all of its titles except for the MAD comics, making EC comics very unprofitable. William Gaines went on to try and counter the CCA by reprinting a comic called judgment day from Weird Fantasy#18 toIncredible Science Fiction#33. It was printed as a replacement for another code-disapproved comic story, but the CCA also disapproved this because the of the main character being black. The story (written by Gaines) was a message against the evils of racism, which wouldn't be shown if the main character wasn't black, and if the CCA didn't allow this story to run, he said that he would make sure that the world knew why. This resulted in the CCA allowing this story to be run. Soon afterwards, from the sheer restrictions that the CCA imposed on his comics, Gaines decided to quit the comic business to concentrate on the MAD magazine.
During the 60's the comic industry went underground, selling more adult comics without CCA approval, causing some but not massive success.
The CCA between these times had started to revise their laws as more subjects they opposed became more socially acceptable.In the late 90s and during the beginning of the 21st century, more and more comic book business now publish their comics without CCA approval. Also, more comic book stores have shown up, meaning more, non-code comics can reach a larger audience. As the CCA is starting to become less important as the time goes by, the only major businesses that still submit their work to the CCA before selling (as of 2007) are DC comics and Archie comics, though DC comics only submit a small amount of their work.
An example of a recently banned comic is MurderDrome, made by Al Ewing and Paul J. Holden in Belfast, banned by Apple, as it was available on the Apple iTunes store. The reason for this was for the amount of excessive violence that was shown in the comic.

Lately, the government has gotten round to closing loopholes, stopping creation of certain images that were able to be allowed under old schemes, one of the mainly concerned "Child Pornography". Due to the release of the new Coroners and Justice bill that came into effect earlier this year, (although it is being reviewed at the moment) would make some well known graphic novels become banned, such as two Alan Moore Graphic novelists, Watchmen and The lost girls. Because of this, a comic book alliance was formed by Alan Moore's daughter, to help out any comic book creators, as this bill has the potential to land innocent people into jail over possession of a newly banned comic book.