U9 Lesson 1: Comics & Graphic novel story telling

 Lesson 1: Comics & Graphic novel story telling

Comic books and cartoon strips have been around for a very long time from the earliest cave paintings depicting graphic scenes to the digital comics we see today. Comics have developed their own style, characters and following. Comics have served many purposes; firstly to entertain but secondly, in the case of some comics, to purvey a message to those who read it.

Spider woman #1 was the top comic in March 2020

$1.2 billion comic and graphic novel sales in 2019 \

Quick Search

The website displayed that Marvel comics dominated the comic industry during March 2020 in terms of retail market share as well as unit market share as they have over 40% shares. DC comics follows behind as they dominate almost a third of this market with around a 27% share. On top of this, both Marvel and DC shipped the most Comics and Graphic novels in March 2020. These increase in sales were probably down to the pandemic and people being stuck at home meaning people had to entertain themselves yes with content.

Purpose of comics

Why people might read comics:

• Escapism
• Entertainment
• Pop culture reasons
• The art and drawings inside

“Comics can inform, persuade, and encourage new behaviours in readers” -gov book talk

Different comic formats

Comic Book - A softcover magazine of sequential artwork (pictures in order) and words that are used together to tell a story. The cover is usually a glossy paper with a higher quality paper interior similar to that of a newspaper. The spine is stapled together. Comic books today cover a variety of subjects such as horror, fantasy, sci-fi, crime, real life, and many others. The most well known comic book genre is superhero and heightened reality.

Comic Strip - You would find these in newspapers, such as Garfield. These are what were originally referred to as ‘comics’

Graphic Novel - These are thicker, and glue bound books. This format has been used by some publishers to help differentiate the content from comics with more mature subjects and content matter. Graphic Novels tend to include complete narratives and cover a wide array of genres. Latest, graphic novels have seen a large amount of success by collecting comic series and then allowing purchasers to read a while comic story in one sitting/book.

Webcomics - This term is used to describe both comic strips and comic books that can be found on the internet.  Webcomics tend to be smaller attempts by people who just wan to find a creative outlet, but others have turned their webcomics into successful industries such as Player vs. Player, penny Arcade, Order Of The Stick, and Ctrl, Alt, Del.