Before touching on the history of the origins of comics, it would be a good idea to understand adequately what a comic book is and why it is not necessarily the adventure story of “Batman” and “Spiderman. Let’s take this question literally, straightforwardly, and without including any manifestations of fantasy. Comics are pictures with which a story is told. Sometimes authors and contributing artists can use text for clarity of narrative, or they can limit themselves to a trivial statement of fact by illustrating a couple of fragments from a real or fictional story. Now let’s turn on our brains and think about what it looks like.
It seems that primitive people did something similar-rock art, and you can’t call it anything other than comics in the modern interpretation. What fits the analogy next? Egypt, of course. Oh, yes. The famous painted walls of pharaohs’ tombs, local dishes, etc. Same thing? Of course it is. Well, we’ll also include frescoes and religious mosaics from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Isn’t that a comic book? It is a comic book. Only in a very specific interpretation, the comic is still a product of the various newspapers and magazines that began to flood European cities first, and then the world. And even though comics were transferred to electronic formats as well, we should still consider as a starting point the first paper newspapers, in which the authors used drawings to try to tell a story, most often of a religious nature.
And now let us take a closer look at the name. Comic, from the English comic – funny, amusing. It turns out that the main purpose of comics – to make people laugh. But do all comics look like a bunch of jokes and funny lines? Of course not. Even the infamous stories about Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse have not always been distinguished by a comedic plot. Sometimes you had to meet something remotely resembling a life drama. So it’s no coincidence that in many countries of the world the comic book has its own name, which does not hint at the humorous purpose of this form of visual and written art. More often than not, all these names boil down to a simple definition – “graphic story”, “graphic novel”, “manga”. This is the truth of the matter.
If we put aside the various publications of a religious nature of the 16th and 17th century, in which biblical stories are retold, the first comic strip could be called the work of Rodolphe Tepfer, who was originally from Switzerland. It was the 19th century and the printing industry was beginning to gain popularity. Machines began to appear in all the developed parts of Europe. Eventually, printing in the form of newspapers and printed books got bored, and enthusiasts appeared, who developed with great pleasure a new genre – stories in pictures. They began to amuse the local public.
Such little books with illustrated stories loved to buy not only for themselves, but also as gifts. It turned out a kind of greeting card with a spread. The first postcards of this kind were really humorous, so it is appropriate to name a specific date of appearance exactly comics – 1830. This was the first work by Rodolphe Tepfer.
In the U.S., the first comic strip came out only in 1892, and it was called “The Bear Cubs and the Tiger. Then began to appear similar and uncomplicated stories. More often than not, comics in newspapers were done by cartoonists who were given overtime as a comic book writer. But interest in comics began to grow at such a serious pace that they had to dedicate a separate position for this business with a separate rate. But it was only the dawn of a cult, which in the future was destined to grow into some kind of subculture.