Portal:Comics

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Introduction

Comics are a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically takes the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information. There is no consensus among theorists and historians on a definition of comics; some emphasize the combination of images and text, some sequentiality or other image relations, and others historical aspects such as mass reproduction or the use of recurring characters. Cartooning and other forms of illustration are the most common image-making means in comics; Photo comics is a form that uses photographic images. Common forms include comic strips, editorial and gag cartoons, and comic books. Since the late 20th century, bound volumes such as graphic novels, comic albums, and tankōbon have become increasingly common, along with webcomics as well as scientific/medical comics.

The English term comics is used as a singular noun when it refers to the medium itself (e.g. "Comics is a visual art form."), but becomes plural when referring to works collectively (e.g. "Comics are popular reading material."). (Full article...)

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The Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story is given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories told in graphic form and published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. It has been awarded annually since 2009. The Hugo Awards have been described as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing".

In the 19 nomination years, 106 works from 66 series have been nominated, including Retro Hugos. Works from 13 different series have won the award, including Retro Hugos. Girl Genius, written by Kaja and Phil Foglio, drawn by Phil Foglio, and colored by Cheyenne Wright, won the first three awards. After their third straight win in 2011, the Girl Genius team announced that, in order to show the category was a "viable award", they were refusing nomination for the following year (after which the award was up for re-ratification); Girl Genius was nominated a fourth time in 2014. For the following five years, the award was taken by a different series or work every year, and included both webcomics and installments of published series. The 2017–2019 awards saw the second series to win three times, Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's Monstress, and has been followed since by different works each year. The three Retro Hugos were won by early comic books such as Bill Finger and Bob Kane's Batman #1, William Moulton Marston and H. G. Peter's Wonder Woman #5: "Battle for Womanhood", and Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman: "The Mysterious Mr. Mxyzptlk". Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples's Saga has the most nominations at eight, followed by Monstress at seven and Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary at five, while Bill Willingham's Fables, Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's Paper Girls, and Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon have been nominated four times. Nine other works have at least two nominations.

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Anniversaries for May 14

1924: birth of Brad Anderson, American cartoonist and creator of the comic strip Marmaduke
1936: birth of Lambil, Belgian comics artist best known for Les Tuniques Bleues
1955: birth of Dave Hoover, American comic book artist known for runs on The Wanderers, Starman and Captain America
1957: birth of Gary Leach, American comic book comics writer, artist, translator, art director, and production manager, known for his work on Disney comics
1970: birth of Norm Feuti, American cartoonist known for the comic strips Retail and Gil
1993: death of Gerda Gattel, American comic book letterer for DC Comics

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General images

The following are images from various comics-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Sequential depictions on Trajan's Column in Rome, Italy (from History of comics)
Image 2Convention crowd outside of Golden Hall in 1982 (from San Diego Comic-Con)
Image 3Chōjū-giga (12th century), traditionally attributed to a monk-artist Kakuyū (Toba Sōjo) (from History of manga)
Image 4Image of bathers from the Hokusai manga (from History of manga)
Image 5Comic-Con crowd inside the second floor of the convention center in 2011 waiting for the exhibition hall to open (from San Diego Comic-Con)
Image 6Cover of Illustrated Chips in 1896 featuring the first appearance of the long-running comic strip of the tramps Weary Willie and Tired Tim. (from British comics)
Image 7During panels at comic book conventions, the audience is sometimes invited to line up and ask questions using a dedicated microphone. (from Comic book convention)
Image 8Hokusai Manga (early 19th century) (from History of manga)
Image 9
Comics artist Mœbius (2008), who achieved international renown through Métal Hurlant
(from Bande dessinée)
Image 10Japanese wood block illustration from 19th century (from History of manga)
Image 11The French comic Les Pieds Nickelés (1954 book cover): an early 20th-century forerunner of the modern Franco-Belgian comic (from Bande dessinée)
Image 12Close Hergé collaborator and magazine contributor Bob de Moor (from Bande dessinée)
Image 13The San Diego Convention Center during Comic-Con in 2013 (from San Diego Comic-Con)
Image 14Comic Con crowds in 2011 as seen from a helicopter (from San Diego Comic-Con)
Image 15Phoenix Fan Fusion's 2017 convention in Phoenix, Arizona (from Comic book convention)
Image 16Cover to 27 December 1884 edition of Ally Sloper's Half Holiday. (from British comics)
Image 17A page by Rodolphe Töpffer, whose work is considered influential in shaping the comics form. (from History of comics)
Image 18A Fallout Cosplayer photographed at a Comic Con in a Fallout Themed area (from Comic book convention)

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Kake has been described as "a sort of Johnny Appleseed ... spreading the seeds of liberated, mutually satisfying, ecstatically explicit gay sex"?
... that John Byrne retold the origin of Superman in the 1986 comic book limited series The Man of Steel, 48 years after the character was created?
... that although Blizzard's franchise Overwatch is centered around video games, its lore is mainly told through animated shorts, comics, and novels?
... that Fabrizio Dori wants his comic book Il dio vagabondo to bring attention to an ancient Greek view of death?
... that The Steranko History of Comics has been described as the first piece of cultural analysis on American comic books?
... that while Marvel Comics originally designated the main reality depicted in the MCU multiverse as Earth-199999, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness established it as Earth-616?
... that Steve Englehart wrote the Captain America comic book storyline "Secret Empire" as an allegory for the Watergate scandal?
... that comic book artist Barry Windsor-Smith wrote, drew, inked, and lettered every page of his graphic novel Monsters by himself?

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Credit: Jim Henderson

Midtown Comics is a New York City comic book retailer with three shops in Manhattan and an e-commerce website. The largest comic book store in the United States, the company opened its first store in the Times Square area in 1997. Its second was opened on Lexington Avenue in 2004, and is known as the Grand Central store for its proximity to Grand Central Terminal.

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More did you know...

...that publication of comics in Hungary largely stopped during World War II due to Nazi pressure?

... that the graphic novel Building Stories by Chris Ware was published as a box that contained fourteen printed objects, including cloth-bound books, newspapers, broadsheets, and flip books?

... that Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book (1959) was the first book-length work of original comics in the United States?

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The comics medium is a very specialized area of the Arts, home to many rare and talented blooms and flowering imaginations and it breaks my heart to see so many of our best and brightest bowing down to the same market pressures which drive lowest-common-denominator blockbuster movies and television cop shows. Let's see if we can call time on this trend by demanding and creating big, wild comics which stretch our imaginations. Let's make living breathing, sprawling adventures filled with mind-blowing images of things unseen on Earth. Let's make artefacts that are not faux-games or movies but something other, something so rare and strange it might as well be a window into another universe because that's what it is.

— Grant Morrison

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