comic

Comics is a visual medium used to express ideas via images, often combined with text or visual information. Comics frequently takes the form of juxtaposed sequences of panels of images. Often textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and sound effects ("onomatopoeia") indicate dialogue, narration, or other information. Elements such as size and arrangement of panels control narrative pacing. Cartooning and similar forms of illustration are the most common image-making means in comics; fumetti is a form which uses photographic images. Common forms of comics include comic strips, editorial and gag cartoons, and comic books. Since the late 20th century, bound volumes such as graphic novels, comics albums, and tankōbon have become increasingly common, and online webcomics have proliferated.

The history of comics has followed divergent paths in different cultures. Scholars have posited a pre-history as far back as the Lascaux cave paintings. By the mid-20th century, comics flourished particularly in the US, western Europe (particularlyFrance and Belgium), and Japan. European comics traces its history to Rodolphe Töpffer's cartoon strips of the 1830s, and became popular following the 1920s success of strips such as The Adventures of Tintin. American comics emerged as amass medium in the early 20th century with the advent of newspaper comic strips; magazine-style comic books followed in the 1930s. Japanese comics and cartooning ("manga") traces its history to the 13th century. Modern comic strips emerged in Japan in the early 20th-century in imitation of Western strips, and by the 1930s comics magazines and book collections became common. The post-World War II era saw the popularity of cartoonists such as Osamu Tezuka lead to rapid expansion of the popularity of comics in Japan.

Comics has had a lowbrow reputation for much of its history, but towards the end of the 20th century began to find greater acceptance with the public and within academia. The English term comics derives from the humorous (or comic) work which predominated in early American newspaper comic strips; usage of the term has become standard also for non-humorous works. It is common in English to refer to the comics of different cultures by the terms used in their original languages, such as "manga" for Japanese comics, or "bandes dessinées" for French-language comics. There is no consensus amongst 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. The increasing cross-pollination of concepts from different comics cultures and eras has further made defining the medium difficult.