Comics

We should start wondering, what is a comic? A comic book is a series of illustrations that form a story in some cases with or without text. The story is counted sequentially. Scott McCloud, essayist and comic theoretical defined as: "juxtaposed illustrations and other images in sequence with the purpose of transmitting information or obtain a response from the reader". Now that we know what is a comic book we can understand that a comic book as such is not more than a format to distribute and publish a comic. This publication method is very used in the United States.

However, in its early days the comic was not recognized as an art form, but as a sub-product that was used for different kind of social studies. Despite this, the comic books were claimed in the 60's and are today recognized as the ninth art, thanks to the influence that took from the cinema and literature. We must also begin to realise the comic books have gone out the paper and they have been part of advertising, fashion and obviously cinema.

We can now begin to see comic book by its importance as a literary genre. It is clear that today comics are widely used in various media narrative means. The great advantage that has is that it has an excellent flexibility to tell stories of all kinds, from science fiction, horror, romance, western.

Comic book started to become more of a valid genre during the early 1980s, when the way to use the comic as narracion gave a great leap with authors like Alan Moore and Frank Miller. From these two authors the comic gave a 360º turn and became a genre much more seriously and stopped being regarded lightly.

The time of increased recognition of comic books was when in 1986 Art Spiegelman wins a pulitzer Prize for his Maus work. Is in that moment that the comic begins to be recognised as an excellent literary narrative genre and begins to be looked not only as a book for children but also for adults. This was the birth of what is today known as the graphic novel. This latest achievement capture the attention of a public more mature by their stories in such a way that many newspapers began to use the phrase: "the comics are no longer just for children". A clear example of the success that took the comic books was in the mid 80's when Batman: The Dark Knight Returns of Frank Miller maintained for 40 weeks as the most sold book in the lists of books of U.K.

It is amazing as this genre already is coming to a century of existence and has taken a greater role in the past few years. It evolved from a simple product for children to be considered an art. And today is recognized as a successful literary genre that can communicate through varied kinds of stories. The comic books have to give much more, and slowly it has integrated with other media such as advertising which makes them a real successful literary genre.