Intro 1: the subject

Almost all of these pictures are from comic books.

Comics -- most of which are not actually comic in any traditionally literary or psychological way -- are stories that use words and pictures in combination, and in series.

For the most part, comics are a popular medium and, for a period of time during the middle of the 20th century, American comics could claim to have been a mass medium (Herdling 1996).

For the purposes of this essay, "comics" will refer generally to comic strips, comic pages and comic books, and the more specific terms will be used for their more specific cases. As a singular/collective noun, "comics," like "blues," perches astride a strange grammatical divide in English usage, and there may be a bit of inconsistency about the word's singular or plural usage. In the 1960s, underground publishers often called their products comix, but the alternate name has not stuck very well.

Comic books are a conspicuous sub-genre of the larger comics art-form. North American comic books emerged from the daily comic strips, Sunday comic pages and colour supplements of mass-circulation city newspapers. Newspapers remain the home for other combinations of words and visuals, including editorial cartoons and illustrations, explanatory diagrams, photo essays, and weather maps. With a very few (early) exceptions, this study skips past the newspaper as the birthplace and hearth for modern comics, concentrating on the comic books that appear with a vengeance in the mid-1930s and continue to be published in a variety of formats, as both periodicals and single editions.

While comic books are no longer able to claim mass readership in North America, comics still hang out with other mass media. Newspaper comic strips and single-panel "editorial" cartoons still reach vast numbers of readers on a daily or weekly basis. Paper comics are foundations for film and television animation and occasionally for live-action movies. And forms and habits for reading comics are essential components of reading and learning for children and for adults poorly literate in either their own or a foreign language.

There are other parallel histories of the art-form in the Western industrialized world beyond North America, with different trajectories and chronologies. This particular study is primarily about the images themselves rather than the various histories of the comics industry, so that American and European stories and images (and the occasional Japanese and Canadian content) appear here mixed together without shame. Nonetheless, the historical elements that are here have a North American perspective.

It is tempting to elevate comics and other popular picture-forms (advertising, television, film) as special, even privileged, kinds of material culture because they are overtly both object-system and communication-system. But material culture, broadly defined, intends to embrace the communicative function in "mute" collections of objects, as well as the physical manifestations and relations within social processes like communication in general, or the communications industries in particular.

Accordingly there is no particular claim here to special status in the study of material culture for comics. Indeed, despite their evident cultural complexities and sophistication, their wide distribution and recognition in Western and lately even Eastern culture streams, and some very astonishing artistic leaps, comics just don't get much respect at all.

In large measure, low opinion about comic content tends to rub off on the comic form, emphatically so in English-speaking cultures. And much of the subject matter depicted in comics does not get societal respect. "Cartoonish" or "comic-book" and derivative adjectives are seriously pejorative terms in critical writing. Perhaps that is because comics attract attention fairly easily, whether deserved or not -- a trait that certainly undercuts a fundamental concept of merit, in scholarship or in the arts, or in any society that holds hierarchies dear.

Most of the pages and books shown here were not created for children, but children can and do read them. Because comics appear at first glance to be easy to read (and often are), there has been a running controversy about the suitability of comics content for children since their first mass publication in turn-of-the-20th-century newspapers. In the United States, the controversy reached frenzy level during the McCarthy era at mid-century. Major American comics publishers catering to teenagers and adults imposed on themselves a form of censorship aimed to protect younger children -- at least aimed to give the impression of protection in order to preempt actual government censorship (Daniels 1971: 83–99). The "Comics Code" is still in effect.

How many X-Men to a Bilderstreifen?

		Ephemeral landscapes: introduction Subject: popular views of the world

`LITTLE PICTURES` `MATERIAL CULTURE MODELS` `OF THE PAGE` `IN THE PAGE` `INTEGRATING IMAGES` `COPY(RIGHTS)` `BIBLIOGRAPHY (citations)` `BIBLIOGRAPHY (annotated)` `LINKS` `Topics in material culture` `website`		This work looks at some kinds of popular representations of the places where we live: certain kinds of pictures of human environments, particularly of cities and places within cities. These pictures are sometimes objects, sometimes images of objects, and sometimes ideas about images about objects. Almost all of these pictures are from comic books. Comics -- most of which are not actually comic in any traditionally literary or psychological way -- are stories that use words and pictures in combination, and in series. For the most part, comics are a popular medium and, for a period of time during the middle of the 20th century, American comics could claim to have been a mass medium (Herdling 1996). For the purposes of this essay, "comics" will refer generally to comic strips, comic pages and comic books, and the more specific terms will be used for their more specific cases. As a singular/collective noun, "comics," like "blues," perches astride a strange grammatical divide in English usage, and there may be a bit of inconsistency about the word's singular or plural usage. In the 1960s, underground publishers often called their products comix, but the alternate name has not stuck very well. Comic books are a conspicuous sub-genre of the larger comics art-form. North American comic books emerged from the daily comic strips, Sunday comic pages and colour supplements of mass-circulation city newspapers. Newspapers remain the home for other combinations of words and visuals, including editorial cartoons and illustrations, explanatory diagrams, photo essays, and weather maps. With a very few (early) exceptions, this study skips past the newspaper as the birthplace and hearth for modern comics, concentrating on the comic books that appear with a vengeance in the mid-1930s and continue to be published in a variety of formats, as both periodicals and single editions. While comic books are no longer able to claim mass readership in North America, comics still hang out with other mass media. Newspaper comic strips and single-panel "editorial" cartoons still reach vast numbers of readers on a daily or weekly basis. Paper comics are foundations for film and television animation and occasionally for live-action movies. And forms and habits for reading comics are essential components of reading and learning for children and for adults poorly literate in either their own or a foreign language. There are other parallel histories of the art-form in the Western industrialized world beyond North America, with different trajectories and chronologies. This particular study is primarily about the images themselves rather than the various histories of the comics industry, so that American and European stories and images (and the occasional Japanese and Canadian content) appear here mixed together without shame. Nonetheless, the historical elements that are here have a North American perspective. It is tempting to elevate comics and other popular picture-forms (advertising, television, film) as special, even privileged, kinds of material culture because they are overtly both object-system and communication-system. But material culture, broadly defined, intends to embrace the communicative function in "mute" collections of objects, as well as the physical manifestations and relations within social processes like communication in general, or the communications industries in particular. Accordingly there is no particular claim here to special status in the study of material culture for comics. Indeed, despite their evident cultural complexities and sophistication, their wide distribution and recognition in Western and lately even Eastern culture streams, and some very astonishing artistic leaps, comics just don't get much respect at all. In large measure, low opinion about comic content tends to rub off on the comic form, emphatically so in English-speaking cultures. And much of the subject matter depicted in comics does not get societal respect. "Cartoonish" or "comic-book" and derivative adjectives are seriously pejorative terms in critical writing. Perhaps that is because comics attract attention fairly easily, whether deserved or not -- a trait that certainly undercuts a fundamental concept of merit, in scholarship or in the arts, or in any society that holds hierarchies dear. Most of the pages and books shown here were not created for children, but children can and do read them. Because comics appear at first glance to be easy to read (and often are), there has been a running controversy about the suitability of comics content for children since their first mass publication in turn-of-the-20th-century newspapers. In the United States, the controversy reached frenzy level during the McCarthy era at mid-century. Major American comics publishers catering to teenagers and adults imposed on themselves a form of censorship aimed to protect younger children -- at least aimed to give the impression of protection in order to preempt actual government censorship (Daniels 1971: 83–99). The "Comics Code" is still in effect. How many X-Men to a Bilderstreifen?
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Subject: popular views of the world