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Sunday 15 June 2014

Comic Book

Many of the tropes we associate with comic book superheroes were invented by a woman, Baroness Emma Orczy, who wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905. Orczy's premise of a daring hero who cultivates a secret identity disguised by a meek or ineffectual manner was followed the Shadow, the Spider, the Phantom, Superman and Batman within a few decades, and the trope remains a popular one in serial fiction today.

The Adventures of Tintin was first published in Belgium on January 10, 1929. The series originally appeared in French in Le Petit Vingtième, a youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle.

The front page of the 1 May 1930 edition of Le Petit Vingtième, declaring "Tintin Returns!"


The first comic book to be sold regularly and the first to be issued as a periodical was Famous Funnies, published by the Dell Publishing Co at a price of 10c. It debuted on newstands on March 1, 1934.

On April 18, 1938 Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, made his debut in Action Comics #1, the first true superhero comic book.

Action Comics #1 features the first appearance of several comic book heroes. For this reason it is widely considered both the beginning of the superhero genre and the most valuable comic book of all time. A copy of Action Comics #1 was sold in April 2021 on eBay for  $3.25 million, the then-highest price paid for a single issue of a comic book.

The actor Nicolas Cage's copy of Action Comics #1 was stolen from his house and found in an abandoned storage locker 11 years later.

Cover of Action Comics 1 (Jun 1938 DC Comics). Art by Joe Shuster, art, and Jack Adler, Wikipedia Commons

Captain Marvel was created in 1939 by artist C. C. Beck and writer Bill Parker. His face was modeled after the actor Fred MacMurray.

In 1939  DC Comics published its second major superhero in Detective Comics #27; he was Batman, one of the most popular comic book superheroes of all time. He made his first appearance under the name "Bat-Man"

Marvel’s Black Widow was the first costumed, super-powered, female comic character. She first appears in Mystic Comics #4 (cover dated August 1940).

Captain America is a fictional superhero from the Marvel Comics. He made his first appearance in the comic book Captain America Comics #1 on December 20, 1940. The issue sold almost a million copies. The cover shows the captain punching out Hitler a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but a full year into World War II.

Captain America w quickly became one of the most popular superheroes of World War II. The character's patriotic themes and his ability to defeat the Nazis resonated with American audiences, and the comic book series was a huge success. In its first year of publication, Captain America Comics sold over one million copies per month. This was an unprecedented number for a comic book, and it far outstripped the circulation of news magazines such as Time.

Marvel Comics once owned the trademark to the word "zombie."

The series of Asterix comic books first appeared in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959. Over 350 million copies of the Asterix comic books have been sold worldwide in 111 languages.

The cast of Asterix Wikipedia

Although Gaulish leaders’ names really did end in -ix, the Asterix comic’s characters’ names include magic potion brewing druid Getafix, the mysterious Doublosix (one short of 007), the portly Vitalstatistix and his awkward wife Impedimenta.

Published in September 1959, the 140 page Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book was the first mass-market paperback of original comics content in the United States

The Marvel comics superhero The Hulk was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby and first appeared in the debut issue of The Incredible Hulk (May 1962).

Spider-Man made his debut in issue 15 of Marvel Comics’ Amazing Fantasy on August 10, 1962. Stan Lee had the original idea for Spider Man but Steve Ditko came up with his 'spider-sense' of danger and created villains including the Green Goblin and Sandman.

Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962). Wikipedia Commons.

The creation of Iron Man in Tales of Suspense #39 (cover dated March 1963) was based on a challenge by Stan Lee's publisher Martin Goodman saying create a superhero that's a “wealthy capitalist war profiteer.” The "Golden Avenger" made his solo debut with The Invincible Iron Man #1 (May 1968).

Cover of Iron Man vol. 1, 1 (May 1968 Marvel Comics) By Wikipedia

Members of the rock group Kiss provided Marvel Comics in 1977 with a vial of their blood to be mixed with the red ink used to print their upcoming comic book.

The first comic books in Japan appeared during the 18th century in the form of woodblock-printed booklets containing short stories drawn from folk tales, legends, and historical accounts, told in a simple visual-verbal idiom.

A manga store in Japan. By Doc Sleeve at the German language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia Commons

One Piece by Japanese manga artist Eiichiro Oda is the best-selling manga series of all time with over 345 million copies in circulation worldwide, It was first serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine (Shueisha) in Japan, back in December 1997.

Approximately one fifth of all the publications in Japan are comic books.

Egyptian Queen is a painting by American artist Frank Frazetta, made in 1969 for the cover of the horror-comic magazine Eerie. The original painting was sold on May 16, 2019 for $5.4 million, which set a new world record for comic art sold at an auction.

Egyptian Queen (1969) by Frank Frazetta

Nicolas Cage's real name is Nicolas Coppola—his stage name was inspired by Marvel's Luke Cage, one of his favorite comic characters.

The Black Panther is allegedly the richest comic character. He is worth an estimated $90.7 billion making him richer than Tony Stark, 12.4 billion and Bruce Wayne, $9.2 billion

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