Beginnings: The Evolution of Sequential Art
It seems that from its creation comics were destined to be the food of the masses. Although Roger Sabir tells us that, “the comic itself is an invention of the nineteenth century...” he also remarks that “its antecedents date back to the Middle ages.” (10) These antecedents were called broadsheets and were in fact sketches of public executions, such as hangings and burnings, and were made as souvenirs for the public. (Sabir 10) The fact that this type of entertainment was so popular is very telling of the history of comics because it presents them as a sort of crude diversion for the people from its very inception. These broadsheets were not intended to tell a story and did not possess any type of social commentary, and in fact the main aim of the sheets was to “make as much money...for as little outlay as possible.” (Sabir 12) Although webcomics today may not depict hangings, many strips will make use of crude jokes and lack any real commentary on their topic, and in a similar way they too become a souvenir of particular pop cultural event for the masses. This can be seen in the fact that most webcomics are made of image files that can be easily downloaded into one's own computer to keep. One such an instance of this occurring was upon the death of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, where many webcomics took it upon themselves to relay the news to the world of his death in a comical way.
In a way webcomics parallel the distribution of broadsheets because they show the way in which both of these allowed for an audience to live through private moments vicariously through these images. However, at the same time another thing that webcomics have in common with the phenomenon of broadsheets, is the fact that both broadsheets and webcomics are made for the most profit for the least effort. Webcomics do it in a different way however, where what matters is not necessarily the immediate monetary gain but the traffic that the website will get from strips such as the strip on Jobs. Furthermore, these “pre-comics” were directed at the masses, but more specifically the illiterate uneducated masses. These broadsheets contained rarely any text and were only meant as a diversion, but when publishers decided to go in a different direction and began to market them to the the higher classes this changed.
One example of this is the work of William Hogarth, who is considered to be the father of sequential art, the basis of what comics are today. Hogarth brought in a more moralistic element into comics, but he and artists like him, also helped to create more costly versions of these broadsheets that were “designed for a middle-class, monied audience with some knowledge of politics.”(Sabir 12) It can then be said that the division between a comic and a political cartoon has always been set by class and money, a dynamic that would not really change through out the years. Webcomics today rarely step out of their world of comedy and pop culture references to discuss anything serious, let alone do they venture into discussing morality. In a sense thanks to the development of webcomics this line of difference has become even more visible because webcomics are made for the people by the people, where as the political cartoon continues to be created by the expert, schooled, cartoonist and are published in newspapers and magazines such as The New Yorker. Despite the fact that there is a comical element to the political cartoon it is its lack of approachability in terms of language and topics which have always posed a problem, while comics have always been meant to be unambiguous and easy to follow.
During the early nineteenth century magazines began to circulate and these possessed an element of social commentary in their comics but it was during this time that speech bubbles became a main future in comics. Sabir tells us that these works that were directed at a middle class audience and were far from the sequential art works of Hogarth, and were in fact less ornate and began to “[make] extensive use of word balloons.” (14) It is interesting to note this difference because in Hogarth's art there were but a few phrases below the prints and the moral of the story for the most part was implied by looking at the sequence, which assumed that the elite aristocracy would understand its meaning without much aid. However, when comics became available to the middle class one of the first things to become dominant was the use of the word bubble, suggesting that the lower classes were less likely to comprehend the humor, or the moral of the comic if the meaning was not directly pointed to by the writer. Similarly, one of the main features of webcomics is they are simple to follow, and deal with topics that do not require any type of specialized knowledge, or training, only common knowledge of pop culture.
The more affordable it was to print paper and make publications the more widely spread magazines became during the nineteenth century. This decrease in cost of production lead to a spread of magazines that involved comics far from just the reach of the aristocracy or the middle class. One example of this is the penny dreadful that later became extremely popular in the late nineteenth century. These “were serialized prose stories...with accompanying pictures, commonly involving tales that glorified criminals, but also anti-aristocratic romances” and were “designed for a working class readership.” (Sabir 14) This shift from a political cartoon or comic that would comment on societal issues into topics that were of a comical nature shows that as the cartoon worked its way down the social latter certain topics were made exclusive and were reserved for the aristocracy, or the higher classes. Works relevant to the lower classes were meant to tell a cautionary tales, while the comics that were available for the higher classes would contain commentary that would bring about an intellectual discussion. The comics that were specifically designed for the working class dealt with the lives of criminals and the evils of the aristocracy, but they no longer possessed the political/social critique that had distinguish them previously. The masses were being discouraged from engaging in the political fervor of their time and were being pushed to lose themselves in a world of laughter and comedy. In American society “the most popular of the early strip genres was the domestic comedy” and also those that were “lightweight, and [placed] an emphasis on slapstick.” (Sabir 24) The majority of Americans in the early twentieth century were not interested in reading comics that dealt with political or social issues, that were serious, or thought provoking, and rather were interested in the laughs and the visual appeal that comics provided.
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