104-479: Little Annie Fanny is a comics series by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder . It appeared in 107 two- to seven-page episodes in Playboy magazine from October 1962 to September 1988. Little Annie Fanny is a humorous satire of contemporary American society and its sexual mores. Annie Fanny, the title character, is a statuesque, buxom young blonde woman who innocently finds herself nude in every episode. The series
208-627: A lowbrow reputation for much of their history, but towards the end of the 20th century, they began to find greater acceptance with the public and academics. The English term comics is used as a singular noun when it refers to the medium itself (e.g. " Comics is a visual art form."), but becomes plural when referring to works collectively (e.g. " Comics are popular reading material."). The comics may be further adapted to animations (anime), dramas, TV shows, movies. The European, American, and Japanese comics traditions have followed different paths. Europeans have seen their tradition as beginning with
312-629: A mortar and pestle , then pour it into a ceramic dish where it could dry. To use the dry mixture, a wet brush would be applied until it rehydrated, or more commonly in East Asian calligraphy, a dry solid ink stick was rubbed against an inkstone with water. Like Chinese black inks, the black inks of the Greeks and Romans were also stored in solid form before being ground and mixed with water for usage. In contrast to Chinese inks that were permanent, these inks could be washed away with water. Pine soot
416-425: A "worldwide search for the actress" who would "portray Little Annie Fanny in a live-action movie". In 2000, Playboy TV approached Mainframe Entertainment to create a CGI animated television series based on Little Annie Fanny , but no series was ever produced. Twenty-six early episodes of the comic were reprinted in book form by Playboy Press in 1966 and 1972. After Kurtzman's death in 1993, Playboy revived
520-443: A Goodman Beaver strip of two, three, or four pages, but using a sexy girl ... is a bull's eye. We can run it every issue." Kurtzman recruited his long-time collaborator Will Elder to work on the strip's illustrations. He suggested to Elder an "outlineless", painted style, then thought the strip would be better suited by an India inked , outlined comic book style with flat color behind it. Hefner, whose opinion prevailed, preferred
624-503: A catty (approx. 0.5 kg) of oil. The lampwick used in the making of lampblack was first soaked in the juice of Lithospermum officinale before burning. A skillful artisan could tend to 200 lamps at once. For the second process, the ink was derived from pine wood from which the resin had been removed. The pine wood was burnt in a rounded chamber made from bamboo with the chamber surfaces and joints pasted with paper and matting in which there were holes for smoke emission. The ground
728-560: A combined circulation of over 2 million copies by the 1950s. Their characters, including " Dennis the Menace ", " Desperate Dan " and " The Bash Street Kids " have been read by generations of British children. The comics originally experimented with superheroes and action stories before settling on humorous strips featuring a mix of the Amalgamated Press and US comic book styles. The popularity of superhero comic books declined in
832-451: A deep and true black; and second, it is permanent, unchangeable in color, and almost indestructible. Chinese written documents may be soaked in water for several weeks without washing out... In documents written as far back as the Han dynasty ... the ink is as bright and well preserved as though it had been applied but yesterday. The same holds good of the productions of the printer's art. Books of
936-479: A defining factor, which can imply the exclusion of even photographic comics. The term manga is used in Japanese to indicate all forms of comics, cartooning, and caricature. The term comics refers to the comics medium when used as an uncountable noun and thus takes the singular: "comics is a medium" rather than "comics are a medium". When comic appears as a countable noun it refers to instances of
1040-497: A dozen stories; they are later compiled in tankōbon -format books. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, nearly a quarter of all printed material in Japan was comics. Translations became extremely popular in foreign markets—in some cases equaling or surpassing the sales of domestic comics. Comic strips are generally short, multipanel comics that have, since the early 20th century, most commonly appeared in newspapers. In
1144-541: A favorable response from Hefner, who liked the "fresh and eager" character. He especially enjoyed " Goodman Goes Playboy ", which featured a boisterous romp in Hefner's mansion. Hefner nevertheless insisted that the material was not right for his magazine, but requested an explanation of the character with a suggestion: "Maybe there is a way of launching a similar series ... that can somehow be related to Playboy ". Kurtzman replied that Goodman Beaver "could be foolish and at
SECTION 10
#17327987628621248-533: A favored pigment for the manufacturing of black inks. It was made by combustion in lamps with wicks, using animal, vegetable, and mineral oils. In the Chinese record Tiangong Kaiwu , ink of the period was said to be made from lampblack of which a tenth was made from burning tung oil, vegetable oils, or lard, and nine-tenths was made from burning pine wood. For the first process, more than one ounce (approx. 30 grams) lampblack of fine quality could be produced from
1352-603: A larger page size than used in many other cultures. In English-speaking countries, the trade paperback format originating from collected comic books have also been chosen for original material. Otherwise, bound volumes of comics are called graphic novels and are available in various formats. Despite incorporating the term "novel"—a term normally associated with fiction—"graphic novel" also refers to non-fiction and collections of short works. Japanese comics are collected in volumes called tankōbon following magazine serialization. Gag and editorial cartoons usually consist of
1456-520: A major American magazine. Annie Fanny is the feature's lead character. Like other young women in Playboy pictorials, Annie is beautiful, buxom, and often unclothed. She is sexually innocent, oblivious to the worldliness around her. Like her forebear Goodman Beaver, Annie was conceived as a modern Candide , above the story's corruptions and temptations. Unlike Goodman, however, Annie is never shocked or offended; she remains blithe. The authors of Icons of
1560-622: A narrator, convey characters' dialogue or thoughts, or indicate place or time. Speech balloons themselves are strongly associated with comics, such that the addition of one to an image is sufficient to turn the image into comics. Sound effects mimic non-vocal sounds textually using onomatopoeia sound-words. Cartooning is most frequently used in making comics, traditionally using ink (especially India ink ) with dip pens or ink brushes; mixed media and digital technology have become common. Cartooning techniques such as motion lines and abstract symbols are often employed. While comics are often
1664-517: A note from Hefner: "I bow to no one in my appreciation for H. Kurtzman." Hefner's praise encouraged Kurtzman to meet with publisher Ian Ballantine and create Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book (1959). This introduced the innocent and idealistic Goodman Beaver , a male character who continued to appear—with artwork by Elder—in Kurtzman's Help! (1960). Kurtzman continued to correspond with Hefner and Playboy executive editor Ray Russell , who
1768-739: A powerful, manipulative capitalist, is based on Daddy Warbucks . His mysterious assistant, the Wasp, derives from Warbucks' assistant the Asp, and Punchjab, his bodyguard, comes from the character Punjab. Other supporting characters include ad man Benton Battbarton (whose name is taken from the advertising agencies Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn and Benton & Bowles ), Battbarton's rival Huck Buxton (modeled on gap-toothed British actor Terry-Thomas ), Duncan Fyfe Hepplewhite (an art plagiarist), and Freddie Flink (who resembles comic actor Fred Gwynne from Car 54, Where Are You? ). Little Annie Fanny takes
1872-539: A pre-history as far back as the Lascaux cave paintings. By the mid-20th century, comics flourished, particularly in the United States , western Europe (especially France and Belgium ), and Japan . The history of European comics is often traced to Rodolphe Töpffer 's cartoon strips of the 1830s, while Wilhelm Busch and his Max and Moritz also had a global impact from 1865 on, and became popular following
1976-734: A prolific body of work. Towards the close of the 20th century, these three traditions converged in a trend towards book-length comics: the comic album in Europe, the tankōbon in Japan, and the graphic novel in the English-speaking countries. Outside of these genealogies, comics theorists and historians have seen precedents for comics in the Lascaux cave paintings in France (some of which appear to be chronological sequences of images), Egyptian hieroglyphs , Trajan's Column in Rome,
2080-536: A similarly confusing history since they are most often not humorous and are periodicals, not regular books. It is common in English to refer to the comics of different cultures by the terms used in their languages, such as manga for Japanese comics, or bandes dessinées for French-language Franco-Belgian comics . Many cultures have taken their word for comics from English, including Russian ( комикс , komiks ) and German ( Comic ). Similarly,
2184-439: A single panel, often incorporating a caption or speech balloon. Definitions of comics which emphasize sequence usually exclude gag, editorial, and other single-panel cartoons; they can be included in definitions that emphasize the combination of word and image. Gag cartoons first began to proliferate in broadsheets published in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the term "cartoon" was first used to describe them in 1843 in
SECTION 20
#17327987628622288-564: A solid form as an inkstick (most commonly, a stick), which must be ground and mixed with water before use. If a binder is used, India ink may be waterproof or non-waterproof. Woods and Woods (2000) state that the process of making India ink was known in China as early as the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, in Neolithic China , whereas Needham (1985) states that inkmaking commenced perhaps as early as 3 millennia ago in China. India ink
2392-403: A vessel full of oil, and lay upon this vessel an iron cover, made in the shape of a funnel, which must be set at a certain distance so as to receive all the smoke. When it has received enough, they take it off, and with a goose feather gently brush the bottom, letting the soot fall upon a dry sheet of strong paper. It is this that makes their fine and shining ink. The best oil also gives a lustre to
2496-406: A way that one could read the 6-panel comic, flip the book and keep reading. He made 64 such comics in total. In 2012, a remake of a selection of the comics was made by Marcus Ivarsson in the book 'In Uppåner med Lilla Lisen & Gamle Muppen'. ( ISBN 978-91-7089-524-1 ) Shorter, black-and-white daily strips began to appear early in the 20th century, and became established in newspapers after
2600-411: Is also used in medical applications. Compared to other inks, such as the iron gall ink previously common in Europe, India ink is noted for its deep, rich black color. It is commonly applied with a brush (such as an ink brush ) or a dip pen . In East Asian traditions such as ink wash painting and Chinese calligraphy , India ink is commonly used in a solid form called an inkstick . Basic India ink
2704-402: Is composed of a variety of fine soot , known as lampblack , combined with water to form a liquid. No binder material is necessary: the carbon molecules are in colloidal suspension and form a waterproof layer after drying. A binding agent such as gelatin or, more commonly, shellac may be added to make the ink more durable once dried. India ink is commonly sold in bottled form, as well as
2808-451: Is notable for its painted, luminous color artwork and for being the first full-scale, multi-page comics feature in a major American publication. Harvey Kurtzman, a cartoonist , created the series at the culmination of his career. He had launched Mad magazine, worked briefly for Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner and on a series of solo and collaborative projects, then returned to working for Hefner with Little Annie Fanny . Each episode of
2912-565: Is often seen at Annie's side throughout the remainder of the series. Ralphie Towzer, Annie's nerdy-but-hip do-gooder boyfriend, has the look of Goodman Beaver (with playwright Arthur Miller 's eyeglasses and pipe) and the temperament of a strait-laced, chastising prude. Solly Brass, Annie's huckster agent, is based on actor Phil Silvers . A number of other characters in Little Annie Fanny are derived from Gray's Little Orphan Annie . Sugardaddy Bigbucks, Annie's surrogate father and
3016-411: Is the incorporation of verbal content". Aaron Meskin saw McCloud's theories as an artificial attempt to legitimize the place of comics in art history. Cross-cultural study of comics is complicated by the great difference in meaning and scope of the words for "comics" in different languages. The French term for comics, bandes dessinées ("drawn strip") emphasizes the juxtaposition of drawn images as
3120-614: The New York World and later the New York American , particularly Outcault's The Yellow Kid , led to the development of newspaper comic strips. Early Sunday strips were full-page and often in colour. Between 1896 and 1901 cartoonists experimented with sequentiality, movement, and speech balloons. An example is Gustave Verbeek , who wrote his comic series "The UpsideDowns of Old Man Muffaroo and Little Lady Lovekins" between 1903 and 1905. These comics were made in such
3224-457: The Avis TV commercial's O. J. Simpson , and Star Wars ' C-3PO . In the 1980s, when Little Annie Fanny appeared once or twice a year, Annie deals with personal computers , goes to Urban Cowboy 's Gilley's Club , cruises on The Love Boat , and encounters Indiana Jones , Ayatollah Khomeini , Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker , and Woody Allen . Elder's background gags include
Little Annie Fanny - Misplaced Pages Continue
3328-467: The Coneheads , Howard Cosell , Miss Piggy , E.T. , and Billy Beer . Comics historian Don Markstein said that Little Annie Fanny "reached a high point seldom achieved by cartoon art", saying "Harvey Kurtzman ... strove for most of his life to advance the boundaries of comics, not just in terms of storytelling but also in production values", concluding that Little Annie Fanny achieved at least
3432-561: The Mad artists with him, including frequent collaborator Will Elder , to create the adult-oriented humor magazine Trump . Although it sold well, Hefner ran into financial problems in 1957 and halted Trump after two issues. He provided office space for the artists, from which they self-published the satirical magazine Humbug in 1957–58. It failed to gain a significant following, and a dejected Kurtzman began pitching feature proposals to Playboy , all of which were rejected. However, he received
3536-425: The comic strip was designed and written by Kurtzman and rendered in oil , tempera , and watercolor by Elder. Hefner edited each episode, often requiring detailed changes to ensure that the series remained true to the magazine's editorial style. Critical reaction was mixed, with most praising the elaborate, fully painted comic, but some dismissing it as falling short of Kurtzman's full potential. The complete series
3640-610: The "Put a Tiger in Your Tank" ad campaign of Humble Oil . During the 1970s, when the strip ran three to five times per year, Annie sees violent films such as A Clockwork Orange and The French Connection and meets sex novelist Philip Roth , consumer advocate Ralph Nader , chess champion Bobby Fischer , and shock rocker Alice Cooper . She experiences disco , streaking , C.B. radio , nudist resorts , and women's liberation . Background "eye pops" include Hollywood heavy Charles Bronson , Laugh-In 's Arte Johnson ,
3744-510: The 11th-century Norman Bayeux Tapestry , the 1370 bois Protat woodcut, the 15th-century Ars moriendi and block books , Michelangelo's The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, and William Hogarth 's 18th-century sequential engravings, amongst others. Illustrated humour periodicals were popular in 19th-century Britain, the earliest of which was the short-lived The Glasgow Looking Glass in 1825. The most popular
3848-412: The 12th century. Japanese comics are generally held separate from the evolution of Euro-American comics, and Western comic art probably originated in 17th-century Italy. Modern Japanese comic strips emerged in the early 20th century, and the output of comic magazines and books rapidly expanded in the post-World War II era (1945)– with the popularity of cartoonists such as Osamu Tezuka . Comics has had
3952-655: The 1930s, at first reprinting newspaper comic strips; by the end of the decade, original content began to dominate. The success in 1938 of Action Comics and its lead hero Superman marked the beginning of the Golden Age of Comic Books , in which the superhero genre was prominent. In the UK and the Commonwealth , the DC Thomson -created Dandy (1937) and Beano (1938) became successful humor-based titles, with
4056-481: The 1980s, mainstream sensibilities were reasserted and serialization became less common as the number of comics magazines decreased and many comics began to be published directly as albums. Smaller publishers such as L'Association that published longer works in non-traditional formats by auteur -istic creators also became common. Since the 1990s, mergers resulted in fewer large publishers, while smaller publishers proliferated. Sales overall continued to grow despite
4160-472: The 1990s. Formal theories of manga have focused on developing a "manga expression theory", with emphasis on spatial relationships in the structure of images on the page, distinguishing the medium from film or literature, in which the flow of time is the basic organizing element. Comics studies courses have proliferated at Japanese universities, and Japan Society for Studies in Cartoon and Comics ( ja )
4264-660: The 3rd century BC during the Warring States or dynastic period, from Yunmeng , Hubei. India ink has been in use in India since at least the 4th century BC, where it was called masi , an admixture of several substances. Indian documents written in Kharosthi with this ink have been unearthed in as far as Xinjiang , China . The practice of writing with ink and a sharp-pointed needle in Tamil and other Dravidian languages
Little Annie Fanny - Misplaced Pages Continue
4368-569: The American Comic Book say Annie "glides through a changing world with an untiring optimism" with a "good-natured lack of desire". She is insulated from the carnal nature of those around her, who explain the new rules of society to her each episode. Ruthie, Annie's mother hen roommate, appears in the first episode and remains in the strip throughout its run. Wanda Homefree, Annie Fanny's wild and shapely best friend, first appears in an episode-10 beauty contest as Miss Greenwich Village and
4472-686: The British humour magazine Punch . Webcomics are comics that are available on the internet, first being published the 1980s. They are able to potentially reach large audiences, and new readers can often access archives of previous installments. Webcomics can make use of an infinite canvas , meaning they are not constrained by the size or dimensions of a printed comics page. Some consider storyboards and wordless novels to be comics. Film studios, especially in animation, often use sequences of images as guides for film sequences. These storyboards are not intended as an end product and are rarely seen by
4576-602: The Chinese term manhua and the Korean manhwa derive from the Chinese characters with which the Japanese term manga is written. Academic journals Archives Databases India ink India ink ( British English : Indian ink ; also Chinese ink ) is a simple black or coloured ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing and outlining, especially when inking comic books and comic strips . India ink
4680-476: The Japanese term for comics and cartooning, manga , in the early 19th century. In the 1930s Harry "A" Chesler started a comics studio, which eventually at its height employed 40 artists working for 50 different publishers who helped make the comics medium flourish in "the Golden Age of Comics" after World War II. In the post-war era modern Japanese comics began to flourish when Osamu Tezuka produced
4784-550: The Rye author J. D. Salinger (as "Salinger Fiengold"), NFL champions Green Bay Packers (as the "Greenback Busters"), and Elvis Presley , Bob Dylan , and Sonny & Cher on the "Hoopadedoo Show" ( Hullabaloo show). During these early years, the strip pokes fun at miniskirts , LSD , free love , and bra burning . Background caricatures include Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev , prissy-but-powerful J. Edgar Hoover , unisex fashion designer Rudi Gernreich , and
4888-663: The Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer from as early as 1827 and Americans have seen the origin of theirs in Richard ;F. Outcault 's 1890s newspaper strip The Yellow Kid , though many Americans have come to recognize Töpffer's precedence. Wilhelm Busch directly influenced Rudolph Dirks and his Katzenjammer Kids . Japan has a long history of satirical cartoons and comics leading up to the World War ;II era. The ukiyo-e artist Hokusai popularized
4992-896: The US, daily strips have normally occupied a single tier, while Sunday strips have been given multiple tiers. Since the early 20th century, daily newspaper comic strips have typically been printed in black-and-white and Sunday comics have usually been printed in colour and have often occupied a full newspaper page. Specialized comics periodicals formats vary greatly in different cultures. Comic books , primarily an American format, are thin periodicals usually published in colour. European and Japanese comics are frequently serialized in magazines—monthly or weekly in Europe, and usually black-and-white and weekly in Japan. Japanese comics magazine typically run to hundreds of pages. Book-length comics take different forms in different cultures. European comic albums are most commonly colour volumes printed at A4-size ,
5096-468: The artwork in ink; a colourist ; and a letterer , who adds the captions and speech balloons. The English-language term comics derives from the humorous (or " comic ") work which predominated in early American newspaper comic strips, but usage of the term has become standard for non-humorous works as well. The alternate spelling comix – coined by the underground comix movement – is sometimes used to address such ambiguities. The term "comic book" has
5200-415: The black, and by consequence makes the ink more esteemed and dearer. The lampblack which is not fetched off with the feather, and which sticks very fast to the cover, is coarser, and they use it to make an ordinary sort of ink, after they have scraped it off into a dish." The Chinese had used India ink derived from pine soot prior to the 11th century AD, when the polymath official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) of
5304-491: The brain's comprehension of comics is similar to comprehending other domains, such as language and music. Historical narratives of manga tend to focus either on its recent, post-WWII history, or on attempts to demonstrate deep roots in the past, such as to the Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga picture scroll of the 12th and 13th centuries, or the early 19th-century Hokusai Manga . The first historical overview of Japanese comics
SECTION 50
#17327987628625408-603: The character, he was allowed (with Playboy 's substantial budget) to travel for research, photography, and sketching. He followed this with a preliminary script for Hefner, who revised it. Kurtzman then worked out the story's composition, pacing, and action in thumbnail drawings and pencil roughs of each page of the comic, followed by larger, more-detailed layouts on translucent vellum specifying lighting, color, and speech balloon placement. These also required Hefner's approval—a typical two- to seven-page episode would take as many as nine pages of layout. Kurtzman then discussed
5512-488: The coarser grade was used for black paint. The pine soot was soaked in water to divide the fine particles that float and the coarser particles that sink. The sized lampblack was then mixed with glue after which the final product was hammered. Precious components such as gold dust or musk essence may be added to either types of inks. In 1738, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde described the Chinese manufacturing process for lampblack from oil as: "They put five or six lighted wicks into
5616-400: The comic in 1998 with art by Ray Lago and Bill Schorr , publishing seven episodes until 2000. Dark Horse Comics collected all episodes of the series and published them in two volumes (2000 and 2001), with annotations by Denis Kitchen and others. Comics Comics are a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically takes
5720-768: The definition of comics, a medium that has taken various, equally valid forms over its history. Morgan sees comics as a subset of " les littératures dessinées " (or "drawn literatures"). French theory has come to give special attention to the page, in distinction from American theories such as McCloud's which focus on panel-to-panel transitions. In the mid-2000s, Neil Cohn began analyzing how comics are understood using tools from cognitive science, extending beyond theory by using actual psychological and neuroscience experiments. This work has argued that sequential images and page layouts both use separate rule-bound "grammars" to be understood that extend beyond panel-to-panel transitions and categorical distinctions of types of layouts, and that
5824-600: The establishment of the Comics Code Authority self-censoring body. The Code has been blamed for stunting the growth of American comics and maintaining its low status in American society for much of the remainder of the century. Superheroes re-established themselves as the most prominent comic book genre by the early 1960s. Underground comix challenged the Code and readers with adult, countercultural content in
5928-400: The final rendering. Elder painted in oil , tempera , and watercolor , never using ink. Beginning with a white illustration board , Elder explained he would "pile on" his oil paint, light colors over dark, then apply tempera, then layer several watercolor washes to give Annie luminous tones. "The colors were like gems to me," he said. "I worked very hard to give them iridescence." The work
6032-527: The first modern Japanese comic strip. By the 1930s, comic strips were serialized in large-circulation monthly girls' and boys' magazine and collected into hardback volumes. The modern era of comics in Japan began after World War II, propelled by the success of the serialized comics of the prolific Osamu Tezuka and the comic strip Sazae-san . Genres and audiences diversified over the following decades. Stories are usually first serialized in magazines which are often hundreds of pages thick and may contain over
6136-427: The form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons , captions , and onomatopoeia can indicate dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information. There is no consensus among 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
6240-437: The late 1960s and early 1970s. The underground gave birth to the alternative comics movement in the 1980s and its mature, often experimental content in non-superhero genres. Comics in the US has had a lowbrow reputation stemming from its roots in mass culture ; cultural elites sometimes saw popular culture as threatening culture and society. In the latter half of the 20th century, popular culture won greater acceptance, and
6344-577: The late 19th century. New publications in both the Western and Japanese styles became popular, and at the end of the 1890s, American-style newspaper comics supplements began to appear in Japan, as well as some American comic strips. 1900 saw the debut of the Jiji Manga in the Jiji Shinpō newspaper—the first use of the word "manga" in its modern sense, and where, in 1902, Rakuten Kitazawa began
SECTION 60
#17327987628626448-506: The latter. About its venue he said, " Playboy magazine, whatever you may say about its content, always did a first-rate job of printing color pictures." According to comics commentators Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith, the series "reads today as an amusing look at the evolving mores of the sexual revolution". Comics editor Monte Beauchamp said that Little Annie Fanny was "the most elaborate comic strip ever created" and cartoonist-critic R. C. Harvey called it "a masterpiece ...
6552-603: The layout with Elder, who drove from his home in New Jersey to Kurtzman's in New York. Kurtzman acted out every detail of the strip; according to Elder, "He would change his voice and take on the characteristics of each role ... We'd crack each other up and fall down laughing." This gave Elder what he needed to create the penciling, including "eye pops" (background gags worked into blank areas of Kurtzman's layout; Hefner rejected many, so Elder created as many as possible) and
6656-462: The lines between high and low culture began to blur. Comics nevertheless continued to be stigmatized, as the medium was seen as entertainment for children and illiterates. The graphic novel —book-length comics—began to gain attention after Will Eisner popularized the term with his book A Contract with God (1978). The term became widely known with the public after the commercial success of Maus , Watchmen , and The Dark Knight Returns in
6760-514: The loaded topics of the era, and some have found Annie's lack of character development and the requisite sexual hijinks an impediment to taking her seriously." However, they repeated their respect: "The eternally innocent Annie performed admirably as a nonjudgmental witness to the changing tides of the sexual revolution." American cartoonist Budd Root cited Little Annie Fanny as one of the inspirations for his independent comic book series Cavewoman . The December 1978 issue of Playboy mentioned
6864-516: The medium, such as individual comic strips or comic books: "Tom's comics are in the basement." Panels are individual images containing a segment of action, often surrounded by a border. Prime moments in a narrative are broken down into panels via a process called encapsulation. The reader puts the pieces together via the process of closure by using background knowledge and an understanding of panel relations to combine panels mentally into events. The size, shape, and arrangement of panels each affect
6968-414: The mid Song dynasty became troubled by deforestation (due to the demands of charcoal for the iron industry ) and sought to make ink from a source other than pine soot. He believed that petroleum (which the Chinese called 'rock oil') was produced inexhaustibly within the earth and so decided to make an ink from the soot of burning petroleum, which the later pharmacologist Li Shizhen (1518–1593) wrote
7072-457: The mid-1980s. In the 21st century graphic novels became established in mainstream bookstores and libraries and webcomics became common. The francophone Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer produced comic strips beginning in 1827, and published theories behind the form. Wilhelm Busch first published his Max and Moritz in 1865. Cartoons appeared widely in newspapers and magazines from the 19th century. The success of Zig et Puce in 1925 popularized
7176-419: The more difficult, fully painted, outlineless look. Kurtzman's suggestions for the feature's name included The Perils of Zelda , The Perils of Irma , and Little Mary Mixup ; he settled on Little Annie Fanny , its title and logo a parody of Harold Gray 's Little Orphan Annie . The cartoonist began submitting story ideas for the multi-page comic strip to Hefner for approval. Over the twenty-six years he wrote
7280-556: The more interesting Goodman Beaver. Underground cartoonist Robert Crumb , whose career Kurtzman helped launch, scorned Playboy and Annie . Monty Python 's Terry Gilliam , the former assistant editor of Help! , said that Little Annie Fanny was not as sharp as Kurtzman's earlier work: "technically brilliant but ... slightly compromised." Art agent and publisher Denis Kitchen , who handles Kurtzman and Eisner's estates, said that "most Kurtzman devotees would not consider Little Annie Fanny genius work ... [and] some would argue
7384-450: The most lavish color comic strip of all time". Not all were as impressed. Noting that Kurtzman was financially strapped before making his living for twenty-six years from Playboy , historian Paul Buhle wrote: "The strip had many brilliant early moments, but went downhill as the writer and artist bent to editor Hugh Hefner's demands for as much titillation as possible." Cartoonist Art Spiegelman said that Little Annie Fanny devolved from
7488-470: The opposite: that it was genius diluted or degraded". Kitchen placed the onus on Kurtzman's employer Hefner, who "was often a punctilious taskmaster with a heavy red pen who often had very different ideas about what was funny or satiric" and insisted that each strip "had to include Annie disrobing". Beauchamp agreed: "Unfortunately, Hefner was notorious for his heavy editorial hand." Duncan and Smith also agreed, and wrote that "humor sometimes mixes awkwardly with
7592-440: The primacy of sequences of images. Towards the close of the 20th century, different cultures' discoveries of each other's comics traditions, the rediscovery of forgotten early comics forms, and the rise of new forms made defining comics a more complicated task. European comics studies began with Töpffer's theories of his own work in the 1840s, which emphasized panel transitions and the visual–verbal combination. No further progress
7696-524: The primary outlet for comics in the mid-20th century. As in the US, at the time comics were seen as infantile and a threat to culture and literacy; commentators stated that "none bear up to the slightest serious analysis", and that comics were "the sabotage of all art and all literature". In the 1960s, the term bandes dessinées ("drawn strips") came into wide use in French to denote the medium. Cartoonists began creating comics for mature audiences, and
7800-562: The problems of defining literature and film, no consensus has been reached on a definition of the comics medium, and attempted definitions and descriptions have fallen prey to numerous exceptions. Theorists such as Töpffer, R. C. Harvey , Will Eisner , David Carrier, Alain Rey, and Lawrence Grove emphasize the combination of text and images, though there are prominent examples of pantomime comics throughout its history. Other critics, such as Thierry Groensteen and Scott McCloud, have emphasized
7904-403: The public. Wordless novels are books which use sequences of captionless images to deliver a narrative. "Comics ... are sometimes four-legged and sometimes two-legged and sometimes fly and sometimes don't ... to employ a metaphor as mixed as the medium itself, defining comics entails cutting a Gordian-knotted enigma wrapped in a mystery ..." R. C. Harvey , 2001 Similar to
8008-489: The reader through the changing attitudes of American culture, satirizing contemporary trends and fads. In each of the 107 episodes, Annie experiences the latest popular movie, fashion statement, national politics, or society headline. During the strip's first decade, when it ran up to eleven times per year, Annie meets caricatures of the Beatles (who lust for Annie), Sean Connery (playing "James Bomb"), reclusive Catcher in
8112-506: The rest of the world, including Europe, due to its quality. For instance, in the 17th century, Louis LeComte said of Chinese ink that "it is most excellent; and they have hitherto vainly tried in France to imitate it." In another instance, in 1735, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde wrote that "the Europeans have endeavored to counterfeit this ink, but without success." These qualities were described by Berthold Laufer : "It produces, first of all,
8216-401: The same time wise," and that he "innocently partakes of the bad while espousing the good." He further stated that Beaver's innocent, restive, and charming nature allotted him especial creative freedom. A week later, Kurtzman wrote to Hefner, "What would you think of a girl character ... whom I could apply to my kind of situations?" Six weeks later Hefner replied, "I think your notion of doing
8320-625: The satirical and taboo-breaking Hara-Kiri defied censorship laws in the countercultural spirit that led to the May 1968 events . Frustration with censorship and editorial interference led to a group of Pilote cartoonists to found the adults-only L'Écho des savanes in 1972. Adult-oriented and experimental comics flourished in the 1970s, such as in the experimental science fiction of Mœbius and others in Métal hurlant , even mainstream publishers took to publishing prestige-format adult comics . From
8424-562: The study of comics. David Carrier's The Aesthetics of Comics (2000) was the first full-length treatment of comics from a philosophical perspective. Prominent American attempts at definitions of comics include Eisner's, McCloud's, and Harvey's. Eisner described what he called " sequential art " as "the arrangement of pictures or images and words to narrate a story or dramatize an idea"; Scott McCloud defined comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in
8528-496: The success in 1907 of Bud Fisher 's Mutt and Jeff . In Britain, the Amalgamated Press established a popular style of a sequence of images with text beneath them, including Illustrated Chips and Comic Cuts . Humour strips predominated at first, and in the 1920s and 1930s strips with continuing stories in genres such as adventure and drama also became popular. Thin periodicals called comic books appeared in
8632-413: The success in the 1930s of strips and books such as The Adventures of Tintin . American comics emerged as a mass medium in the early 20th century with the advent of newspaper comic strips; magazine-style comic books followed in the 1930s, the superhero genre became prominent after Superman appeared in 1938. Histories of Japanese comics and cartooning ( manga ) propose origins as early as
8736-399: The term "Ninth Art" was coined, as comics began to attract public and academic attention as an artform. A group including René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo founded the magazine Pilote in 1959 to give artists greater freedom over their work. Goscinny and Uderzo's The Adventures of Asterix appeared in it and went on to become the best-selling French-language comics series. From 1960,
8840-428: The timing and pacing of the narrative. The contents of a panel may be asynchronous, with events depicted in the same image not necessarily occurring at the same time. Text is frequently incorporated into comics via speech balloons , captions, and sound effects. Speech balloons indicate dialogue (or thought, in the case of thought balloons ), with tails pointing at their respective speakers. Captions can give voice to
8944-600: The trend towards a shrinking print market. Japanese comics and cartooning ( manga ), have a history that has been seen as far back as the anthropomorphic characters in the 12th-to-13th-century Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga , 17th-century toba-e and kibyōshi picture books, and woodblock prints such as ukiyo-e which were popular between the 17th and 20th centuries. The kibyōshi contained examples of sequential images, movement lines, and sound effects. Illustrated magazines for Western expatriates introduced Western-style satirical cartoons to Japan in
9048-576: The use of recurring characters. Cartooning and other forms of illustration are the most common means of image-making in comics. Photo comics is a form that uses photographic images. Common forms include comic strips , editorial and gag cartoons , and comic books . Since the late 20th century, bound volumes such as graphic novels , comic albums , and tankōbon have become increasingly common, along with webcomics as well as scientific/medical comics. The history of comics has followed different paths in different cultures. Scholars have posited
9152-534: The use of speech balloons in European comics, after which Franco-Belgian comics began to dominate. The Adventures of Tintin , with its signature clear line style, was first serialized in newspaper comics supplements beginning in 1929, and became an icon of Franco-Belgian comics. Following the success of Le Journal de Mickey (est. 1934), dedicated comics magazines like Spirou (est. 1938) and Tintin (1946–1993), and full-colour comic albums became
9256-539: The viewer", a strictly formal definition which detached comics from its historical and cultural trappings. R. C. Harvey defined comics as "pictorial narratives or expositions in which words (often lettered into the picture area within speech balloons) usually contribute to the meaning of the pictures and vice versa". Each definition has had its detractors. Harvey saw McCloud's definition as excluding single-panel cartoons, and objected to McCloud's de-emphasizing verbal elements, insisting "the essential characteristic of comics
9360-424: The work of a single creator, the labour of making them is frequently divided between a number of specialists. There may be separate writers and artists , and artists may specialize in parts of the artwork such as characters or backgrounds, as is common in Japan. Particularly in American superhero comic books, the art may be divided between a penciller , who lays out the artwork in pencil; an inker , who finishes
9464-451: The years following World War II, while comic book sales continued to increase as other genres proliferated, such as romance , westerns , crime , horror , and humour. Following a sales peak in the early 1950s, the content of comic books (particularly crime and horror) was subjected to scrutiny from parent groups and government agencies, which culminated in Senate hearings that led to
9568-437: Was Punch , which popularized the term cartoon for its humorous caricatures. On occasion the cartoons in these magazines appeared in sequences; the character Ally Sloper featured in the earliest serialized comic strip when the character began to feature in its own weekly magazine in 1884. American comics developed out of such magazines as Puck , Judge , and Life . The success of illustrated humour supplements in
9672-418: Was Seiki Hosokibara's Nihon Manga-Shi in 1924. Early post-war Japanese criticism was mostly of a left-wing political nature until the 1986 publication of Tomofusa Kure's Modern Manga: The Complete Picture , which de-emphasized politics in favour of formal aspects, such as structure and a "grammar" of comics. The field of manga studies increased rapidly, with numerous books on the subject appearing in
9776-415: Was a miniature masterpiece that Willie glazed and re-glazed in brilliant watercolor until he reached the level of 3-D-like translucence that he wanted. I know from first-hand experience what went into this project." Letterers inked the dialog balloons before Kurtzman cleaned and submitted the finished work. Little Annie Fanny , Playboy 's first comic strip, was the first multi-page comics feature in
9880-452: Was as lustrous as lacquer and was superior to pine soot ink. A common ingredient in India ink, called carbon black, has been used by many ancient historical cultures. For example, the ancient Egyptians and Greeks both had their own recipes for "carbon black". One Greek recipe, from 40 to 90 AD, was written, documented and still exists today. The ink from China was often sought after in
9984-440: Was collected into two volumes in 2000 and 2001 by Dark Horse Comics . Harvey Kurtzman founded the satirical Mad magazine in 1952; an early fan was onetime cartoonist Hugh Hefner , who founded the men's magazine Playboy in 1953. Hefner offered Kurtzman an opportunity to conceive a new humor magazine for his enterprise, which the cartoonist accepted when he left Mad in 1956 in an ownership dispute. Kurtzman took most of
10088-487: Was common practice from antiquity in South India , and so several ancient Buddhist and Jain scripts in India were compiled in ink. In India, the carbon black from which India ink is formulated was obtained indigenously by burning bones, tar , pitch , and other substances. The traditional Chinese method of making ink was to grind a mixture of hide glue , carbon black , lampblack, and bone black pigment with
10192-521: Was established in 2001 to promote comics scholarship. The publication of Frederik L. Schodt 's Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics in 1983 led to the spread of use of the word manga outside Japan to mean "Japanese comics" or "Japanese-style comics". Coulton Waugh attempted the first comprehensive history of American comics with The Comics (1947). Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art (1985) and Scott McCloud 's Understanding Comics (1993) were early attempts in English to formalize
10296-649: Was first invented in China, but the English term India(n) ink was coined due to their later trade with India. A considerable number of oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty contain incised characters with black pigment from a carbonaceous material identified as ink. Numerous documents written in ink on precious stones as well as bamboo or wooden tablets dating to the Spring and Autumn , Warring States , and Qin period have been uncovered. A cylindrical artifact made from black ink has been found in Qin tombs, dating back to
10400-413: Was interested in Kurtzman's idea of a comic strip suitable for the magazine's audience and suggested " satire ... as an excuse or rationale for a slick magazine to be publishing a comic strip." Although single- panel cartoons were an established part of the magazine, a comic strip was unprecedented and had to be justified. Kurtzman submitted some Goodman Beaver strips and was surprised to receive
10504-410: Was labor-intensive and deadlines were often difficult to meet, so other artists, including Russ Heath , Arnold Roth , Jack Davis , Al Jaffee , Frank Frazetta , and Paul Coker , were occasionally enlisted to help finish the art. Jaffee, a childhood friend of Elder, said about the experience: " Little Annie Fannie was the most unique, lavishly produced cartoon cum illustration feature ever. Each panel
10608-447: Was made from bricks and mud with channels for smoke built in. After a burn of several days, the resulting pine soot was scraped from the chamber after cooling. The last one or two sections delivered soot of the purest quality for the best inks, the middle section delivered mixed-quality soot for ordinary ink, and the first one or two sections delivered low-grade soot. The low-grade soot was further pounded and ground for printing, while
10712-570: Was made until the 1970s. Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle then took a semiotics approach to the study of comics, analyzing text–image relations, page-level image relations, and image discontinuities, or what Scott McCloud later dubbed "closure". In 1987, Henri Vanlier introduced the term multicadre , or "multiframe", to refer to the comics page as a semantic unit. By the 1990s, theorists such as Benoît Peeters and Thierry Groensteen turned attention to artists' poïetic creative choices. Thierry Smolderen and Harry Morgan have held relativistic views of
10816-538: Was traditionally favored in Chinese inkmaking. Several studies observed that 14th-century Chinese inks are made from very small and uniform pine soot; in fact the inks are even superior in these aspects to modern soot inks. The author Song Yingxing ( c. 1600 –1660) of the Ming dynasty has described the inkmaking process from pine soot in his work Tiangong Kaiwu . From the Song dynasty onwards, lampblack also became
#861138