Summary: Bob Callahan's "No More Yielding but a Dream"

[A Brief History of the Comic Book]

1930s – Newspapers start repackaging daily comic strips as pulp books

1938 – Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster invent Superman

 

1940 – Sheldon Mayer creates an anti-Superman: Scribbly

1941 – Jack Cole creates Plastic Man

 

1950s – Pioneer Harvey Kurtzman publishes Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat, and Mad

1954 – Comics Code Authority (complements of McCarthy): “comics cause kids to behave violently and challenge social norms and authority figures”

Thus, Kurtzman announces, “Comics Go Underground”

 

1960s – Stan Lee reinvents Marvel’s line of superheroes along with artists like Jack Kirby; opposition to Comics Code in the mainstream

1965 – Counter-cultural artists including comic artists flock to San Francisco and New York’s Lower East Side; LSD

Robert Crumb (influenced by Kurtzman) starts publishing gag cartoons

1968 (Feb 25) – Robert Crumb, Dana Crumb, Don Donahue, and Charlie Plymell put together Zap Comix and distribute from a baby carriage in San Francisco

1972 – Justin Green creates Binky Brown Meets the Blessed Virgin Mary

Art Spiegelman (Green’s roommate) publishes his first “Maus” comic book; Maus establishes the comic as a sophisticated medium

1977 – Spiegelman and his partner Francouise Mouly begin producing comic magazine Raw; in general, they attempt to mess with boundaries between high and low culture

 

1980s – Frank Miller and Alan Moore reinvent DC comics heroes: Daredevil and Batman, and Swamp Thing respectively

Moore and Dave Gibbon create Watchmen

 

1990s – Neil Gaiman creates Sandman while working for DC Comics

Published under Fantagraphics, Daniel Clowes writes Lloyd Llewellyn and Eightball, and Chris Ware creates characters like Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth