American Comic Books

The history of American comic books dates back to the 1930's when the comic book emerged as popular reading material to brighten the doom and gloom of the days of the stock market crash. Although there had been comic books before this date, the storylines were mostly about children and pets. The stories of Tarzan retold with pictures, the escapades of Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy, saw the emergence of genres in comic books.

During the Golden Age of comics, the first costumed character came of age with the Phantom. This character was the first superhero for which the American comic books are best known. Superman, created by Siegel and Shuster, became the model for all superheroes that followed and there were many. Batman, Spiderman, the Green Lantern, Captain Marvel and Captain America are some of the superheroes made famous in comic books.

The popularity of the American comic books meant that competing comic book publishers strive to create the ultimate superhero. There were over 400 such superheroes created between 1940 and 1945 and it was then that the format of the comic book as we know it today was developed. Charlie Brown also emerged from the pencil of Charles Schultz and the Peanuts comic strip started as a main feature of most newspapers.

American comic books became so popular that TV shows were made of the popular superheroes. Superman and Batman were very popular as a weekly series and Spiderman was made into an animated cartoon for children.

Later comic book characters championed the disabled because most of them had come disability of some kind that made them out of the mainstream society, such as the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and the X-Men. Although funny stories prevailed such as with the Archie and Veronica comics, the storylines changed with the time so that they reflected the changes of society.