Comic Book Genres

Just as there are genres for literature and movies, there are also comic book genres. Comics started out as entertainment for children, but pretty soon publishers began to see that teenagers and adults were also interested in reading the short stories in the comic books. In the age before television, reading comics was very popular because unlike reading a novel where you have to imagine the pictures in your head, a comic provided them for you often with less words. Some of the genres that exist in comic books include mystery, crime, romance, comedy, westerns, educational, adaptation of the Classics and many, many more.

It is best to talk of comic books in terms of ages rather than genres because that is how they are best known During some periods of time some genres were more [popular than others. Within each of these comic book genres there are comics that are popular for many different reasons. The superhero comic book that emerged with the appearance of Superman flourished during the war period because people saw this as a way to keep their spirits up and inspire them. After the war was over, people liked to have the lighter side of comics and focused on comics that fell into the genre of humor, but the superhero was not lost entirely.

Horror and true crime are two popular comic book genres that have always been popular. Many of these contained graphic pictures of violence, which led to comics being banned and even burned in many places during the 1950s because they were seen as leading youth down the road to crime.

Marvel comics brought superheroes to the forefront again with the publishing of the Flash and the Fantastic Four. School children loved the pictures and the dialogue, while college students were enthralled by the human qualities of the new superhero.

Another of the comic book genres that has emerged in modern times is that of alternative comics or the underground focusing on the drug world. These comics are very irreverent of many topics in society and have found a small niche, but they never gained a large following.