HIST 105-06, From Superman to Sin City: A Cultural History of Comic Books, Fall 2005

Abstract

“From Superman to Sin City” analyzes the medium’s history from its precursors in nineteenth-century “Penny Dreadfuls,” the first comic strips and early pulp fiction to the birth of comics as an independent genre in the 1930s. It examines the culture from which Golden Age comics creators emerged. It tracks the comics explosion caused by the success of Superman in 1938 and the global popularization of American-style comic books, especially in Asia, and the post-World War II backlash that resulted in comics’ censorship in the 1950s. It considers the rebirth of American comics in the “Silver Age” of the 1960s and concludes by tracing the history of the medium into the early 1990s. Particular emphasis in the latter part of the course will be placed on the influential work of Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller and Alan Moore and the impact of Japanese comics and animation.