Comic Book
| Synonyms: | comicbook, comic magazine, comic |
| See also: | Comicsverse, Comics Fandom, Free Comic Book Day, manga, donghua, manhua, underground comics, independent comics |
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Comic Books are a media form consisting of sequential art with text, often heavy with dialogue rather than narrative description and featuring onomatopoeia or sound effects in print form.
Comic Book Fandoms
Fandoms that got their start in comic books include many superhero fandoms, like Superman, Batman, the X-Men, Spiderman and so on. Marvel and DC comics are the best-known in the US, however there is also a large market for independent comics, which are published by small publishing groups or by the creator. Of these, Image, Dark Horse and IDW Publishing are the most prominent, but there are many more.
Long-lived comics can have problems with continuity: a popular comic series can run for decades, and the writers are stuck trying to find a balance between "write the kind of stories everyone loves in this fandom" and "show character growth and world changes." In the main US comics, this results in a weird universe-reboot every 10 years or so, such as the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars, which allowed character deaths, new character origins, and major changes to teams. However, the eventual result is usually some form of retconning the results back to something like the original.
If they get popular enough, there are often TV series and movies made based on the comics. Most comic movies are flops -- they don't follow comic continuity enough to appeal to comics fans, and the storylines aren't compelling to non-comics-fans. This media shift also goes the other direction: Popular shows, movies, and video games can wind up with comics series; sometimes they follow the original timeline and events, and sometimes they don't.
It can be hard to identify popular "comics" fandoms, because most archives don't differentiate between the comics and TV shows of the same name, and many fans mix the canon details together. Some fans are comic book "purists" who refuse to address animated (or live-action) remakes of their favorite fandom.
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Noteworthy comic book fandoms
- The Sandman, Neil Gaiman's comic series published by DC's Vertigo, especially after the 2022 Netflix series.
- Elfquest has a devoted following decades after its initial run.
- Archie Comics made waves by introducing a gay character to its slice-of-life small-town setting, which disturbed many conservatives and caught the attention of fans who'd previously ignored the series as unrealistically based on 50s-era tropes.
- Lumberjanes created by Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Brooklyn A. Allen and ND Stevenson and published by Boom!Studios.
- The Wicked + The Divine created by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie, published by Image Comics.
Movie and TV fandoms originally based on comics
- Deadpool -the first R-rated superhero movie is based on the Marvel comic
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began as a black & white comic in the 80s, published by Mirage Studios and then by Dreamwave Productions, an imprint of Image Comics.
- The Old Guard was a comic series before it became a Netflix miniseries, published by Image.
- The Umbrella Academy comics have only a tangential connection to the series plotline.
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) covers films and television series based on the Marvel Comics characters and is an extremely popular fandom.
- DCEU is the DC Comics version of the MCU; the films are less successful than the MCU's but a number of television shows are popular with fandom, such as the Arrowverse.
- X-Men Movieverse refers to the series of films, released by Fox that are based on the X-Men comics from Marvel.
- Sin City was a series of comics published by Dark Horse whose popularity was renewed with the release of the 2005 film adaptation.
- Scott Pilgrim was an Oni Press comic series before the release of the live-action film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in 2010.
- The Walking Dead was first published by Image Comics from 2003-2019.
- Kick-Ass was a comic book also published by Image Comics 2008-2014 under their Millarworld imprint.
- The Archie Comics' comics provided the basis for the later Riverdale television series.