Summary:
Comic strips and panels that tell a story: this is the image that comes to mind when we think of a comic book. But this description lacks a crucial element, a fragmented, temporal aspect that makes our lives run parallel to the experiences of these characters: seriality, an element that was inherent to the medium for much of its history. That's why a visit to a bookstore or newsstand has become, for generations, a ritual to learn about the adventures of those mischievous children, detectives, adventurers, superheroes—modernizations of mythological beings—who, without realizing it, have become part of our lives. In this book, we'll explore the evolution of serial comics in the United States, the progress of an industry, the creation of its own language, and the creation of different genres. History, science, politics, and the rest of the arts (and their back-and-forth exchanges) have also played a pivotal role in the development of these stories, from the earliest newspaper strips to superhero comic books, through the Marvel universe to the most recent offerings.