AHC: Prevent Comic Books From Becoming Popular

In the prewar years, comic books experienced a huge rise in popularity throughout the Western world. In the United States, the first Golden Age of comic books saw the rise of the superhero archetype. In France, Franco-Belgian comics developed in the late '20s with popular characters like Tintin and Captain Haddock. Meanwhile, postwar comics became hugely popular in Japan, the United States, and Britain, becoming perhaps the biggest form of children's mass entertainment during the '40s and early '50s.

How could this have been prevented? In other words, can you kill the comic book?

Obviously, the POD should be after 1900.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 

FDW

Banned
I would say that it isn't possible, largely because comics are a very obvious invention, being a simple combination of art and writing.
 
I would say that it isn't possible, largely because comics are a very obvious invention, being a simple combination of art and writing.

The flaw in that argument is that both art and writing existed for thousands of years before the first comic books. What made them become popular when they did? And how can we delay that?

Cheers,
Ganesha
 

FDW

Banned
The flaw in that argument is that both art and writing existed for thousands of years before the first comic books. What made them become popular when they did? And how can we delay that?

Cheers,
Ganesha

And let me counter that modern comics aren't the first time Man has attempted to combine art and writing into a single media, it's happened dozens of times before in history. As to gives it an appeal, it's the way the two reinforce one another in telling stories, giving people a far more vivid concept of the story that what would exist with just one or the other.
 
It could possibly be that one of the reasons that comics became so popular is that movies had become very popular by that same time. Like comics, they are a very visual media that are very good at portraying action in a manner that books are not capable of. The children of that time had grown up with movies as an every day fact and are use to a much more visual media and probably found that comics allowed them to experience a form of literature that matches what they were used to.

Torqumada
 
I do not know if this will kill comic books entirely, even in the United States, but there may be a way to kill superhero comics in their cradle. The creators of Superman wanted him to be a comic strip character, and the Superman comic book only came about after the creators had been rejected by various comic strip companies. So, let's say one of those comic strip companies decides to take a chance with Superman, once Superman is recognizably the same character he was when the comic book debuted. Even if the Superman comic strip is as popular as the Superman Comic Book was, ITTL he won't be associated with comic books. Consequently, if people try to imitate Superman, those imitations won't be in comic books, because they won't be a presence to the same extent they were historically. Therefore, there's a good chance that Superhero comics won't exist. If that's the case, then at the very least, in the United States comic books will be somewhat less popular.
 

FDW

Banned
I do not know if this will kill comic books entirely, even in the United States, but there may be a way to kill superhero comics in their cradle. The creators of Superman wanted him to be a comic strip character, and the Superman comic book only came about after the creators had been rejected by various comic strip companies. So, let's say one of those comic strip companies decides to take a chance with Superman, once Superman is recognizably the same character he was when the comic book debuted. Even if the Superman comic strip is as popular as the Superman Comic Book was, ITTL he won't be associated with comic books. Consequently, if people try to imitate Superman, those imitations won't be in comic books, because they won't be a presence to the same extent they were historically. Therefore, there's a good chance that Superhero comics won't exist. If that's the case, then at the very least, in the United States comic books will be somewhat less popular.

Less popular maybe, but the advantage of all the extra space available in comic books will probably lead to their break out at some point along the line.
 
It could possibly be that one of the reasons that comics became so popular is that movies had become very popular by that same time. Like comics, they are a very visual media that are very good at portraying action in a manner that books are not capable of. The children of that time had grown up with movies as an every day fact and are use to a much more visual media and probably found that comics allowed them to experience a form of literature that matches what they were used to.

Torqumada

That's an interesting theory, to be sure. Did people ever release comics back then as tie-ins to movies, or visa versa? When were the first superhero films released?

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
That's an interesting theory, to be sure. Did people ever release comics back then as tie-ins to movies, or visa versa? When were the first superhero films released?

Cheers,
Ganesha

That would depend on what you are calling a superhero. The first Superman serial came 2 years after he first appeared. However, there were other action type heroes like Flash Gordon, Tarzan etc... prior to 1938. To the best of my knowledge, there were no movie tie ins comics wise for a few years. There were toy tie ins.

Torqumada
 
The big thing is that printing started to make books real cheap. Sooner or later someone will come up with the idea of making books out of pulp paper to sell cheaply to the middle and lower classes. After that someone will come up with the idea of combining pictures with simple stories and you progress from Pulp Fiction to Comic Books. It is really hard to stop.
 

Thande

Donor
You can have less recognisable comics, e.g. in the 19th century for a long time the norm in comics was to provide a picture with a text narration underneath rather than speech bubbles etc. But really the appearance of comics of some form is a natural consequence of cheaper paper and printing techniques.
 
The big thing is that printing started to make books real cheap. Sooner or later someone will come up with the idea of making books out of pulp paper to sell cheaply to the middle and lower classes. After that someone will come up with the idea of combining pictures with simple stories and you progress from Pulp Fiction to Comic Books. It is really hard to stop.

You can have less recognisable comics, e.g. in the 19th century for a long time the norm in comics was to provide a picture with a text narration underneath rather than speech bubbles etc. But really the appearance of comics of some form is a natural consequence of cheaper paper and printing techniques.

So cheaper paper and printing techniques led to an explosion in use among the lower and middle classes, which then caused comic books to become widely available? Why did paper suddenly become cheaper? What new printing techniques were used?

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
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