They have amused us as children and made us cry as adults. We cried because the ones we had as children became very valuable and we had either traded them or threw them away. They are comic books, those colorful fantasy stories that were stamped out onto cheap paper and enclosed in a beautiful glossy cover that was stapled, usually with two staples. one on the top center and the other on the bottom center.

So far, the earliest known comic book that has been found is the Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck and was printed in Europe in 1837. The comic book was printed in several languages including English. Until last year it was thought that the first comic book was the Yellow Kid, a comic book published in 1895 in America. The wording was under the panels and not in 'balloons' and rather than using staples, the book was stitched together. The Library of Congress has managed to acquire a collection of over 100,000 comic books and this may be the biggest collection of comics in the United States.

These early comic books were tame by today's standards but as time went by things began to change. In the 1930s we see the man of steel. Superman hits the comic books. Superman is an instant hit. He was on Action Comics Vol. 1 in 1938 and drawn by Joe Shuster. Superman was impervious to everything except a chunk of rock, that came from his home planet Krypton, called Kryptonite. Superman was America's first super hero.

Captain Marvel soon followed and was also an instant success. At one point the Captain sold over 2,000,000 copies a month. This made for quite a tidy profit. The captain was a poor orphan named Billy Batson who had the power to change into Captain Marvel by saving the magic word Shazam! But the publishers of Superman thought he changed into Superman and sued Fawcett, the publishers of the Captain Marvel Comic book. At this point Fawcett decided not to take a chance in the courts and stopped publishing the comic book. In 1974 Captain Marvel was published again after a successful television series sparked interest in him. Publication stopped again but resumed in the 1990s when DC Comics brought him back. The Captain is around no longer but who knows, you can't keep a good super hero down.

In the middle 1940s a bunch of crime comics came out with titles like, True Crime, War Against Crime, Crime By Women blah, blah, blah. The crime comics were a big hit and made a lot of money for their publishers. But crime comics were not alone in scoring big money. Something new was hitting the news stands, it was the horror comic. Now we had Eerie Comic, and Adventures into the Unknown, In the 1950s the amount of horror titles being sold exploded. We had the famous Tales From The Crypt, the definitive horror comic, published by EC Comics. The Haunt of Fear also appeared. Horror was so popular it now carried the company until the appearance of Mad Magazine which was really a comic and not a magazine.

Of interest here is a code for comic books that was introduced in 1955. Because of the code, which many thought was not only unreasonable but that it had been put into effect to put comic book publishers out of business. Some people had thought that comics were responsible for lowering the morals of children. Many small publishers bit the dust. But some companies did survive. EC closed down everything except Mad Magazine and still managed to make a nice profit. DC had a decrease in circulation but kept afloat. Dell comics was unaffected as they policed their own publications. Atlas Comics barely held on. Yes this was a low point for comic books.

Super heroes were about to make a comeback thanks to the Flash. The Flash first appeared in 1956 and in 1958 got his own comic book. Then in 1960 The Green Lantern also got his own book. DC Comics was on a roll. Boom, the Justice League appeared. The members were the Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and Wonder Woman. They were to get even more members at a later date including the famous Superman and Batman the dark knight.

Marvel Comics, which formerly was Atlas Comics, came out with the Fantastic Four in 1961. Then hit us with the Incredible Hulk and Spiderman. And the cash rolled in. These characters were a huge hit.

The comic book companies have now gone to the movies and are making more money than ever with such films as X-Men, Spider Man and The Incredible Hulk. It seems there is no limit to the popularity of these timeless characters.

Comic books have come a long way and there are so many titles that I haven't even mentioned like the Conan the Barbarian, Archie, Classic Comics, The Silver Surfer and so many more. In the beginning comics were the Nintendos of their time. They were one of the few ways children and sometimes even adults, could imagine being a hero and fighting crime, flying off to another world or being carried off to a world where Donald Duck was getting very frustrated with Huey, Louie and Dewey.

Let me finish here by stating that comic books have become so popular that they now have a Social Security Comic Book, A FEMA comic book and NASA has comic books, just to mention a few.

NASA Comic Book
Picture Source: NASA