A comic strip is a drawing or a collection of multiple drawings that tells a story. Written and drawn by a cartoonist, these comic strips are published on a recurring basis in local newspapers and on the Internet.
Storytelling using drawings, often combined with words, has existed since the ancient Egyptians..
As the name shows, a comic strip can be humorous. Starting in 1930, comic strips began to include action adventure stories. Buck Rogers was one of the first. Soap-opera strips such as Mary Worth were very popular. All are called, "comic strips", though cartoonist Will Eisner said that "sequential art" would be a better name for them.
Newspaper comic strips
The Yellow Kid is usually credited as being the very first newspaper comic strip. Newspaper comic strips are usually daily strips and Sunday strips. The majority of newspaper comic strips are syndicated; that is, a syndicate hires people to write and draw the strip, and then sells the strip to many newspapers for a profit.
A daily strip is a comic strip that appears in newspapers These strips are for the most part published in black and white. Monday through Saturday, compared with a Sunday strip which appears on Sunday.
Sunday cartoon strips appear in Sunday newspapers, usually in color.
The Yellow Kid
The Yellow Kid the first color comic, part of the first Sunday comic section published in a 1897 newspaper (this term became the source for "yellow journalism")
The 1865 German strip Max and Moritz served as an idea for Rudolph Dirks. He later created the Katzenjammer Kids in 1897.
Very popular, The Katzenjammer Kids was one of the first comic-strip copyright law suits in the history of the cartoon medium.
Most comic strip characters did not age throughout the strip's duration. The first strip to have aging characters was Gasoline Alley.
The history of comic strips also includes strips that are not humorous, but tell a story. Examples include Phantom,Dick Tracy, and Tarzan. Sometimes these are spin-offs from comic books, for example Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man.
A great number of strips have animals as main characters. Some do not speak (Marmaduke), some have thoughts but aren't heard by people, (Garfield, Snoopy), and some can speak with people (Calvin And Hobbes).
Many of the older comic strips are not drawn by the original cartoonist, they have died or retired. A cartoonist, paid by the syndicate, or sometimes a relative of the original cartoonist continues doing the strip, this has been common.
The problems mentioned with a second cartoonist is that the second cartoonist is usually less funny or interesting than the original artist.
Pogo by Walt Kelly
The political influence of comic strips
Pogo used comical animals to create controversy, by caricaturing many politicians of the 1950's as animal citizens of Pogo's Okeefenokee Swamp. In a brave move, Pogo's creator Walt Kelly took on Senator Joseph McCarthy, drawing him as a crazy bobcat named Simple J. Malarkey, a power crazed character who wanted to take over the swamps birdwatching club and root out all undesirables.
Walter Kelly defended the comic strip against government regulation and restrictions in the McCarthy era. At a time when comic books were under fire for having sexual, violent, and subversive content, Kelly feared the same would happen to comic strips. Going before the congressional subcommittee, he charmed the members with his drawings and his personality. The comic strip was safe to poke fun at the elite in Washington.
Doonesbury by Gary Trudeau
Underground comic strips
The 1960s saw the rise of underground newspapers, which carried comic strips, such as Fritz the Cat. College newspapers also began to carry their own strips. Doonesbury began in college papers, and later moved to syndication.
A gag cartoon is a single-panel cartoon, usually including a written caption that appears beneath the drawing, most often published in magazines. As the name implies—"gag" being a show business term for a comedic idea—these cartoons are most often intended to provoke laughter. Their basis in "gags" and their publication in magazines rather than newspapers separates them from political cartoons. Popular magazines that have featured gag cartoons include Punch (UK), The New Yorker (US), and Nick Magazine (US).