Production

Comics were originally short strips of illustrations with dialogue between characters. The original production of these strips were in newspapers in both the US and England during the 1800s. These comics were written by artists and payed for by both the ads in the newspaper as well as those who bought or subscribed to the paper. With the newspaper being the comic’s platform they essentially were backed by the newspaper publisher (Kowalski 2016). Soon after moving into the 1900s collections of these comics and longer stories were published into their own books and by 1922 the first regularly produced comic book was “Comics Monthly” . By this point in time comics were becoming popular with avid readers. They provided convenient yet engaging entertainment and with many different writers and therefore characters there was something for everyone. With the popularity of comics rising production increases with more and  more subscriptions. Soon after the US was involved in WW2 and with the war progressing, the people needed a hero. Around 1938 a new era of comics arrived known as the Golden age of comics (Montgomery 2016). Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel met in highschool and together they became friends over a common interest in sci-fi and action movies, cartoons, and stories(Coville 1996). Together they started writing a “fan”-magazine and produced comics created out of their own interest and love of sci-fi/action stories. Originally they produced a comic called “the reign of the Superman” where Superman was the villain. After tweaking and tweaking the story of superman the story of the hero we all know today was created. Siegel and Shuster were rejected time and time again for the idea by different publishers. However Detective comics accepted the Idea and in 1938 Action comics #1 and thus the golden age of comics were born (Coville 1996). The golden age ushered in an era of Nazi battling super heroes and one of which who was particularly popular was Action comic’s very own Superman. By this point the producers of these golden age comics were individual publishing companies such as DC or Marvel. The golden age was know for being the real first era of mass production with comics. These comics were mostly subscription based such as a newspaper therefore the comic was its own platform as opposed to comics in newspapers. The comics were paid for more by the reader than advertisements. With action comics was a prime example of the success of golden age comics and approximately 1.5 million copies were sold per month (Kowalski 2016).