The Four Color Media Monitor

Business Insider wrote about an auction held in Paris for the drafts of early comic strips. I guess the good news here when it comes to selling is that this is only the draft panels they're putting on sale, and not finished pamphlets. Of course, that's because their formatting has long been different, using the "album" approach, both in paperback and hardcover.

This does has something towards the end worth pondering:

Unlike the European tradition, in North America comics have always favored an array of superheroes.

As great as the superheroes genre is, I'm sure a problem arose from such a huge emphasis on superheroes, and not quite as much on adventure. It wasn't always that way in the mainstream, of course. In the early days of comicdom, there were heroes and heroines who weren't superpowered, like Speed Saunders, Slam Bradley, Sheena, Blackhawks and Adam Strange. There were also a few in later years like Christopher Chance of the Human Target tales Len Wein and Carmine Infantino created. Some of these non-superhero characters could use sci-fi technology and sorcery, but were far from superheroes per se. And unfortunately, they're among the most marginalized, while the costumed superheroes get all the favoratism.

"Actually, US comic books are not really very different from European comics," Leroy said. Even if the subjects may differ.

If they're talking about the action/adventure themes, no, they're not all that different. It's just the costumed crimefighter theme that makes a contrast, whereas European comic writers don't usually rely on that for their story premises.

Labels: comic strips, Europe and Asia