Comic Book

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Synonyms: comicbook, comic magazine, comic
See also: Comicsverse, Comics Fandom, Free Comic Book Day, manga, donghua, manhua, underground comics, independent comics
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Comic Books are a media form consisting of sequential art with text, often heavy with dialogue rather than narrative description and featuring onomatopoeia or sound effects in print form.

Comic Book Fandoms

Fandoms that got their start in comic books include many superhero fandoms, like Superman, Batman, the X-Men, Spiderman and so on. Marvel and DC comics are the best-known in the US, however there is also a large market for independent comics, which are published by small publishing groups or by the creator. Of these, Image, Dark Horse and IDW Publishing are the most prominent, but there are many more.

Long-lived comics can have problems with continuity: a popular comic series can run for decades, and the writers are stuck trying to find a balance between "write the kind of stories everyone loves in this fandom" and "show character growth and world changes." In the main US comics, this results in a weird universe-reboot every 10 years or so, such as the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars, which allowed character deaths, new character origins, and major changes to teams. However, the eventual result is usually some form of retconning the results back to something like the original.

If they get popular enough, there are often TV series and movies made based on the comics. Most comic movies are flops -- they don't follow comic continuity enough to appeal to comics fans, and the storylines aren't compelling to non-comics-fans. This media shift also goes the other direction: Popular shows, movies, and video games can wind up with comics series; sometimes they follow the original timeline and events, and sometimes they don't.

It can be hard to identify popular "comics" fandoms, because most archives don't differentiate between the comics and TV shows of the same name, and many fans mix the canon details together. Some fans are comic book "purists" who refuse to address animated (or live-action) remakes of their favorite fandom.


Noteworthy comic book fandoms

Movie and TV fandoms originally based on comics

Archives & Resources

References