Comics historiography

Comics historiography (the study of the history of comics)[3] studies the historical process through which comics became an autonomous art medium[28] and an integral part of culture.[29] An area of study is premodern sequential art; some scholars such as Scott McCloud consider Egyptian paintings and pre-Columbian American picture manuscripts to be the very first form of comics and sequential art.[30] Another area of study is the 20th-century emergence of the subculture of comics readers and comicphilia,[31] the passionate interest in comic books. (A person with a passionate interest in comics is informally called a comicphile[32] or comics buff.)[33]

The first attempts at comics historiography began in the United States in the 1940s with the work of Thomas Craven, Martin Sheridan, and Coulton Waugh. It was not until the mid-1960s, with the publication of Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes, that the field began to take root. Historiography became an accepted practice in the 1970s with the work of Maurice Horn, Jim Steranko, Ron Goulart, Bill Blackbeard, and Martin Williams. The late 1990s saw a wave of books celebrating American comics' centennial. Other notable writers on these topics include Will Jacobs, Gerard Jones, Rick Marschall, and R. C. Harvey.