What is the comic?

In the various cultures, man has complemented the transmission of knowledge and culture, myths and legends, with the use of images, depicted episodes or full accounts of events important. In papyri, codices, parchments, stained glass windows, murals, paintings, books, pamphlets and newspapers, the human being has captured images that help make communication more effective.
The ideal of telling a story or adventure through a series of drawings, which could be aided or not by text, it arose during the 19th century with the expansion of the press as a massive means of communication; in the United States it acquires its definitive characteristics: Serial images and dialogues framed in a balloon.

Originally they were series of three or more paintings, which presented a rather funny, with cartoonish drawings; By 1929 the adventure theme emerged, preserving the format, but using a much more careful and realistic drawing. Many newspapers even dedicated a Sunday supplement, compiling the comics of the week, or featuring longer stories and longer episodes of the adventures.

At this time, characters such as Tintin reporter in 1929; Flash gordon that in some countries it is Roldán el Temerario, in 1934; The brave prince, in 1937; The breadth and complexity of these stories in many cases exceeds the strips comic or the Sunday supplement, and what we know as the comic proper: a comic magazine or comic book, of regular edition, with a certain number of pages, that presents part of a story or adventures of the protagonist.
Despite a time of decline, improvements in print quality, as well as digital effects, have allowed more realistic and deeper image and lighting effects to be used which have given a new impulse to comic.