62 Comic strips are often serialised and can also be longer and called graphic novels. List all the genres of comic books you can think of in thirty seconds. See unit 7.4 for more information on storyboards. Some onomatopoeia are, for example: ouch, zzz, wow. Can you think of any others? to blend: mescolare caption: didascalia dotted: tratteggiato to draw out: rendere visibile flickering: tremolante gloomy: cupo overlapping: sovrapposto overlooked: trascurato pacing: ritmo smooth: facile, liscio wave: ondata to wrap around: avvolgersi 144 Layout COMIC STRIPS A comic strip is a sequence of boxed drawings or images that tell a story. They are usually printed as a horizontal strip and may be in colour or black and white; they contain a small amount of text in each box and some dialogue printed in balloons. Origins Comic strips were born as a form of social satire or as a form of entertainment for children, but they soon attracted an increasingly large audience of fans. The progressive expansion of the readership and their massive production have created a diversification of genres which corresponds to a variety of styles and illustrations. History of comics Their origins can be traced back to 1895, when American cartoonist R.C. Outcalt introduced The Yellow Kid, a character who commented on everyday life, blending humour with social and political observation, using speech bubbles. The success of early comic strips led to their appearance in book form in 1933. Just five years later, the golden age of Comic Books began thanks to the launch of Action Comics by DC (Detective Comics) and the debut of Superman, and some of the most iconic superheroes, including Batman and Captain America. In Italy, comics targeted younger readers and were at first set in the American Old West, with characters such as Tex Willer (1948). The 1950s and 60s then gave rise to the black genre , with crime stories, gloomy atmospheres, and morally ambiguous characters such as Diabolik. At the same time, in the US, Stan Lee and Marvel Comics contributed to the superhero genre with characters like Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, and The Hulk. The 1990s saw the arrival of Japanese manga, which rapidly gained popularity through television anime, bringing with it new styles, themes, and a fresh wave of international interest. The layout of comics Comics are first written and then drawn in the storyboard. The balloon is a fundamental element in a comic strip since it contains the words spoken or thought by a character and respects a pre-established code. Here are some conventions: sometimes, the speech bubble may be missing, and a simple V line is used; a dotted line indicates that the character speaks in a low voice; a series of bubbles connecting the speech indicates thought; words spoken in a high tone of voice are in bold; flickering lettering expresses fear or coldness. Comics also use a lot of onomatopoeia to help making the text sound more realistic, and captions, to specify the context better. ,