American Newspaper Comics

1. Definition and Defining Elements of Newspaper Comics

1.1. Definition
According to Wikipedia encyclopaedia,
"[…] a comic strip is a short strip or sequence of drawings, telling a story. Drawn by a cartoonist, they are published on a recurring basis (usually daily or weekly) in newspapers or on the Internet. They usually communicate to the reader via speech balloons. The term ‘comic' derives from the fact that most strips were funny in the beginning. For this reason they are often also referred to as ‘funnies'.".  
Comics, however, need not be humorous by necessity. While many comics remain focused on humour, others involve politics, human interest, murder and suspense, or adventure.
Another word for comic is ‘sequential art' , which I regard as the most appropriate term describing the genre, because it refers to comics as an art form on the one hand and gives you an idea of the nature and appearance of comics on the other. This takes me to the structure and appearance of newspaper comics.

1.2. Structure and Appearance
Most comics consist of more than one panel, which is a box or a frame that contains a given scene, but as the following strip shows, sequence can also be expressed in only one panel.
Here, one can imagine what happened before this scene, by just seeing one panel.
Almost all comics also contain some text, which appears in balloons or headlines.
While most daily newspaper comics are published six days a week in black and white, those on Sunday tend to be in colour.
1.2. The Characters
In fact, the characters are the most important ingredients of a successful feature, because everything else is exchangeable. There are often lots of artists who work on one strip and if any of them discontinues, there are others to replace him or her. Artists may even switch syndicates   without anyone noticing, but Peanuts, for example, would not be the same without Charlie Brown or Snoopy.
The characters become your friends, because you identify... [continues]

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