Historical and the Future of Sequential Art

Throughout history the role of sequential art has changed, for instance both Captain America and Superman were created as World War 2 propaganda. This was more than evident with Captain America's first issue where he is seen on the cover as punching Hitler.  The comics in those times were created as escapism as well as propaganda, taking peoples minds away from the darkness of war to a place where patriotic heroes and aliens from another world had saved Earth from it's worsening problems.

The role slowly changed over time and it became a medium that was just for children, no longer did soldiers in the trenches need the escapism after the war and so the characters changed as well.

The role once again changed in the 80's when more teenagers became interested in comic books and the comic industry boomed. Wright (2003) agrees with this and explains that the role of comics has changed so much over the last 40's years that it is hard to pin them down as targeting any one market at at any one time (p40).

The comics industry almost collapsed however just after their boom in the mid-90's when Marvel were printing ever type of variant they could, with hologram covers and 4 collectible issues and so on. The boom turned to dust and Marvel along with many other companies were on the brink of collapse. By scaling back however, Marvel and the others managed to survive into the next era which would see the main consumer of comics being the children who had grown up in the heyday of comics and now had more mature tastes and a more sophisticated palette. This was catered for by comics such as the massively popular 'Watchmen' and 'Dark Knight Returns'. Today the status quo remains the same, comics are now mainly aimed at the grown-up Generation X and the content is reflected as such.

The future of sequential art is unknown with Marvel still cancelling titles and digital comics becoming more and more popular, it's possible that comics will become purely digital in the future especially with the impact of piracy but only time will tell.