by KC Carlson

Though we may be inundated by it in current superhero comic books, long-form serialized storytelling is nothing new.

The idea of telling a long-form storyline as a series of chapters originally dates back to somewhere between the mid-8th and the mid-13th century. The work in question? One Thousand and One Nights, more colloquially known in English as the Arabian Nights. They are actually a series of independent stories gathered together with a framing device, but as originally told, each story was shared over a period of nights, including some kind of “cliffhanger” ending, which would be resolved the following night. Some of the more famous of the stories include “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor”, all of which are probably much better known to several generations of American children as the basis for three very memorable (and historically important) Popeye the Sailor cartoons.

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by KC Carlson

Often in comic books, especially when it comes to superhero comics, credit for creation is talked about in two different ways. One is the common-sense, often folkloreian manner of determining who created a character: either based on a series of tales handed down through the years by those who were there, or by comics historians who have studied the early works and can determine artist styles and quirks or certain writer tics (like placement of punctuation or use of verbs or adjectives, or even the number of exclamation marks used!!!). The other is whoever the lawyers say created something. Of the two, I believe the latter is the more arcane and mysterious choice.

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