The comic strip’s close cousin: Comic books

As the other cartooning genres face the chal-

lenges of a shrinking and evolving newsprint

industry, one cartooning genre closely related

to comic strips is becoming so big, so fast that it

dominates not only the cartoonist business but

the whole entertainment industry as well. Comic

books have exploded in popularity in the last

decade, and you have to look no further than

the top movies in the last few years as proof.

The following is a list of movies based on comic

books or graphic novels, along with each film’s

worldwide box office sales numbers as of 2009:

You can see by the numbers that these movies

grossed more than $8 billion. That kind of financial

success guarantees that Hollywood will make

many more movies based on comic books in the

future.

The comic book/graphic novel industry contin-

ues to thrive. If you have the skills necessary

to enter this popular market, go for it — it’s a

worthwhile and potentially lucrative market to

consider. Although comic books merit an entire

book of their own, I focus this book more on

cartooning and comic strips. But even if you’re

more interested in creating comic books, you

can still use many of the core pieces of advice

that I offer about character development,

humor, background, lettering, and so on.

The first four Batman movies $1.3 billion

Batman Begins/The Dark Knight $1.5 billion

Three Spider-Man movies $2.5 billion

Iron Man $582 million

Hulk and The Incredible Hulk $509 million

Sin City $159 million

300 $456 million

The first three X-Men movies $1.2 billion