It is hard to trace the history of comic books, as many countries seem to have come up with the idea independently of one another. In Britain, they go back to the late 18th century, and in Japan the late 17th. If we're talking about the worldwide explosion of comic book popularity in the format we know today, however, it can be most easily traced back to 1930s America, especially the beginning of the Superman series in 1938.

Since then, comic books have been both hugely in fashion, and very much out of fashion. The situation today, though, is most interesting: children have largely abandoned comic books for video games and television, with the few big-selling comics of today being largely restricted to the big names - and even they aren't doing so well, at least in the West. Manga comics in Japan outsell comics in America by over fifty to one, and the influence of manga (and its animated cousin, anime) is pervasive in Japanese society.

The last generation to grow up with comics in the West, however, still has a special place in its heart for them. Adults have started to take over comic book culture, both by collecting the classics and by struggling to legitimise new comic books, now often called 'graphic novels', as an art form. These graphic novels use the comic book format to tell darker, more serious stories, with higher aspirations than comic books both in terms of their stories and the quality of the drawing.

This adult interest in comic books has seen an explosion in the number of films being based on them, from Superman and Batman in the '90s to the X-Men and Spider-Man films today. These films have been some of the highest-earning in movie history, making far more money for the comic book companies than comic books themselves ever have, and bringing the comic book superheroes into the TV generation.