Fun time with Comic Books

I recently prepared a presentation on comic books. I had a lot of fun doing this thing. It was very enjoyable reading the story about its beginnings and development. Its amazing how comic strips styles and content were influenced by the occurrences and events of those times. I actually saw a comic book featuring the superhero Captain America punching Hitler on the chin.There were several other anti-Nazi superhero comics. Some of these were unbelievably racist too.
I found the Green Lama comic quite intriguing. A superhero who practices Buddhism..devoutly! :p
Another astonishing thing I found out was that the creators of Superman, Siegel & Shuster only ever received $130 in payment in their entire lifetime for their efforts from Diamond Comics. That was seriously crazy! DC still makes billions of dollars from Superman. We sure live in a great world!
I had only read Tintin, Calvin & Hobbes and various Hindi comics like Chacha Chaudhary, Pinki, Billu etc until I started making this highly interesting and rewarding presentation. I wish I could get my hands on those 'Yellow Kid' comics. They went out of print in 1897 :-/
I remember my younger cousins used to be crazy about some Indian superheroes like Dhruv and Sabu etc. I'm going to have so many comic books in my library!
I have a Japanese Manga at home which I haven't touched. Actually now I remember that I did touch it but didn't understand anything beyond the first two pages which made me abandon the book. I have some renewed enthusiasm now. Think I'll try it out again.
The guy who created the first comic strip in the world - Rudolphe Toppffer was an absolute genius. I really liked his idea of Les Amours de M. Vieux Bois (The Loves of Monsieur Vieux Bois) It was later called as the adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck in English. It was hilarious! He narrated the story of a young man hopelessly in love with an extremely fat woman who rejects him. He describes Oldbuck's numerous failed attempts at suicide. In those days,the idea of speech bubbles hadn't occured to anyone, Toppffer used captions under his panels. I think I'll put some pictures here.
The material for the presentation came from a Michigan University professor! It was actually a course being offered in the History Department! Isn't that amazing? Our teachers here would probably have fits if I told them I was researching comics!
Making this presentation makes me feel like researching some more on some other interesting topic. I will have to think of something soon. Wine-making?? :p
I only hope that the actual presenting part for this presentation which happens on Wednesday goes well.