A comic book (often shortened to simply comic and sometimes called a funny book, comic paper or comic magazine) is a magazine made up of narrative artwork, often accompanied by dialog (usually in word balloons, emblematic of the comic book artform) and often including brief descriptive prose. The first comic book appeared in the United States of America in 1934, reprinting the earlier newspaper comic strips, which established many of the story-telling devices used in comics. The term "comic book" arose because the first comic books reprinted humor comic strips, but despite their name, comic books do not necessarily operate in humorous mode; most modern comic books tell stories in a variety of genres. The Japanese and European comic book markets demonstrate this clearly. In the United States the super-hero genre dominates the market, even though other genres also exist.
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