Text Story
In the Platinum and early Golden Age it was common to have a text story published in comics magazines since comics themselves were generally anthologies and contained a mix of stories to begin with, illustrated text stories being seen then as part of the mix.
Name:
Text Story
Aliases:
- Illustrated Story
- 絵物語
- Emonogatari
Start year:
1935
First issue:
New Fun (1935) #1
Note: This page can be credited to any issue with a text story in it but the only other credits related to the text story that can be credited are creators. No characters, locations, teams, concepts, etc. can be tagged based on the content of the text story. Text stories are only relevant insofar as they share an issue with a comic (generally multiple comics), an issue can not be added if its only comic-adjacent content is a text story.
Most text stories in comic books during the Golden Age mainly contain at least one or two pages of a story. Sometimes they have some pictures, but they don't convey a panel sequence to tell a story from page to page. Most text story genres are jungle adventures, cowboy westerns, war, crime, horror and sometimes superheroes. A well known superhero text story is "Captain America Foils the Traitor's Revenge" by Stan Lee in Captain America Comics #3 as it was the very first comic book story written by Stan.
In Japan, there was a similar practice in their early decades where stories were known as 絵物語/Emonogatari and were essentially text stories but with a handful of prominent illustrations. Some of these illustrators were themselves major manga creators like Shigeru Mizuki.
