Short answers, pulled from the story.
Comics is a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information, typically taking the form of a sequence of panels. There is no consensus among theorists and historians on a single definition, with some emphasizing the combination of images and text, some sequentiality, and others historical aspects such as mass reproduction or recurring characters.
Europeans trace their tradition to the francophone Swiss Rodolphe Topffer, who produced comic strips as early as 1827, while Americans long pointed to Richard F. Outcault's 1890s newspaper strip The Yellow Kid. Many Americans have come to recognize Topffer's precedence.
The Golden Age of Comic Books began with the success in 1938 of Action Comics and its lead hero Superman, a period in which the superhero genre was prominent. The popularity of superhero comic books later declined in the years following World War II.
Manga is the Japanese term for comics, cartooning, and caricature, popularized by the ukiyo-e artist Hokusai in the early 19th century. Histories of manga trace roots as far back as the Choju-jinbutsu-giga picture scroll of the 12th and 13th centuries, with the modern era flourishing after World War II through cartoonists such as Osamu Tezuka.
The Comics Code Authority was a self-censoring body established after Senate hearings that scrutinized the content of comic books, particularly crime and horror, following a sales peak in the early 1950s. The Code has been blamed for stunting the growth of American comics and maintaining the medium's low status for much of the century.
Manhwa refers to Korean comics and print cartoons, manga refers to Japanese comics, and manhua refers to Chinese comics. The Chinese term manhua and the Korean manhwa both derive from the Chinese characters with which the Japanese term manga is written, and manhwa emerged under the influence of Japanese manga during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
Will Eisner popularized the term graphic novel with his book A Contract with God in 1978, and it became widely known to the public after the commercial success of Maus, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight Returns in the mid-1980s. In the 21st century graphic novels became established in mainstream bookstores and libraries.