Photo comics

For example, they have been used to adapt popular film and television works into print, tell original melodramas, and provide medical education.

The New York Graphic (1924-1932) featured a daily multi-panel "Graphic Photo Drama from Life" illustrated feature and an "Antics of Arabella" comic strip in which scantily clad chorus girls or models demonstrated Physical Culture (Macfadden magazine) exercise poses while telling jokes in word balloons.

During the 1970s, lines of American paperback books were marketed as "Fotonovels" and "Photostories", adapting popular films and television shows.

Although home video largely supplanted this market in the 1980s, a small number of photo comic adaptations continued to be produced as promotional tie-ins to the original work.

Online series such as Night Zero, A Softer World, and Alien Loves Predator are more recent examples of photo comics.

[15] In the 2010s, cartoonist John Byrne – inspired by 1970s photo comics adaptations of Star Trek episodes – produced a series of "photonovel adventures" which combined stills from the series with original digitally rendered background illustrations and new dialogue, to produce new stories featuring the characters.

Still frames from the film or video are reproduced, often in simple grids but sometimes with creative layouts and cropping, overlaid with balloons with abbreviated dialogue from the screenplays.

They are a cost-effective way to adapt films and TV series into comics without the expense of commissioning illustrations, and were a way for consumers to revisit motion-picture stories before the widespread availability of affordable home recording and video playback equipment such as VCRs.

The fotonovelas produced by these organizations present information in a variety of illustrated forms but usually contain a summation of key points at the end.