Comic books Comic books are also known as funny books or comic magazines that service both the young generation and also the old. Comic books contain different and individual scenes that are followed by dialog and also prose that are descriptive. Comics made the first appearance in the early 1934 in the United States though this was a reprinting of the earlier copies of comic strips. The reprinting of the strips into a general book earned the combined comic strips the term comic book. The comic book “prisoners of the sun: the adventures of Tintin is one example of the comic books and is a result of many comic strips that have been brought together to create a book (Doonan, 1993). Modern comic books do not always give humorous stories but vary in genre. Majority of comic books in the United States and also in China are in the category of comic books that do not always offer humor. There are many genres under which comic books fall. Such examples include superhero comics such as wonder woman, X-men, Spiderman among others, adventure comics; some depict action, war and other stories. In Japan, Manga comics are very popular (Barry, Abel & Madden, 2008). Other genres of comics include science fiction comic books and fantasy books. In the science fiction comic books they have characters that are portrayed in a futuristic setting whereby there is advancement in technology and many times are seen to travel through time and space. Fantasy comics as the word suggests involving having mythological and fantasy creatures. The Conan Barbarian series is fantasy comic book. The horror comic books also as the title suggests have creatures such as zombies, vampires among other frightening creatures. The adventure comic books contain real-life characters such as detectives and police persons in battles against offenders. There are also romance comic books that mainly focus on the older generation as they are filled with themes of relationships and love. Picture books Picture books mainly aim at the older generation and also the young children as they are a combination of both visual and also verbal narratives. The major characteristics of picture books are that they aim at different age sectors. Those that are specifically for children have words that children can understand but cannot read. In this case the parent reads to the child before the child can learn to read by itself. Picture books for young children have also termed board books as they are covered by cardboards for durability when the child plays with the book. Other categories also target the older children and picture books such as the “Tibet through the red box” is an example that targets the older generation (Doonan, 1993). In picture books there is a balance between the pictures and also the words but the pictures usually have a much deeper effect than the words. Just as the comic books there are different kinds of genres into which picture books can be categorized into. They include the magic realism, literature that is usually in most cases traditional, animal stories or what can be termed as anthropomorphic. The picture books also have a category of non-fictional books. The similarities of both the comic books and the picture books are that they both entail having sequential pictures. The sequential part of both books makes it easy to tell a story from the pictures. Another similarity bet