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List of cartoonists

This is a list of cartoonists, visual artists who specialize in drawing cartoons. This list includes only notable cartoonists and is not meant to be exhaustive. Note that the word 'cartoon' only took on its modern sense after its use in Punch magazine in the 1840s - artists working earlier than that are more correctly termed 'caricaturists',

Notable cartoonists

 * Scott Adams, Dilbert
 * Charles Addams (1938-1988), macabre cartoons featured in The New Yorker and elsewhere
 * Attila Adorjany
 * Sarah Andersen, known for Sarah's Scribbles
 * Barry Appleby
 * Sergio Aragonés, known for his contributions to Mad
 * Graciela Aranis (1908-1996), Chilean painter, cartoonist
 * Peter Arno (1904–1968), cartoons featured in The New Yorker and elsewhere
 * Arotxa (Rodolfo Arotxarena)
 * Jim Bamber, cartoonist of Autosport, magazine specialising in motor sports
 * Edgar Henry Banger
 * Carl Barks, inventor of Duckburg and many of its characters like Scrooge McDuck and Gladstone Gander; Fantagraphics Books called him "the Hans Christian Andersen of comic books."
 * Sumanta Baruah
 * Aminollah Rezaei
 * Niko Barun
 * Nancy Beiman, "FurBabies"
 * Darrin Bell, Candorville and Rudy Park
 * Steve Bell, The Guardian (UK)
 * Stephen Bentley, "Herb and Jamaal"
 * Jim Benton, known for his cartoons on reddit, GoComics, and instagram as well as It's Happy Bunny,Dear Dumb Diary,Franny K Stein,Catwad,Batman Squad,Attack of the Stuff
 * Oscar Berger, Aesop's Foibles (1947); active 1920s–1960s
 * Mark Beyer, Amy and Jordan, Agony
 * Brumsic Brandon Jr., "Luther"; with his daughter Barbara Brandon-Croft, first family of cartoonists (father/daughter) to each be nationally syndicated in the U.S. mainstream press
 * Barbara Brandon-Croft, "Where I'm Coming From"; first Black woman cartoonist to be nationally syndicated in the U.S. mainstream press
 * Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County and Outland
 * Frédéric-Antonin Breysse
 * Ed Brubaker
 * Henry Bunbury 18th Century British caricaturist
 * Tom Bunk, cartoonist for Mad
 * Stanley Burnside, Sideburns
 * Mark Burrier
 * John Byrne
 * Al Capp, Li'l Abner
 * Tom Cheney, staff cartoonist for The New Yorker
 * Edgar Church
 * Chester Commodore, political cartoonist
 * George Cruikshank 19th Century British caricaturist
 * Isaac Cruikshank 18th Century British caricaturist
 * Isaac Robert Cruikshank 19th Century British caricaturist
 * Robert Crumb, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Keep on Truckin'
 * Natalie d'Arbeloff
 * Jack Davis
 * Jim Davis, Garfield
 * Abner Dean
 * Arifur Rahman
 * Narayan Debnath, Indian cartoonist known for Handa Bhonda, Bantul the Great, and Nonte Phonte
 * Richard Decker, The New Yorker
 * Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck
 * Ralph Waddell Douglass
 * Stan Drake
 * George du Maurier, also the author of Trilby
 * Robert W. Edgren, American political cartoonist known for his "Sketches from Death" from the Spanish–American War
 * Will Eisner, The Spirit
 * Otto Eppers
 * Charles Evenden
 * Lyonel Feininger, rare fine artist who did strips, The Kin-der-Kids and Wee Willie Winkie's World
 * Rod Filbrandt
 * David Fletcher
 * Ellen Forney
 * André François
 * André Franquin, Spirou et Fantasio, Gaston Lagaffe, Marsupilami
 * Yuliy Abramovich Ganf, Soviet Russian
 * Eddie Germano
 * Denis Gifford, strips in Whizzer and Chips, Knockout, Marvelman
 * Carl Giles
 * James Gillray, 18th century British, called "the father of the political cartoon".
 * John Glashan, Genius
 * Rube Goldberg, cartoons of complex and convoluted machines doing very simple tasks.
 * Larry Gonick, The Cartoon History of the Universe series, Kokopelli & Company
 * Cleven "Goodie" Goudeau, known for his pioneering Afrocentric images on greeting cards
 * Jimmy Gownley, Amelia Rules! series, Simon & Schuster
 * Bud Grace, "Ernie/Piranha Club"
 * Mel Graff, “The Adventures of Patsy”, “Secret Agent X-9”
 * Matt Groening, Life in Hell, The Simpsons, Futurama
 * Sam Gross, for his The New Yorker work, plus many other magazines
 * Shekhar Gurera, well known for his quirky cartoons about India's political and social trends
 * William Haefeli
 * Martin Handford, Where's Wally?
 * Steven Harris
 * Butch Hartman, The Fairly OddParents, T.U.F.F. Puppy, Danny Phantom, Bunsen Is a Beast
 * Andrew Kennaway Henderson
 * Henfil, Brazilian cartoonist
 * Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin
 * George Herriman, Krazy Kat
 * Herblock American cartoonist
 * Watson Heston
 * Stephen Hillenburg (1961-2018), SpongeBob SquarePants
 * Bill Hinds, "Tank McNamara"
 * Dick Hodgins, Jr.
 * William Hogarth, English pictorial satirist and editorial cartoonist; credited with pioneering western sequential art; work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip
 * Bill Holbrook, On the Fastrack, Safe Havens, and Kevin and Kell
 * Nicole Hollander, Sylvia
 * John Holmstrom
 * Geoff "Jeff" Hook, Australian
 * George William Houghton, British golf cartoonist
 * Jim Hummel
 * Edgar Pierre Jacobs, Blake and Mortimer
 * Al Jaffee, Mad
 * Kirk Jarvinen
 * S. Jithesh, World's Fastest Performing Cartoonist
 * Herbert Johnson
 * Mike Judge, Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill, The Goode Family
 * Arja Kajermo
 * Avi Katz
 * Bil Keane, "Family Circus"
 * Jeff Keane. "Family Circus"
 * Walt Kelly, Pogo
 * Rik Kemp
 * Molly Kiely
 * Wyncie King
 * Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid
 * Rick Kirkman, "Baby Blues"
 * Heinrich Kley
 * B. Kliban
 * John Kricfalusi, The Ren & Stimpy Show
 * Gary Larson, The Far Side
 * Rick Law, Beyond the Veil
 * R K Laxman, cartoonist for The Times of India, India
 * Mell Lazarus. "Momma, Miss Peach"
 * John Leech, 19th-century Punch cartoonist
 * Jonathan Lemon, Alley Oop
 * Michael Leunig, Australian
 * Arnold Levin
 * David Liljemark
 * Neil Lonsdale (1907-1989), New Zealand editorial cartoonist
 * David Low, New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist
 * Jay Lynch
 * Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park
 * Seth MacFarlane, Family Guy, American Dad!, The Cleveland Show
 * Manjul, India Today, The Economic Times and Daily News and Analysis
 * Bob Mankoff, The New Yorker
 * Jack Markow
 * Enrico Mazzanti
 * Scott McCloud, Zot!, Understanding Comics
 * Aaron McGruder, The Boondocks
 * Ronald Michaud
 * Yevgeniy Migunov
 * Mario Miranda, The Economic Times, India
 * Shigeru Mizuki, Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro, master of horror of Japanese manga
 * Guillermo Mordillo
 * Arthur Moreland
 * Lorin Morgan-Richards
 * Morris, Lucky Luke
 * Joe Murray, Rocko's Modern Life and Camp Lazlo!
 * Rachel Nabors
 * Ogden Nash
 * Nigar Nazar, first female cartoonist of the Muslim world, creator of cartoon character "Gogi"
 * Roy Nelson
 * Richard Newton, 18th century British caricaturist
 * Mana Neyestani, Iranian cartoonist
 * Ajit Ninan, India Today and The Times of India
 * Floyd Norman
 * Murray Olderman, sports columnist, author of 14 books, National Cartoonist Society Sports Cartoon Award for 1974 and 1978
 * Jack Edward Oliver
 * Jackie Ormes, "Torchy Brown in 'Dixie to Harlem", "Candy", "Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger", "Torchy in 'Hearbeats'"; first Black woman cartoonist to be published nationally in the U.S. (not via syndication)
 * Bruce Ozella
 * Paul Palnik, American Jewish cartoonist
 * Gary Panter
 * Virgil Franklin Partch, known as "VIP;" leading American gag cartoonist from the 1940s to the 1980s
 * Alan Stuart Paterson, New Zealand cartoonist
 * Andrea Pazienza
 * René Pellos, French cartoonist
 * Bob Penuelas, Wilbur Kookmeyer
 * Camillus Perera
 * Bruce Petty
 * Peyo, The Smurfs, Steven Strong, Johan and Peewit
 * S. D. Phadnis, Indian cartoonist
 * Ziraldo Alves Pinto, Brazilian cartoonist
 * Hugo Pratt, Corto Maltese
 * Ken Pyne
 * Quino (Joaquín Salvador Lavado), Argentine cartoonist and social satirist, known for Mafalda
 * Jacki Randall
 * Roy Raymonde, 20th Century English cartoonist whose work appeared principally in Punch (magazine) and Playboy
 * Bob Rich, American award-winning cartoonist
 * W. Heath Robinson, British satirist known for drawings of convoluted machines, similar to Rube Goldberg
 * Christine Roche
 * Artie Romero
 * Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
 * Thomas Rowlandson 18th Century British caricaturist
 * Martin Rowson British political cartoonist
 * Øystein Runde
 * Malik Sajad Indian cartoonist, author of graphic novel Munnu - A Boy from Kashmir'
 * Armando Salas
 * Gerald Scarfe ( political)
 * Jerry Scott, "Baby Blues, Zits"
 * Ronald Searle, St Trinians, Molesworth, The Rake's Progress, editorial work
 * Elzie Crisler Segar, Popeye
 * Sempé
 * Claude Serre
 * James Affleck Shepherd
 * Lee Sheppard
 * Gilbert Shelton
 * Mahmoud Shokraye
 * Shel Silverstein
 * Posy Simmonds, The Silent Three of St Botolph's, Gemma Bovery
 * Siné
 * Jeff Smith, Bone, RASL, Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil, Little Mouse Gets Ready
 * Mauricio de Sousa, Monica's Gang, Chuck Billy 'n' Folks, The Cavern Clan
 * Art Spiegelman, author of Maus; co-editor of RAW magazine
 * Dan Spiegle
 * George Sprod, Punch and other publications
 * Ralph Steadman, editorial cartoonist and book illustrator
 * Ralph Stein
 * Saul Steinberg
 * Jay Stephens
 * Matt Stone, with Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park
 * Jakob Martin Strid
 * Ed Subitzky, known for his National Lampoon work, also The New York Times
 * Joost Swarte, Dutch comic artist known for his ligne claire or clear line style of drawing
 * Betty Swords
 * Les Tanner, political cartoonist
 * Howard Tayler, pioneered web-cartooning as a profession
 * Raina Telgemeier
 * Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy, Phoenix; known as the "God" of Japanese manga who defined modern Japanese cartooning
 * Bal Thackeray, formed a political party in India
 * Lefred Thouron
 * Morrie Turner, credited with the first multicultural syndicated cartoon strip
 * Albert Uderzo, Asterix
 * Jim Unger, Canadian cartoonist: Herman
 * Willy Vandersteen, Spike and Suzy, De Rode Ridder
 * Joan Vizcarra
 * Vicco von Bülow, Loriot
 * Keith Waite, New Zealand-born English editorial cartoonist
 * Mort Walker, Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois
 * Arthur Watts
 * Ben Wicks, Canadian cartoonist and illustrator: The Outsider, Wicks
 * S. Clay Wilson, Zap Comix, Underground Comix
 * Shannon Wright
 * Rhie Won-bok
 * Bianca Xunise, "Six Chix"; first nonbinary cartoonist to be nationally syndicated in the U.S. mainstream press
 * Art Young
 * José Zabala-Santos
 * Zapiro

Cartoonists of comic strips

 * Scott Adams, Dilbert
 * Alex Akerbladh
 * Bill Amend, FoxTrot
 * George Baker, Sad Sack
 * Tom Batiuk, Funky Winkerbean
 * Murray Ball, Footrot Flats
 * Darrin Bell, Candorville, Rudy Park
 * Stephen Bentley, "Herb and Jamaal"
 * Jerry Bittle
 * Boulet, pseudonym of French cartoonist Gilles Roussel
 * Brumsic Brandon Jr., "Luther"
 * Barbara Brandon-Croft, "Where I'm Coming From"
 * Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County (1980s American social-political), Outland, Opus
 * Dave Breger, Mister Breger
 * Dik Browne, Hi and Lois, Hägar the Horrible
 * Ernie Bushmiller, Nancy
 * Milton Caniff, Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon
 * Al Capp, Li'l Abner
 * Ad Carter, Just Kids
 * Jok Church, You Can With Beakman and Jax
 * Francis Cleetus, It's Geek 2 Me
 * Mitch Clem, Nothing Nice to Say, San Antonio Rock City
 * Darby Conley, Get Fuzzy
 * Joan Cornellà
 * Dave Coverly, Speed Bump
 * Max Crivello
 * Alex Raymond, Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, Rip Kirby
 * Stan Cross, The Potts
 * Stacy Curtis, Cul de Sac
 * Lyman Dally, Max Rep
 * Harry Grant Dart
 * Lou Darvas
 * Jim Davis, Gnorm Gnat, Garfield, U.S. Acres, a Mr. Potato Head comic strip
 * Reginald Ben Davis
 * Derf Backderf (John Backderf)
 * Brad Diller
 * J. C. Duffy, The Fusco Brothers
 * Edwina Dumm
 * Frank Dunne
 * Benita Epstein, Six Chix
 * Larry Feign, The World of Lily Wong
 * Norm Feuti, Retail
 * George Fett, Sniffy and Norbert
 * Charles Fincher, creator of Thadeus & Weez and The Daily Scribble
 * Bud Fisher, Mutt and Jeff
 * Ham Fisher, Joe Palooka
 * Evelyn Flinders, The Silent Three
 * Harold Rudolf Foster, Prince Valiant and Tarzan
 * J.D. Frazer, User Friendly
 * David Füleki, 78 Tage auf der Straße des Hasses
 * Paul Gilligan, Pooch Cafe
 * Erich von Götha de la Rosière
 * Chester Gould, Dick Tracy
 * Bud Grace, "Ernie/Piranha Club", "Babs and Aldo"
 * Mel Graff, “The Adventures of Patsy”, “Secret Agent X-9”
 * Bill Griffith, Zippy the Pinhead
 * Cathy Guisewite, Cathy
 * Nicholas Gurewitch, Perry Bible Fellowship
 * Alex Hallatt
 * Johnny Hart, B.C., The Wizard of Id
 * Bill Hinds, Tank McNamara, Cleats, Buzz Beamer
 * Bill Holman, Smokey Stover
 * Daniel Hulet
 * Billy Ireland
 * Tatsuya Ishida, Sinfest
 * Tove and Lars Jansson, The Moomins
 * Ferd Johnson, Moon Mullins
 * Kerry G. Johnson, Harambee Hills, caricaturist and children's book illustrator
 * Russell Johnson, Mister Oswald
 * Lynn Johnston, For Better or For Worse
 * Eric Jolliffe, Andy
 * Bil Keane, Family Circus
 * Jeff Keane, Family Circus
 * Walt Kelly, Pogo
 * James Kemsley, Ginger Meggs
 * Hank Ketcham, Dennis the Menace
 * Kazu Kibuishi, Copper
 * Frank King, Gasoline Alley
 * Rick Kirkman, "Baby Blues"
 * Keith Knight, The K Kronicles
 * Charles Kuhn, Grandma
 * Fred Lasswell, Barney Google
 * Mell Lazarus, "Momma, Miss Peach"
 * Virginio Livraghi
 * Les Lumsdon, "Basil", "Nipper", "Caspar"
 * Edgar Martin
 * Clifford McBride, Napoleon
 * Winsor McCay, Little Nemo
 * Patrick McDonnell, Mutts
 * Brian McFadden, Big Fat Whale
 * Aaron McGruder, creator of the controversial strip The Boondocks
 * George McManus, Bringing Up Father
 * Caesar Meadows
 * Dale Messick, Brenda Starr
 * Tim Molloy
 * Bill Murray, Sonny Boy
 * Fred Negro, Pub Strip
 * Chris Onstad, Achewood
 * Jackie Ormes, "Torchy Brown in 'Dixie to Harlem'", "Torchy in 'Heartbeats'"
 * Phil Ortiz
 * Frode Øverli, Pondus
 * Nina Paley, Nina's Adventures, Fluff, The Hots
 * Brant Parker, The Wizard of Id
 * Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine
 * Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor, Alex
 * Mike Peters, Mother Goose & Grimm
 * Keats Petree
 * Stan Pitt, Larry Flynn, Detective
 * Vic Pratt
 * Dariush Ramezani
 * John Rivas, Bonzzo
 * Valentina Romeo, Jonathan Steele, Dylan Dog, Morgan Lost, Nathan Never
 * Leigh Rubin, Rubes
 * Warren Sattler, Grubby, Billy the Kid and Yang, as well as contributing artist for Barnaby daily, The Jackson Twins, Bringing Up Father and Hi and Lois
 * Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts, Young Pillars
 * Jerry Scott, "Baby Blues, Zits, Nancy"
 * Caroll Spinney, Harvey
 * Lee W. Stanley, The Old Home Town
 * Kris Straub, Starslip Crisis, Checkerboard Nightmare
 * Henry Matthew Talintyre
 * Harold Tamblyn-Watts
 * Russell Taylor and Charles Peattie, Alex
 * Richard Thompson, Cul de Sac
 * Jim Toomey, Sherman's Lagoon
 * Harry J. Tuthill, The Bungle Family
 * Gustave Verbeek, The Upside Downs, The Terrors of the Tiny Tads
 * Mort Walker, Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois
 * Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
 * Bob Weber, Moose & Molly
 * Monty Wedd, Ned Kelly
 * Alex Williams, Queen's Counsel
 * Tom Wilson, Ziggy

Cartoonists of single-panel cartoons

 * Charles Addams
 * Gene Ahern
 * Glen Baxter
 * Belsky
 * Jim Benton
 * Rupert Besley
 * Charles Boyce, Compu-Toon
 * Barry Bradfield
 * Sheree Bradford-Lea
 * Bo Brown
 * Ivan Brunetti
 * John Callahan
 * Irwin Caplan
 * Patrick Chappatte (Chappatte)
 * Roz Chast
 * Chumy Chúmez
 * Mariza Dias Costa
 * Wilbur Dawbarn
 * Chon Day
 * Donelan
 * Denise Dorrance
 * Nick Downes
 * Mort Drucker
 * Vladimir Flórez
 * Stanley Arthur Franklin
 * Carl Giles (Giles), Daily Express
 * Ted Goff
 * Bud Grace
 * Sam Gross
 * Dick Guindon
 * William Haefeli
 * Jessica Hagy
 * Baron Halpenny
 * Sidney Harris
 * William Haselden
 * Bill Hoest
 * Judy Horacek
 * Stan Hunt
 * Hank Ketcham
 * Ted Key
 * John F. Knott, creator of Old Man Texas, Dallas Morning News, 1905-1957
 * Clyde Lamb
 * Gary Larson
 * Mel Lazarus
 * Robert Leighton
 * George Lichty
 * Mike Lynch
 * Lorin Morgan-Richards
 * Fred Neher
 * John Norment
 * Don Orehek
 * Jackie Ormes, "Candy", "Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger"
 * W. B. Park
 * Virgil Partch
 * Dave Pascal
 * Mad Peck
 * Matt Percival
 * Martin Perscheid
 * Josefina Tanganelli Plana
 * Gardner Rea
 * John Reiner
 * Dan Reynolds
 * Mischa Richter
 * Victoria Roberts
 * Burr Shafer
 * Vahan Shirvanian
 * Chris Slane
 * Grant Snider
 * Dan Steffan
 * James Thurber
 * Jerry Van Amerongen
 * H. T. Webster
 * Gluyas Williams
 * J. R. Williams, Out Our Way
 * Gahan Wilson
 * George Wolfe
 * Kevin Woodcock
 * Bianca Xunise
 * Bill Yates
 * ZAK, pseudonym of Belgian cartoonist Jacques Moeraert
 * Zero

Cartoonists of comic books

 * Carlo Ambrosini
 * Jack Herbert
 * Sergio Aragones, Mad; creator of Groo
 * Daniel A. Baker
 * Ken Battefield
 * Jim Benton, Catwad,Batman Squad,Attack of the Stuff
 * Bill Benulis, War is Hell
 * Steve Bialik
 * François Bourgeon, Le Cycle de Cyann
 * Anna Brandoli
 * Reg Bunn
 * Ben Caldwell, creator of the Dare Detectives
 * Aldo Capitanio
 * Onofrio Catacchio
 * Domitille Collardey
 * Carlo Cossio, Dick Fulmine
 * Jason Craig
 * Hugleikur Dagsson
 * Dame Darcy, creator of Meat Cake
 * Patryck de Froidmont
 * Gianni De Luca, Commissario Spada
 * Dan DeCarlo, Archie, Josie and the Pussycats, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
 * Kim Deitch creator of Waldo the Cat and comic novels
 * Vince Deporter, DC Comics; Nickelodeon, Spirou (Belgium)
 * Julie Doucet, creator of Dirty Plotte, My New York Diary
 * Will Elder, Mad, Little Annie Fanny in Playboy
 * Steve Fiorilla, mini-comics
 * Andy Fish
 * Brad W. Foster, creator of Mechthings mini-comics, The Mechthings, Adventures of Olivia mini-comics
 * Chandra Free
 * Vernon Grant, creator of The Love Rangers
 * Dick Hafer
 * Marc Hansen, creator of Ralph Snart
 * Los Bros Hernandez, creators of Love and Rockets
 * Don Hillsman II
 * Yvonne Hutton
 * Al Jaffee, Mad, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions
 * Robyn E. Kenealy
 * Helena Klakocar
 * Andrea Kruis
 * Harvey Kurtzman, founding editor of Mad
 * Antonio Lara de Gavilán
 * Selena Lin
 * Craig McKay
 * Mark Marderosian
 * David Messer, adaptations of Macbeth and the Tempest
 * Erika Moen
 * Colonel Moutarde
 * Art Nugent
 * Gaman Palem
 * Fung Chin Pang
 * Power Paola
 * Eduardo Vañó Pastor
 * Craig Phillips
 * Darren Sanchez
 * Seth, creator of Palookaville
 * Ravi Shankar
 * Pran Kumar Sharma, Chacha Chaudhary
 * Jeff Smith, Bone Book
 * Cal Sobrepeña
 * Fermín Solís
 * Hans Steinbach
 * Kazimir Strzepek
 * Ramon Torrents
 * Przemysław Truściński
 * Jhonen Vasquez, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Squee!, I Feel Sick, Everything Can be Beaten, Fillerbunny, Bad Art Collection, Happy Noodle Boy
 * Wally Wood, Mad
 * Chao Yat
 * Carlos Zéfiro
 * Laura Zuccheri, Ken Parker, Julia-le avventure di una criminologa

Cartoonists of action/superhero comic books

 * Kyle Baker, creator of Why I Hate Saturn
 * Barry Bradfield, Batman: The Animated Homepage
 * Jack Cole, creator of Plastic Man, later set the style for cartoons in Playboy
 * Alan Davis, creator of ClanDestine
 * Steve Ditko, creator of many Marvel Comics, including Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, with editor Stan Lee
 * Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit, teacher, publisher, one of the first to popularize the term graphic novel, in his book A Contract with God
 * Bob Kane, creator of The Batman with writer Bill Finger
 * Jack Kirby, creator of Captain America with his partner Joe Simon, and many other comics
 * Erik Larsen, creator of Savage Dragon
 * Rob Liefeld, creator of Deadpool and Youngblood
 * Jim McDermott
 * Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn
 * Shawn McManus
 * Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy
 * Frank Miller, creator of Sin City
 * James O'Barr, creator of The Crow
 * Paul Palnik, creator of The God of Cartoons
 * Whilce Portacio
 * Humberto Ramos
 * Roberto Raviola, creator of La Compagnia della Forca
 * Shelby Robertson
 * Alberto Saichann
 * Tim Sale
 * Horacio Sandoval
 * Marc Silvestri, creator of Cyberforce and The Darkness
 * Dave Sim, creator of Cerebus
 * Jeff Smith, creator of Bone
 * Ed Tourriol
 * Alain Voss

title: List of cartoonists


text:
Talk:List of cartoonists

Miscellaneous comments

 * a famous cartoonist is defined as one whose art, or work in general was recognized by more than one million people during the time when the cartoons were actively drawn.

If we do need to have some specific cut-off point (I'm skeptical...), declaring that "famous cartoonist" means exactly such-and-such sounds a bit paradoxical. (I.e., I thought I knew what "famous cartoonist" meant, but I didn't know that it meant that...) --LMS

Apart from that, a million would make a looong list. I bet every country with more than 5-10 million inhabitants has a few cartoonists localy "famous" under this definition, but not widely known outside this nation. E.g. I do not know Capp, and Nash only as a poet (as do the authors of his page, BTW) --Robbe

- "Famous" should be dropped because like so many other qualifying words beginning lists all the list REALLY is is what wikipedians care enough to type. I changed "Important Latin Poets" to "Surviving Latin Poets" earlier today. "Important" is (a)less accurate {the list included Propertius, who is as fine an example of a minor poet as one could wish} and (b) potentially non-neutral. I love the idea of a million-reader-cut-off, but who was counting and when? Just say "Cartoonists with or soon to have individual entries" and be done with it. --MichaelTinkler

Many cartoons, particularly in comic book format, by large publishing houses like Marval, DC, Disney are made by teams of artists, as work for hire. The notion of individual creator does break down substantially.

Why have a list of cartoonists AND a list of comic creators? Plus a Category:Cartoonists? We should put some order in this. -- KS

 * I agree that the cartoonist/comics artist distinction is very confusing, but that problem isn't unique to Wikipedia. Depending on who you talk to, "cartoonist" can mean someone who works mostly in a single-panel or newspaper strip format, or a comics artist who also writes the comic, or any illustrator who draws in a cartoon style.  Note that the list of comic creators currently includes both writers and artists, whereas "Cartoonists" clearly doens't include writers like Neil Gaiman.  We also now have Category:Comics writers and Category:Comics artists, which seem to be focused on people working in the comic-book format, rather than single panels or strips... which seems pretty clear to me, except that there are plenty of people who both write and draw, who then get double-listed or else dumped into "Cartoonists".  I don't really have a better suggestion; I think the subject is just inherently confusing.  But whatever the scheme ends up being, it would be good to have clearer descriptive text at the tops of the categories and the list articles.   ←Hob 21:29, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

 * Yeah, the usage seems a little bt confusing...

I change the words "single panel comic strips". According to many other comic fans (most notably me =S) there is no such thing as a "single panel comic strip", a comic strip must, per definition, include at least 2 "panels", telling a sequential story.

I removed * Drew B. White, Illustrated Insanity and promise to return this entry pending the results of vote for deletion. oo64eva (AJ) 02:20, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

I don't get the action/superhero distinction at the end, some of those aren't action/superhero cartoonists, they're just cartoonists, especially Jeff Smith.--Hiding 22:54, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Cartoonist identity
When searching for the subject "cartoonist" there is a photo of a man drawing a comic strip. The tagline says he's drawing the comic strip "Shoe". No, he is not. The man in the photo is Dick Locher and he's drawing the comic strip "Dick Tracy." Jeff MacNelly drew Shoe.

Anonymous comment moved from Village pump (news)

Sounds wounderfull Andile tiana (talk) 06:38, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Omissions
I am frankly astonished at some of the people not mentioned. How can you omit Chester Gould, creator of Dick Tracy? Or John Byrne? Arthur Adams? George Perez? Wendy Pini, of EQ? Mike Grell? And the Canadian political cartoonist, Aislin? Also, I noticed a strong Australian bias... Was it because submissions were coming from there? Also, how is it the hyperlinks for artists' names come here, and not to articles about them? I already knew Dave Berg was a cartoonist when I clicked his name.... --squadfifteen, 18/10/05

Alpha List
If no one has any objections, I would like to alphabatize each list as they seem jumbled with names and delete the dead red links as this is an encyclopedia and a name without information is just a name. WayneRay 19:52, 6 May 2006 (UTC)WayneRay
 * A better way would be an alpha list nested under country headings. Alan Liefting 03:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Redundant?
Surely this page is redundant now that there is a category system? If all cartoonists were listed it would be a LARGE page.Alan Liefting 03:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

 * This guy has a point. Key (talk) 11:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, I stand corrected, I found this: Categories%2C lists%2C and navigational templates. Key (talk) 11:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Red links removed
I removed those entries that were only a red link. We need this list to be composed of blue links, otherwise there is no way at all to check that new names added are genuine. I alseo wrote a little bit of an intro. Before it had nothing. Invertzoo (talk) 18:35, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

List organization
Current structure:

 * 1) Notable cartoonists
 * 2) Cartoonists in animation
 * 3) Cartoonists of comic strips
 * 4) Cartoonists of single-panel cartoons
 * 5) Political cartoonists
 * 6) Cartoonists of comic books
 * 7) Cartoonists of action/superhero comic books

Several problems:
 * There are people under "notable cartoonists" (i.e. before "cartoonists in animation") -- but that's what the whole page is supposed to be.
 * Is there really a precedent to distinguish between "comic strips" and "single-panel cartoons"? Isn't this just a matter of how many sections a strip is divided into -- and aren't there a whole lot of comics that sometimes use a single panel and sometimes break it up? I know in terms of newspaper/magazine real estate there's a particular sort of look or position for reliably single-panel strips like The Far Side or Marmaduke; is this section just supposed to be for them (i.e. the more square-shaped ones)?
 * Political cartoonists and action/superhero comics stop breaking this list into medium and start talking about content. Why mention those and not all the other genres of comics and comic books?

The sections that make sense are simply cartoonists notable for work in animation, for work in comic strips, and for work in comic books. Either that or by nationality.

Thoughts? --—  Rhododendrites talk  |  00:06, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

 * Almost 3 years later, the same problems persist. I'll also add that in a list of "notable cartoonists", we shouldn't be including any people that aren't "notable cartoonists". Notability is based on significant coverage in reliable sources sufficient to pass our notability criteria and for most lists, especially lists of people, that means having a Wikipedia article. The existence of a notable comic, cartoon, etc. means there's a notable comic, cartoon, etc. -- it doesn't mean the cartoonist is automatically notable. With little done to this list over the past years and no comments on the above, I think I'll start implementing these changes. —  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 14:18, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

 * Hmmm. Given there's a separate list of animators, what's left are cartoonists of comic books and comic strips, by and large. But we have a separate list of comics creators that seems to include the same groups. Is this list redundant? —  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 14:58, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

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Civilization

A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languages (namely, writing systems and graphic arts).

Civilizations are often characterized by additional features as well, including agriculture, architecture, infrastructure, technological advancement, a currency, taxation, regulation, and specialization of labour.

Historically, a civilization has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced" culture, in implied contrast to smaller, supposedly less advanced cultures. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, Neolithic societies, or hunter-gatherers; however, sometimes it also contrasts with the cultures found within civilizations themselves. Civilizations are organized densely-populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.

The word civilization relates to the Latin civitas or 'city'. As the National Geographic Society has explained it: "This is why the most basic definition of the word civilization is 'a society made up of cities.'" The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally connected with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia, culminating in the relatively rapid process of urban revolution and state formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite.

History of the concept

The English word civilization comes from the 16th-century French civilisé ('civilized'), from civilis ('civil'), related to civis ('citizen') and civitas ('city'). The fundamental treatise is Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process (1939), which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the early modern period. In The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions: one purely material and the other material and ethical. He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea of civilization, "the sum total of all progress made by man in every sphere of action and from every point of view in so far as the progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of all progress".

Related words like "civility" developed in the mid-16th century. The abstract noun "civilization", meaning "civilized condition", came in the 1760's, again from French. The first known use in French is in 1757, by Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, and the first use in English is attributed to Adam Ferguson, who in his 1767 Essay on the History of Civil Society wrote, "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation". The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment.

In the late 1700's and early 1800's, during the French Revolution, "civilization" was used in the singular, never in the plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French. The use of "civilizations" as a countable noun was in occasional use in the 19th century, but has become much more common in the later 20th century, sometimes just meaning culture (itself in origin an uncountable noun, made countable in the context of ethnography). Only in this generalized sense does it become possible to speak of a "medieval civilization", which in Elias's sense would have been an oxymoron. Using the terms "civilization" and "culture" as equivalents are controversial and generally rejected so that for example some types of culture are not normally described as civilizations.

Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings of Rousseau, particularly his work about education, Emile. Here, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord with human nature, and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original discursive or pre-rational natural unity" (see noble savage). From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder and later by philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts", but a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit". Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy and avarice. In World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind Nazism and German militarism and nihilism.

Characteristics
Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society. Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy and other cultural traits. Andrew Nikiforuk argues that "civilizations relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities" and considers slavery to be a common feature of pre-modern civilizations.

All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence, with the possible exception of some early civilizations in Peru which may have depended upon maritime resources.

The traditional "surplus model" postulates that cereal farming results in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilization, irrigation and crop rotation. It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilizations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare. Grain surpluses have been especially important because grain can be stored for a long time.

Research from the Journal of Political Economy contradicts the surplus model. It postulates that horticultural gardening was more productive than cereal farming. However, only cereal farming produced civilization because of the appropriability of yearly harvest. Rural populations that could only grow cereals could be taxed allowing for a taxing elite and urban development. This also had a negative effect on rural population, increasing relative agricultural output per farmer. Farming efficiency created food surplus and sustained the food surplus through decreasing rural population growth in favour of urban growth. Suitability of highly productive roots and tubers was in fact a curse of plenty, which prevented the emergence of states and impeded economic development.

A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides producing food for a living: early civilizations included soldiers, artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labour predates plant and animal domestication.

Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word civilization is sometimes defined as "living in cities". Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade.

Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories.
 * Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
 * Horticultural–pastoralist societies in which there are generally two inherited social classes: chief and commoner.
 * Highly stratified structures, or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.
 * Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional forms of government.

Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a market system, or receive food through the levy of tribute, redistributive taxation, tariffs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early human cultures functioned through a gift economy supplemented by limited barter systems. By the early Iron Age, contemporary civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for increasingly complex transactions. In a village, the potter makes a pot for the brewer and the brewer compensates the potter by giving him a certain amount of beer. In a city, the potter may need a new roof, the roofer may need new shoes, the cobbler may need new horseshoes, the blacksmith may need a new coat and the tanner may need a new pot. These people may not be personally acquainted with one another and their needs may not occur all at the same time. A monetary system is a way of organizing these obligations to ensure that they are fulfilled. From the days of the earliest monetarized civilizations, monopolistic controls of monetary systems have benefited the social and political elites.

The transition from simpler to more complex economies does not necessarily mean an improvement in the living standards of the populace. For example, although the Middle Ages is often portrayed as an era of decline from the Roman Empire, studies have shown that the average stature of males in the Middle Ages (c. 500 to 1500 CE) was greater than it was for males during the preceding Roman Empire and the succeeding Early Modern Period (c. 1500 to 1800 CE). Also, the Plains Indians of North America in the 19th century were taller than their "civilized" American and European counterparts. The average stature of a population is a good measurement of the adequacy of its access to necessities, especially food, and its freedom from disease.

Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state". Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, the writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other. However, writing is not always necessary for civilization, as shown by the Inca civilization of the Andes, which did not use writing at all but except for a complex recording system consisting of knotted strings of different lengths and colors: the "Quipus", and still functioned as a civilized society.

Aided by their division of labour and central government planning, civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These include organized religion, development in the arts, and countless new advances in science and technology.

Assessments of what level of civilization a polity has reached are based on comparisons of the relative importance of agricultural as opposed to trading or manufacturing capacities, the territorial extensions of its power, the complexity of its division of labour, and the carrying capacity of its urban centres. Secondary elements include a developed transportation system, writing, standardized measurement, currency, contractual and tort-based legal systems, art, architecture, mathematics, scientific understanding, metallurgy, political structures, and organized religion.

As a contrast with other societies
The idea of civilization implies a progression or development from a previous "uncivilized" state. Traditionally, cultures that defined themselves as "civilized" often did so in contrast to other societies or human groupings viewed as less civilized, calling the latter barbarians, savages, and primitives. Indeed, the modern Western idea of civilization developed as a contrast to the indigenous cultures European settlers encountered during the European colonization of the Americas and Australia. The term "primitive," though once used in anthropology, has now been largely condemned by anthropologists because of its derogatory connotations and because it implies that the cultures it refers to are relics of a past time that do not change or progress.

Because of this, societies regarding themselves as "civilized" have sometimes sought to dominate and assimilate "uncivilized" cultures into a "civilized" way of living. In the 19th century, the idea of European culture as "civilized" and superior to "uncivilized" non-European cultures was fully developed, and civilization became a core part of European identity. The idea of civilization can also be used as a justification for dominating another culture and dispossessing a people of their land. For example, in Australia, British settlers justified the displacement of Indigenous Australians by observing that the land appeared uncultivated and wild, which to them reflected that the inhabitants were not civilized enough to "improve" it. The behaviors and modes of subsistence that characterize civilization have been spread by colonization, invasion, religious conversion, the extension of bureaucratic control and trade, and by the introduction of new technologies to cultures that did not previously have them. Though aspects of culture associated with civilization can be freely adopted through contact between cultures, since early modern times Eurocentric ideals of "civilization" have been widely imposed upon cultures through coercion and dominance. These ideals complemented a philosophy that assumed there were innate differences between "civilized" and "uncivilized" peoples.

Cultural identity
"Civilization" can also refer to the culture of a complex society, not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of manufactures and arts that make it unique. Civilizations tend to develop intricate cultures, including a state-based decision-making apparatus, a literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion and complex customs of education, coercion and control associated with maintaining the elite.

The intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them into the civilization, a classic example being Chinese civilization and its influence on nearby civilizations such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres containing many nations and regions. The civilization in which someone lives is that person's broadest cultural identity. It is precisely the protection of this cultural identity that is becoming increasingly important nationally and internationally. According to international law, the United Nations and UNESCO try to set up and enforce relevant rules. The aim is to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity and also the cultural identity, especially in the case of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg, President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is often the opponent's cultural identity, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to destroy the particularly sensitive cultural memory (museums, archives, monuments, etc.), the grown cultural diversity, and the economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or community.

Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as discrete units. Early twentieth-century philosopher Oswald Spengler, uses the German word Kultur, "culture", for what many call a "civilization". Spengler believed a civilization's coherence is based on a single primary cultural symbol. Cultures experience cycles of birth, life, decline, and death, often supplanted by a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new cultural symbol. Spengler states civilization is the beginning of the decline of a culture as "the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable".

This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume A Study of History, which traced the rise and, in most cases, the decline of 21 civilizations and five "arrested civilizations". Civilizations generally declined and fell, according to Toynbee, because of the failure of a "creative minority", through moral or religious decline, to meet some important challenge, rather than mere economic or environmental causes.

Samuel P. Huntington defines civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species".

Complex systems

Another group of theorists, making use of systems theory, looks at a civilization as a complex system, i.e., a framework by which a group of objects can be analysed that work in concert to produce some result. Civilizations can be seen as networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures and are defined by the economic, political, military, diplomatic, social and cultural interactions among them. Any organization is a complex social system and a civilization is a large organization. Systems theory helps guard against superficial and misleading analogies in the study and description of civilizations.

Systems theorists look at many types of relations between cities, including economic relations, cultural exchanges and political/diplomatic/military relations. These spheres often occur on different scales. For example, trade networks were, until the nineteenth century, much larger than either cultural spheres or political spheres. Extensive trade routes, including the Silk Road through Central Asia and Indian Ocean sea routes linking the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, India and China, were well established 2000 years ago when these civilizations scarcely shared any political, diplomatic, military, or cultural relations. The first evidence of such long-distance trade is in the ancient world. During the Uruk period, Guillermo Algaze has argued that trade relations connected Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan. Resin found later in the Royal Cemetery at Ur is suggested was traded northwards from Mozambique.

Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single "world system", a process known as globalization. Different civilizations and societies all over the globe are economically, politically, and even culturally interdependent in many ways. There is debate over when this integration began, and what sort of integration – cultural, technological, economic, political, or military-diplomatic – is the key indicator in determining the extent of a civilization. David Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BCE. Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East and Europe, and then expanded to a global scale with European colonization, integrating the Americas, Australia, China and Japan by the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or homogeneous, like the Japanese civilization. What Huntington calls the "clash of civilizations" might be characterized by Wilkinson as a clash of cultural spheres within a single global civilization. Others point to the Crusading movement as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.

History
The notion of human history as a succession of "civilizations" is an entirely modern one. In the European Age of Discovery, emerging Modernity was put into stark contrast with the Neolithic and Mesolithic stage of the cultures of many of the peoples they encountered. Nonetheless, developments in the Neolithic stage, such as agriculture and sedentary settlement, were critical to the development of modern conceptions of civilization.

Urban Revolution
The Natufian culture in the Levantine corridor provides the earliest case of a Neolithic Revolution, with the planting of cereal crops attested from c. 11,000 BCE. The earliest neolithic technology and lifestyle were established first in Western Asia (for example at Göbekli Tepe, from about 9,130 BCE), later in the Yellow River and Yangtze basins in China (for example the Peiligang and Pengtoushan cultures), and from these cores spread across Eurasia. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest civilizations developing from 7,400 years ago. This area has been evaluated by Beverley Milton-Edwards as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the building of the earliest cities and the development of written cursive script". Similar pre-civilized "neolithic revolutions" also began independently from 7,000 BCE in northwestern South America (the Caral-Supe civilization) and in Mesoamerica. The Black Sea area served as a cradle of European civilization. The site of Solnitsata – a prehistoric fortified (walled) stone settlement (prehistoric city) (5500–4200 BCE) – is believed by some archaeologists to be the oldest known town in present-day Europe.

The 8.2 Kiloyear Arid Event and the 5.9 Kiloyear Inter-pluvial saw the drying out of semiarid regions and a major spread of deserts. This climate change shifted the cost-benefit ratio of endemic violence between communities, which saw the abandonment of unwalled village communities and the appearance of walled cities, seen by some as a characteristic of early civilizations.

This "urban revolution" –a term introduced by Childe in the 1930's– from the 4th millennium BCE, marked the beginning of the accumulation of transferable economic surpluses, which helped economies and cities develop. Urban revolutions were associated with the state monopoly of violence, the appearance of a warrior, or soldier, class and endemic warfare (a state of continual or frequent warfare), the rapid development of hierarchies, and the use of human sacrifice.

The civilized urban revolution in turn was dependent upon the development of sedentism, the domestication of grains, plants and animals, the permanence of settlements and development of lifestyles that facilitated economies of scale and accumulation of surplus production by particular social sectors. The transition from complex cultures to civilizations, while still disputed, seems to be associated with the development of state structures, in which power was further monopolized by an elite ruling class who practiced human sacrifice.

Towards the end of the Neolithic period, various elitist Chalcolithic civilizations began to rise in various "cradles" from around 3600 BCE beginning with Mesopotamia, expanding into large-scale kingdoms and empires in the course of the Bronze Age (Akkadian Empire, Indus Valley Civilization, Old Kingdom of Egypt, Neo-Sumerian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire, Babylonian Empire, Hittite Empire, and to some degree the territorial expansions of the Elamites, Hurrians, Amorites and Ebla).

Outside the Old World, a later development took place independently in the Pre-Columbian Americas. Urbanization in the Norte Chico civilization in coastal Peru emerged about 3200 BCE; the oldest known Mayan city, located in Guatemala, dates to about 750 BCE. and Teotihuacan in Mexico was one of the largest cities in the world in 350 CE, with a population of about 125,000.

Axial Age
The Bronze Age collapse was followed by the Iron Age around 1200 BCE, during which a number of new civilizations emerged, culminating in a period from the 8th to the 3rd century BCE which Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age, presented as a critical transitional phase leading to classical civilization.

Modernity
A major technological and cultural transition to modernity began approximately 1500 CE in Western Europe, and from this beginning new approaches to science and law spread rapidly around the world, incorporating earlier cultures into the technological and industrial society of the present.

Fall of civilizations
Civilizations are traditionally understood as ending in one of two ways; either through incorporation into another expanding civilization (e.g. as Ancient Egypt was incorporated into Hellenistic Greek, and subsequently Roman civilizations), or by collapsing and reverting to a simpler form of living, as happens in so-called Dark Ages.

There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization. Some focus on historical examples, and others on general theory.
 * Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah influenced theories of the analysis, growth, and decline of the Islamic civilization. He suggested repeated invasions from nomadic peoples limited development and led to social collapse.Invasions of the Roman Empire 1.png played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire.]]
 * Edward Gibbon's work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a well-known and detailed analysis of the fall of Roman civilization. Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE. For Gibbon, "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long".
 * Theodor Mommsen in his History of Rome suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis", "growth", "senescence", "collapse" and "decay".
 * Oswald Spengler, in his Decline of the West rejected Petrarch's chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight "mature civilizations". Growing cultures, he argued, tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations, which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.
 * Arnold J. Toynbee in his A Study of History suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats.
 * Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity, due to which, as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd century CE.
 * Jared Diamond in his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, such as deforestation and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion; and societal responses to internal and environmental problems.
 * Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayev et al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing population growth leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse.
 * Peter Heather argues in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate and others.
 * Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, argues from mostly archaeological evidence that the collapse of Roman civilization in western Europe had deleterious impacts on the living standards of the population, unlike some historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing for the elite disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar impacts have been postulated for the Dark Age after the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere.
 * Arthur Demarest argues in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization, using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archaeology, paleoecology, and epigraphy, that no one explanation is sufficient but that a series of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the disintegration of the courts of Mayan kingdoms, which began a spiral of decline and decay. He argues that the collapse of the Maya has lessons for civilization today.
 * Jeffrey A. McNeely has recently suggested that "a review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society".
 * Thomas Homer-Dixon considers the fall in the energy return on investments. The energy expended to energy yield ratio is central to limiting the survival of civilizations. The degree of social complexity is associated strongly, he suggests, with the amount of disposable energy environmental, economic and technological systems allow. When this amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources or collapse.
 * Feliks Koneczny in his work "On the Plurality of Civilizations" calls his study the science on civilizations. He asserts that civilizations fall not because they must or there exist some cyclical or a "biological" life span and that there stil exist two ancient civilizations – Brahmin-Hindu and Chinese – which are not ready to fall any time soon. Koneczny claimed that civilizations cannot be mixed into hybrids, an inferior civilization when given equal rights within a highly developed civilization will overcome it. One of Koneczny's claims in his study on civilizations is that "a person cannot be civilized in two or more ways" without falling into what he calls an "abcivilized state" (as in abnormal). He also stated that when two or more civilizations exist next to one another and as long as they are vital, they will be in an existential combat imposing its own "method of organizing social life" upon the other. Absorbing alien "method of organizing social life" that is civilization and giving it equal rights yields a process of decay and decomposition.

Future
According to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, the 21st century will be characterized by a clash of civilizations, which he believes will replace the conflicts between nation-states and ideologies that were prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, this viewpoint been strongly challenged by others such as Edward Said, Muhammed Asadi and Amartya Sen. Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West is caused by the Muslim rejection of the West's more liberal sexual values, rather than a difference in political ideology, although they note that this lack of tolerance is likely to lead to an eventual rejection of (true) democracy. In Identity and Violence Sen questions if people should be divided along the lines of a supposed "civilization", defined by religion and culture only. He argues that this ignores the many others identities that make up people and leads to a focus on differences.

Cultural Historian Morris Berman argues in Dark Ages America: the End of Empire that in the corporate consumerist United States, the very factors that once propelled it to greatness―extreme individualism, territorial and economic expansion, and the pursuit of material wealth―have pushed the United States across a critical threshold where collapse is inevitable. Politically associated with over-reach, and as a result of the environmental exhaustion and polarization of wealth between rich and poor, he concludes the current system is fast arriving at a situation where continuation of the existing system saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy is physically, socially, economically and politically impossible. Although developed in much more depth, Berman's thesis is similar in some ways to that of Urban Planner, Jane Jacobs who argues that the five pillars of United States culture are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism and the growing gulf between rich and poor.

Cultural critic and author Derrick Jensen argues that modern civilization is directed towards the domination of the environment and humanity itself in an intrinsically harmful, unsustainable, and self-destructive fashion. Defending his definition both linguistically and historically, he defines civilization as "a culture... that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities", with "cities" defined as "people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life". This need for civilizations to import ever more resources, he argues, stems from their over-exploitation and diminution of their own local resources. Therefore, civilizations inherently adopt imperialist and expansionist policies and, to maintain these, highly militarized, hierarchically structured, and coercion-based cultures and lifestyles.

The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The scale is only hypothetical, but it puts energy consumption in a cosmic perspective. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist.

Non-human civilizations
The current scientific consensus is that human beings are the only animal species with the cognitive ability to create civilizations that has emerged on Earth. A recent thought experiment, the silurian hypothesis, however, considers whether it would "be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record" given the paucity of geological information about eras before the quaternary.

Astronomers speculate about the existence of communicating intelligent civilizations within and beyond the Milky Way galaxy, usually using variants of the Drake equation. They conduct searches for such intelligences – such as for technological traces, called "technosignatures". The proposed proto-scientific field "xenoarchaeology" is concerned with the study of artifact remains of non-human civilizations to reconstruct and interpret past lives of alien societies if such get discovered and confirmed scientifically.

title: Civilization


text:
Civilization (video game)

Sid Meier's Civilization is a 1991 turn-based strategy 4X video game developed and published by MicroProse. The game was originally developed for MS-DOS running on a PC, and it has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms. The player is tasked with leading an entire human civilization over the course of several millennia by controlling various areas such as urban development, exploration, government, trade, research, and military. The player can control individual units and advance the exploration, conquest and settlement of the game's world. The player can also make such decisions as setting forms of government, tax rates and research priorities. The player's civilization is in competition with other computer-controlled civilizations, with which the player can enter diplomatic relationships that can either end in alliances or lead to war.

Civilization was designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley following the successes of Silent Service, Sid Meier's Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon. Civilization has sold 1.5 million copies since its release and is considered one of the most influential computer games in history due to its establishment of the 4X genre. In addition to its commercial and critical success, the game has been deemed pedagogically valuable due to its presentation of historical relationships, and one of the greatest video games ever made by several publications. A multiplayer remake, Sid Meier's CivNet, was released for the PC in 1995. Civilization was followed by several sequels starting with Civilization II, with similar or modified scenarios.

Gameplay

Civilization is a turn-based single-player strategy game. The player takes on the role of the ruler of a civilization, starting with one (or occasionally two) settler units, and attempts to build an empire in competition with two to seven other civilizations. The game requires a fair amount of micromanagement (although less than other simulation games). Along with the larger tasks of exploration, warfare and diplomacy, the player has to make decisions about where to build new cities, which improvements or units to build in each city, which advances in knowledge should be sought (and at what rate), and how to transform the land surrounding the cities for maximum benefit. From time to time the player's towns may be harassed by barbarians, units with no specific nationality and no named leader. These threats only come from huts, unclaimed land or sea, so that over time and turns of exploration, there are fewer and fewer places from which barbarians will emanate.

Before the game begins, the player chooses which historical or current civilization to play. In contrast to later games in the Civilization series, this is largely a cosmetic choice, affecting titles, city names, musical heralds, and color. The choice does affect their starting position on the "Play on Earth" map, and thus different resources in one's initial cities, but has no effect on starting position when starting a random world game or a customized world game. The player's choice of civilization also prevents the computer from being able to play as that civilization or the other civilization of the same color, and since computer-controlled opponents display certain traits of their civilizations this affects gameplay as well. The Aztecs are both fiercely expansionist and generally extremely wealthy, for example. Other civilizations include the Americans, the Mongols, and Romans. Each civilization is led by a famous historical figure, such as Mahatma Gandhi for India.

The scope of Civilization is larger than most other games. The game begins in 4000 BC, before the Bronze Age, and can last through to AD 2100 (on the easiest setting) with Space Age and "future technologies". At the start of the game there are no cities anywhere in the world: the player controls one or two settler units, which can be used to found new cities in appropriate sites (and those cities may build other settler units, which can go out and found new cities, thus expanding the empire). Settlers can also alter terrain, build improvements such as mines and irrigation, build roads to connect cities, and later in the game they can construct railroads which offer unlimited movement.

As time advances, new technologies are developed; these technologies are the primary way in which the game changes and grows. At the start, players choose from advances such as pottery, the wheel, and the alphabet to, near the end of the game, nuclear fission and spaceflight. Players can gain a large advantage if their civilization is the first to learn a particular technology (the secrets of flight, for example) and put it to use in a military or other context. Most advances give access to new units, city improvements or derivative technologies: for example, the chariot unit becomes available after the wheel is developed, and the granary building becomes available to build after pottery is developed. The whole system of advancements from beginning to end is called the technology tree, or simply the Tech tree; this concept has been adopted in many other strategy games. Since only one tech may be "researched" at any given time, the order in which technologies are chosen makes a considerable difference in the outcome of the game and generally reflects the player's preferred style of gameplay.

Players can also build Wonders of the World in each of the epochs of the game, subject only to obtaining the prerequisite knowledge. These wonders are important achievements of society, science, culture and defense, ranging from the Pyramids and the Great Wall in the Ancient age, to Copernicus' Observatory and Magellan's Expedition in the middle period, up to the Apollo program, the United Nations, and the Manhattan Project in the modern era. Each wonder can only be built once in the world, and requires a lot of resources to build, far more than most other city buildings or units. Wonders provide unique benefits to the controlling civilization. For example, Magellan's Expedition increases the movement rate of naval units. Wonders typically affect either the city in which they are built (for example, the Colossus), every city on the continent (for example, J.S. Bach's Cathedral), or the civilization as a whole (for example, Darwin's Voyage). Some wonders are made obsolete by new technologies.

The game can be won by conquering all other civilizations or by winning the space race by reaching the star system of Alpha Centauri.

Prior Civilization-named games
British designer Francis Tresham released his Civilization board game in 1980 under his company Hartland Trefoil. Avalon Hill had obtained the rights to publish it in the United States in 1981.

There were at least two attempts to make a computerized version of Tresham's game prior to 1990. Danielle Bunten Berry planned to start work on the game after completing M.U.L.E. in 1983, and again in 1985, after completing The Seven Cities of Gold at Electronic Arts. In 1983 Bunten and producer Joe Ybarra opted to first do Seven Cities of Gold. The success of Seven Cities in 1985 in turn led to a sequel, Heart of Africa. Bunten never returned to the idea of Civilization. Don Daglow, designer of Utopia, the first simulation game, began work programming a version of Civilization in 1987. He dropped the project, however, when he was offered an executive position at Brøderbund, and never returned to the game.

Development at MicroProse
Sid Meier and Bill Stealey co-founded MicroProse in 1982 to develop flight simulators and other military strategy video games based on Stealey's past experiences as a United States Air Force pilot. Around 1989, Meier wanted to expand his repertoire beyond these types of games, as just having finished F-19 Stealth Fighter (1988, 1990), he said "Everything I thought was cool about a flight simulator had gone into that game." He took to heart the success of the new god game genre, in particular SimCity (1989) and Populous (1989). Specifically with SimCity, Meier recognized that video games could still be entertaining based on building something up. By then, Meier was not an official employee of MicroProse but worked under contract where the company paid him upfront for game development, a large payment on delivery of the game, and additional royalties on each game of his sold.

MicroProse had hired a number of Avalon Hill game designers, including Bruce Shelley. Among other works, Shelley had been responsible for adapting the railroad-based 1829 board game developed by Tresham into 1830: The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons. Shelley had joined MicroProse finding that the board game market was weakening in contrast to the video game market, and initially worked on F-19 Stealth Fighter. Meier recognized Shelley's abilities and background in game design and took him on as personal assistant designer to brainstorm new game ideas. The two initially worked on ideas for Covert Action, but had put these aside when they came up with the concepts for Railroad Tycoon (1990), based loosely on the 1829/1830 board games. Railroad Tycoon was generally well received at its release, but the title did not fit within the nature of flight simulators and military strategy from MicroProse's previous catalog. Meier and Shelley had started a sequel to Railroad Tycoon shortly after its release, but Stealey canceled the project.

One positive aspect both had taken from Railroad Tycoon was the idea of multiple smaller systems working together at the same time and the player having to manage them. Both Meier and Shelley recognized that the complex interactions between these systems led players to "make a lot of interesting decisions", and that ruling a whole civilization would readily work well with these underlying systems. Some time later, both discussed their love of the original Empire computer games, and Meier challenged Shelley to give him ten things he would change about Empire; Shelley provided him with twelve. Around May 1990, Meier presented Shelley with a 5-1/4" floppy disk which contained the first prototype of Civilization based on their past discussions and Shelley's list.

Meier described his development process as sculpting with clay. His prototype took elements from Empire, Railroad Tycoon, SimCity and the Civilization board game. This initial version of this game was a real-time simulation, with the player defining zones for their population to grow similar to zoning in SimCity. Meier and Shelley went back and forth with this, with Shelley providing suggestions based on his playthrough and acting as the game's producer, and Meier coding and reworking the game to address these points, and otherwise without involvement of other MicroProse staff. During this period, Stealey and the other managers became concerned that this game did not fit MicroProse's general catalog as strategy computer games had not yet proven successful. A few months into the development, Stealey requested them to put the project on hold and complete Covert Action, after which they could go back to their new game. Meier and Shelley completed Covert Action which was published in 1990.

Once Covert Action was released, Meier and Shelley returned to the prototype. The time away from the project allowed them to recognize that the real-time aspect was not working well, and reworked the game to become turn-based and dropped the zoning aspect, a change that Meier described as "like tossing the clay in the trash and getting a new lump". They incorporated elements of city management and military aspect from Empire, including creating individual military units as well as settler units that replaced the functionality of the zoning approach. Meier felt adding military and combat to the game was necessary: "The game really isn't about being civilized. The competition is what makes the game fun and the players play their best. At times, you have to make the player uncomfortable for the good of the player." Meier also opted to include a technology tree that would help to open the game to many more choices to the player as it continued, creating a non-linear experience. Meier felt players would be able to use the technology tree to adopt a style of play and from which they could use technologies to barter with the other opponents. While the game relies on established recorded history, Meier admitted he did not spend much time in research, usually only to assure the proper chronology or spellings; Shelley noted that they wanted to design for fun, not accuracy, and that "Everything we needed was pretty much available in the children’s section of the library."

Computer Gaming World reported in 1994 that "Sid Meier has stated on numerous occasions that he emphasizes the 'fun parts' of a simulation and throws out the rest". Meier described the process as "Add another bit [of clay]—no, that went too far. Scrape it off". He eliminated the potential for any civilization to fall on its own, believing this would be punishing to the player. "Though historically accurate", Meier said, "The moment the Krakatoa volcano blew up, or the bubonic plague came marching through, all anybody wanted to do was reload from a saved game". Meier omitted multiplayer alliances because the computer used them too effectively, causing players to think that it was cheating. He said that by contrast, minefields and minesweepers caused the computer to do "stupid things ... If you've got a feature that makes the AI look stupid, take it out. It's more important not to have stupid AI than to have good AI". Meier also omitted jets and helicopters because he thought players would not find obtaining new technologies in the endgame useful, and online multiplayer support because of the small number of online players ("if you had friends, you wouldn't need to play computer games"); he also did not believe that online play worked well with turn-based play. The game was developed for the IBM PC platform, which at the time had support for both 16-color EGA to 256-color VGA; Meier opted to support both 16-color and 256-color graphics to allow the game to run on both EGA/Tandy and VGA/MCGA systems.

"I’ve never been able to decide if it was a mistake to keep Civ isolated as long as I did", Meier wrote; while "as many eyes as possible" are beneficial during development, Meier and Shelley worked very quickly together, combining the roles of playtester, game designer, and programmer. Meier and Shelley neared the end of their development and started presenting the game to the rest of MicroProse for feedback towards publication. This process was slowed by the current vice president of development, who had taken over Meier's former position at the company. This vice president did not receive any financial bonuses for successful publication of Meier's games due to Meier's contract terms, forgoing any incentive to provide the needed resources to finish the game. The management had also expressed issue with the lack of a firm completion date, as according to Shelley, Meier would consider a game completed only when he felt he had completed it. Eventually the two got the required help for publication, with Shelley overseeing these processes and Meier making the necessary coding changes.

"One of my big rules has always been, 'double it, or cut it in half, Meier wrote. He cut the map's size in half less than a month before Civilization release after playtesting revealed that the previous size was too large and made for boring and repetitive gameplay. Other automated features, like city management, were modified to require more player involvement. They also eliminated a secondary branch of the technology tree with minor skills like beer brewing, and spent time reworking the existing technologies and units to make sure they felt appropriate and did not break the game. Most of the game was originally developed with art crafted by Meier, and MicroProse's art department helped to create most of the final assets, though some of Meier's original art was used. Shelley wrote out the "Civilopedia" entries for all the elements of the game and the game's large manual.

The name Civilization came late in the development process. MicroProse recognized at this point the 1980 Civilization board game may conflict with their video game, as it shared a similar theme including the technology tree. Meier had noted the board game's influence but considered it not as great as Empire or SimCity, while others have noted significant differences that made the video game far different from the board game such as the non-linearity introduced by Meier's technology tree. To avoid any potential legal issues, MicroProse negotiated a license to use the Civilization name from Avalon Hill. The addition of Meier's name to the title was from a current practice established by Stealey to attach games like Civilization that diverged from MicroProse's past catalog to Meier's name, so that players that played Meier's combat simulators and recognized Meier's name would give these new games a try. This approach worked, according to Meier, and he would continue this naming scheme for other titles in the future as a type of branding.

By the time the game was completed and ready for release, Meier estimated that it had cost $170,000 in development. Civilization was released in September 1991. Because of the animosity that MicroProse's management had towards Meier's games, there was very little promotion of the title, though interest in the game through word-of-mouth helped to boost sales. Following the release on the IBM PC, the game was ported to other platforms; Meier and Shelley provided this code to contractors hired by MicroProse to complete the ports.

CivNet
Civilization was released with only single-player support, with the player working against multiple computer opponents. In 1991, Internet or online gaming was still in its infancy, so this option was not considered in Civilization release. Over the next few years, as home Internet accessibility took off, MicroProse looked to develop an online version of Civilization. This led to the 1995 release of Sid Meier's CivNet. CivNet allowed for up to seven players to play the game, with computer opponents available to obtain up to six active civilizations. Games could be played either on a turn-based mode, or in a simultaneous mode where each player took their turn at the same time and only progressing to the next turn once all players have confirmed being finished that turn. The game, in addition to better support for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, supported connectivity through LAN, primitive Internet play, modem, and direct serial link, and included a local hotseat mode. CivNet also included a map editor and a "king builder" to allow a player to customize the names and looks of their civilization as seen by other players.

According to Brian Reynolds, who led the development of Civilization II, MicroProse "sincerely believed that CivNet was going to be a much more important product" than the next single-player Civilization game that he and Jeff Briggs had started working on. Reynolds said that because their project was seen as a side effort with little risk, they were able to innovate new ideas into Civilization II. As a net result, CivNet was generally overshadowed by Civilization II which was released in the following year.

Post-release
Civilization critical success created a "golden period of MicroProse" where there was more potential for similar strategy games to succeed, according to Meier. This put stress on the company's direction and culture. Stealey wanted to continue to pursue the military-themed titles, while Meier wanted to continue his success with simulation games. Shelley left MicroProse in 1992 and joined Ensemble Studios, where he used his experience with Civilization to design the Age of Empires games. Stealey had pushed MicroProse to develop console and arcade-based versions of their games, but this put the company into debt, and Stealey eventually sold the company to Spectrum HoloByte in 1993; Spectrum HoloByte kept MicroProse as a separate company on acquisition.

Meier would continue and develop Civilization II along with Brian Reynolds, who served in a similar role to Shelley as design assistant, as well as help from Jeff Briggs and Douglas Kaufman. This game was released in early 1996, and is considered the first sequel of any Sid Meier game. Stealey eventually sold his shares in MicroProse and left the company, and Spectrum HoloByte opted to consolidate the two companies under the name MicroProse in 1996, eliminating numerous positions at MicroProse in the process. As a result, Meier, Briggs, and Reynolds all opted to leave the company and founded Firaxis, which by 2005 became a subsidiary of Take-Two. After a number of acquisitions and legal actions, the Civilization brand (both as a board game and video game) is now owned by Take-Two, and Firaxis, under Meier's oversight, continues to develop games in the Civilization series.

Reception
Civilization has been called one of the most important strategy games of all time, and has a loyal following of fans. This high level of interest has led to the creation of a number of free and open source versions and inspired similar games by other commercial developers.

Computer Gaming World stated that "a new Olympian in the genre of god games has truly emerged", comparing Civilization importance to computer games to that of the wheel. The game was reviewed in 1992 in Dragon #183 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars. They commented: "Civilization is one of the highest dollar-to-play-ratio entertainments we've enjoyed. The scope is enormous, the strategies border on being limitless, the excitement is genuinely high, and the experience is worth every dime of the game's purchase price."

Jeff Koke reviewed Civilization in Pyramid #2 (July/Aug., 1993), and stated that "Ultimately, there are games that are a lot flashier than Civilization, with cool graphics and animation, but there aren't many - or any - in my book that have the ability to absorb the player so totally and to provide an interesting, unique outcome each and every time it's played."

Civilization won the Origins Award in the category Best Military or Strategy Computer Game of 1991. A 1992 Computer Gaming World survey of wargames with modern settings gave the game five stars out of five, describing it as "more addictive than crack ... so rich and textured that the documentation is incomplete". In 1992 the magazine named it the Overall Game of the Year, in 1993 added the game to its Hall of Fame, and in 1996 chose Civilization as the best game of all time:

"While some games might be equally addictive, none have sustained quite the level of rich, satisfying gameplay quite like Sid Meier's magnum opus. The blend of exploration, economics, conquest and diplomacy is augmented by the quintessential research and development model, as you struggle to erect the Pyramids, discover gunpowder, and launch a colonization spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. For its day, Civilization had the toughest computer opponents around - even taking into account the 'cheats', that in most instances added rather than detracted from the game. Just when you think the game might bog down, you discover a new land, a new technology, another tough foe - and you tell yourself, 'just one more game', even as the first rays of the new sun creep into your room ... the most acute case of game-lock we've ever felt."

A critic for Next Generation judged the Super NES version to be a disappointing port, with a cumbersome menu system (particularly that the "City" and "Production" windows are on separate screens), an unintuitive button configuration, and ugly scaled down graphics. However, he gave it a positive recommendation due to the strong gameplay and strategy of the original game: "if you've never taken a crack at this game before, be prepared to lose hours, even days, trying to conquer those pesky Babylonians." Sir Garnabus of GamePro, in contrast, was pleased with the Super NES version's interface, and said the graphics and audio are above that of a typical strategy game. He also said the game stood out among the Super NES's generally action-oriented library.

In 1996, Computer Gaming World listed it as the best game of all time. In 2000, GameSpot rated Civilization as the tenth most influential video game of all time. It was also ranked at fourth place on IGN 2000 list of the top PC games of all time. In 2004, readers of Retro Gamer voted it as the 29th top retro game. In 2007, it was named one of the 16 most influential games in history at a German technology and games trade show Telespiele. In Poland, it was included in the retrospective lists of the best Amiga games by Wirtualna Polska (ranked ninth) and CHIP (ranked fifth). In 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time. In 1994, PC Gamer US named Civilization the second best computer game ever. The editors wrote, "The depth of strategies possible is impressive, and the look and feel of the game will keep you playing and exploring for months. Truly a remarkable title." That same year, PC Gamer UK named its Windows release the sixth best computer game of all time, calling it Sid Meier's "crowning glory".

On March 12, 2007, The New York Times reported on a list of the ten most important video games of all time, the so-called game canon, including Civilization.

By the release of Civilization II in 1996, Civilization had sold over 850,000 copies. By 2001, sales had reached 1 million copies. Shelley stated in a 2016 interview that Civilization had sold 1.5 million copies.

In 2022, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Sid Meier’s Civilization to its World Video Game Hall of Fame.

Reviews

 * Casus Belli #70 (July 1992)

Legacy
There have been several sequels to Civilization, including Civilization II (1996), Civilization III (2001), Civilization IV (2005), Civilization Revolution (2008), Civilization V (2010), and Civilization VI in 2016. In 1994, Meier produced a similar game titled Colonization.

Civilization is generally considered the first major game in the genre of "4X", with the four "X"s equating to "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate", a term developed by Alan Emrich in promoting 1993's Master of Orion. While other video games with the principles of 4X had been released prior to Civilization, future 4X games would attribute some of their basic design principles to Civilization.

A famous supposed bug in the original game - later debunked - is that a computer-controlled Gandhi, normally a highly peaceful leader, could become a nuclear warmonger if provoked. It was theorized that the game started Gandhi's "aggression value" at 1 out of a maximum 255 possible for an 8-bit unsigned integer, making a computer-controlled Gandhi tend to avoid armed conflict. However, once a civilization achieves democracy as its form of government, its leader's aggression value falls by 2. Under normal arithmetic principles, Gandhi's "1" would be reduced to "-1", but because the value is an 8-bit unsigned integer, it supposedly wraps around to "255", causing Gandhi to suddenly become the most aggressive opponent in the game.

Interviewed in 2019, developer Brian Reynolds said with "99.99% certainty" that this story was apocryphal, recalling Gandhi's coded aggression level as being no lower than other peaceful leaders in the game, and doubting that a wraparound would have had the effect described. He noted that all leaders in the game become "pretty ornery" after their acquisition of nuclear weapons, and suggested that this behaviour simply seemed more surprising and memorable when it happened to Gandhi. Meier, in his autobiography, stated "That kind of bug comes from something called unsigned characters, which are not the default in the C programming language, and not something I used for the leader traits. Brian Reynolds wrote Civ II in C++, and he didn't use them, either. We received no complaints about a Gandhi bug when either game came out, nor did we send out any revisions for one. Gandhi's military aggressiveness score remained at 1 throughout the game." He then explains the overflow error story was made up in 2012. It spread from there to a Wikia entry, then eventually to Reddit, and was picked up by news sites like Kotaku and Geek.com. The story may have originated from the fact that 2010's Civilization V was deliberately written with Gandhi having an affinity for nuclear weapons, added as a joke by developer Jon Shafer. The misinformation around this bug led to the meme known as "Nuclear Gandhi".

Another relic of Civilization was the nature of combat where a military unit from earlier civilization periods could remain in play through modern times, gaining combat bonuses due to veteran proficiency, leading to these primitive units easily beating out modern technology against all common sense, with the common example of a veteran phalanx unit able to fend off a battleship. Meier noted that this resulted from not anticipating how players would use units, expecting them to have used their forces more like a war-based board game to protect borders and maintain zones of control rather than creating "stacks of doom". Future civilization games have had many changes in combat systems to prevent such oddities, though these games do allow for such random victories.

The 1999 game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was also created by Meier and is in the same genre, but with a futuristic/space theme; many of the interface and gameplay innovations in this game eventually made their way into Civilization III and IV. Alpha Centauri is not actually a sequel to Civilization, despite beginning with the same event that ends Civilization and Civilization II: a crewed spacecraft from Earth arrives in the Alpha Centauri star system. Firaxis' 2014 game Civilization: Beyond Earth, although bearing the name of the main series, is a reimagining of Alpha Centauri running on the engine of Civilization V.

A 1994 Computer Gaming World survey of space war games stated that "the lesson of this incredibly popular wargame has not been lost on the software community, and technological research popped up all over the place in 1993", citing Spaceward Ho! and Master of Orion as examples. That year MicroProse published Master of Magic, a similar game but embedded in a medieval-fantasy setting where instead of technologies the player (a powerful wizard) develops spells, among other things. In 1999, Activision released Civilization: Call to Power, a sequel of sorts to Civilization II but created by a completely different design team. Call to Power spawned a sequel in 2000, but by then Activision had sold the rights to the Civilization name and could only call it Call to Power II.

An open source clone of Civilization has been developed under the name of Freeciv, with the slogan "'Cause civilization should be free." This game can be configured to match the rules of either Civilization or Civilization II. Another game that partially clones Civilization is a public domain game called C-evo.

title: Civilization (video game)