ORIGINS of the American Comic Book 0

[BLBcomics-migration]

Fascinating, incredibly interesting stuff, Bob. Loving this thread more and more every time I open it

 

Thanks for the kind words, you, and others, who have voiced similar, which i did not earlier directly respond to what with real life full of too many distractions. As I dig further in to the research archives am becoming re-enthused all over again spending more time with this stuff. There is so much more am going to share.

 

Have also begun working on my own web site once again which will contain a blog unfolding the vast majority of this stuff to share. Thousands of pages of documents few have ever seen. That all debuts in a couple months as Katy keeps on her healing trajectory. We ain't out of those woods yet. Fingers are crossed, knocking on wood et al.

[BLBcomics-migration]

 

 

In this next Ernie McGee letter he states in no uncertain terms Walt McDougall as well as Mark Fenderson should be given proper comics historial credit for "first" comic strips in New York City newspapers.

 

That Mark Fenderson created the first sequential comic strip in a NY newspaper dated Jan 28 1894.

 

The second sequential comics strip was the following week and a collaboration between Fenderson and McDougall. In later letters I have yet to scan he discusses how Outcault fits in the chrono time line as well as discussing earlier comic strip creators such as Frank Bellew who began doing sequential comic strips in humor magazines as early as the 1850s. From his letters he does not appear to have ever found, consequently been aware of, Rodolphe Topffer.

 

Ernie also stresses on page two of this missive this is only concerning "newspaper" comics with comic strips appearing in earlier humor magazines and that comic strips indeed were appearing in Europe before they began appearing in America.

 

His list in chrono order for comic strips to begin in newspapers is:

 

1) New York World May 21 1893 Pulitzer

2) New York Herald mid 1894 Gordon Bennett

3) New York Journal American Oct 1896 Hearst

4) boston Globe 1896

5) Philadelphia Inquier 1898

6) Philadelphia Press 1899

 

then the floodgates open by 1900 with newspapers all over the country jumping at grabbing at this now proven circulation builder.

 

[bLB: Ernie does not appear, or maybe forgot as he is in his mid 70s by the mid 1960s when writing these letters so is maybe to be forgiven, there was a Chicago newspaper Inter-Ocean IIRC which also began a color Sunday supplement in 1893 featuring recurring characters called Ting Ling Kids]

 

Also note on page two he mentions a few humor magazine title examples Puck, Judge, Life, "...."these were not newspapers - but - they actually started the comic (strip) trend. Newspapers saw how popular the comics were in these magazines and got wise - and copied the idea...."

[BLBcomics-migration]

For some reason the below post deleted during a typo edit which accounts for the "blank" a few clicks back, so i repost:

 

 

Back in 1971 while still a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at an early Thanksgiving Creationcon in New York City I used to fly in for on a regular basis an older gent was wandering around looking tired and lost. He had some very old newspaper Sunday sections rolled up tucked under this armpit.

 

I called out to him, asking him if he wished to take a load off, rest on a chair behind my table. He said sure, sat down, we proceeded to converse. I asked him what he was doing at this comics show as he looked to be in his 80s. I was struck such an older guy was at such a comics show.

 

He replied he had seen a TV newscast on this thing called a comic book convention which said to "bring your #1 comic books in to sell for big bucks" something to that effect. So there he came in with his #1 comics, but he sid no one wanted to buy them.

 

i replied, what do you have? I would be interested....

 

So, he unfolds his roll of vintage news print and I was treated to seeing the first Yellow Kid, first Katzenjammer Kids, first Happy Hooligan, first Little Nemo, etc etc - I no longer remember the others in the stack right this sec.

 

He also had a few original newspaper dailies with him for sale. On the spot I paid his asking price of $50 each for a 1915 George Herriman Baron Bean, a 1935 Noel Sickles Scorchy Smith, a 1927 Walt McDougall Radio Buggs. They were my very first early newspaper strip original art pieces. Comics Heaven knew no bounds back in those days of daZe.

 

I was blown away as we made arrangements for me to come out to his house that night which was in a town called Upper Gloustcher (sp) New Jersey across the river from Philly PA. Dealer room closed at 7 PM, i then had my very first adventure with Grand Central Station, figuring out a train to Philly, then a bus across the river in to New Jersey, then a cab to his house, which turned out to be a huge three story run-down type mansion on top of a small hill as I remember it.

 

I knocked on the door, it was 10 PM by this point, Ernie ushered me in, saying he had almost given up on my showing up - and he proceeded to begin my education in to early comics in America. He was very impressed a young 19 year old such as myself was interested in comics as early as he as showing me.

 

Before we both knew it, the sun was coming up, it was 7 AM or so, I am exclaiming I need to get back to NYC to guard my table of comics, we part company, me vowing to making it back to this veritable Comics Mecca.

 

On my way out the door, again saying how he was so impressed a "youngster" such as myself enjoyed the older stuff as much as the then "newer" comics, gave me Yellow Kid Sunday strips #1 #2 #4 - his TRIPLICATES - as a gift, saying to me to keep the spirit of this earlier comics heritage alive as he did not know how much longer he was going to last.

 

Ernie McGee had been born in 1884, had begun "serious" comics collecting in 1914 age 20, how his comics collecting passions had alienated him from his former wife as well as two daughters. More on Ernie & his collecting coming up shortly if people are interested (or not) as he was the earliest comics collector I ever met, and I have talked with many thousands of "old timers" no longer with us

 

below is the photo spread on Ernie collecting comics from a General Motors magazine titled Friends from 1964 with its cover pictured above. There are others on his collecting yet to sort out amongst my research files.

 

[Bronty]

Right, so topolino was selling the same # per month in a country with a far far smaller population

[Sqeggs]

Right, so topolino was selling the same # per month in a country with a far far smaller population

 

And a country with a much lower per capita income. It is pretty amazing.

[vaillant]

Right, so topolino was selling the same # per month in a country with a far far smaller population

 

I don’t mean to misdirect a thread which is obviously related to the US comics publication history, but I believe worldwide comparision is healthy for any kind of research and study.

 

There is another element which I just thought about recently, and that is very interesting: as I previously told, the default format for italy – unlike it has happened in the US – became the large journal, tabloid-like format.

So in the 1930s and 1940s the majority of comics periodicals (i.e. not special reprints or single issues, which may have been in comic book or landscape formats) were newspaper-size.

 

Then, in 1949, a little revolution occurred, which pretty much changed the industry. Arnoldo Mondadori, the italian publisher for Disney, decided to buy new printing equipment to print the italian edition of the Reader’s Digest, and to cut down costs, he decided that Topolino would turn monthly and in the very same pocket format of the Reader’s Digest: instead of a 16 pages newspaper-format journal, all of a sudden the italian readers found themselves holding a thick Reader’s digest size monthly comic.

This was a gamble but proved to be hugely successful, as Topolino became fortnightly and then once again weekly in a very little time.

 

The first issue, from 1949, was quite a leap. In this picture, as a comparision, it’s shown the very first Topolino Giornale issue, from 1932, and Topolino Libretto #2979 (which celebrated the 80th anniversary of this legendary Disney italian publication reproducing on the cover the first page of the 1932 first issue) laid upon it.

 

 

This was the cover of the first issue which used an illustration sourced from the back cover of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #9:

 

 

Modern anastatic reprints of early "Topolino" issues:

 

Edited May 5, 2013 by vaillant

[Shield]

[font:Times New Roman]I concur on this viewpoint, the caveat being that some things have had a much greater influence on that development than others. Some connections are tenuous at best and others are virtual dead-ends.

 

which really doesn't say anything

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershon_Legman

 

[font:Times New Roman]While Love and Death is a fascinating read, Legman's scholarship is debatable although that isn't quite the word that comes to mind given his prurient interest in the erotic. [/font]

 

I referenced Love & Death only to ID the man to some of those (not you) who might not recognize who he is. His 'scholarship' (I agree with your assessment BTW, and one can draw a line to LG's L&D article to Wertham's later SOTI) as such in L&D has no relation to the article in a years earlier magazine wherein Legman discusses early 1800s comic books. It is quite long.

 

Some where in my computer files I have a transcription of this fascinating Legman article which became the foundational basis for searching out 1800s comic books when we began the work to add in 1800s comic books in to what was then still a "Platinum" price index section of OPG. I transcribed it back in 1999

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]I applaud this if for no other reason than the Platinum expansion of the Guide into the history of Victorian illustration art provides a deeper understanding of the genealogy of the comic family tree.

 

That said, I'm resistant to making too many direct connections to the theoretical origins of comics in a guide that also has as it's main criteria establishing a baseline for investment values. Some of the branches of the family tree are dead-ends and have little to do with the evolution of comics as we know them today.

 

From a collecting standpoint Platinum books have less market potential to comic collectors because the interest is going to be narrower and much more specialized. My [/font]

 

In all actuality I agree with you regarding the "investment" aspects of these earlier comic books and extend that thought to the 20th century comic books as well. I think many a comic book bringing in "record" prices to be 4th Stage Tulip Mania ie the "bigger fool" theory. At some point the reality of "gravity" is going to snap back on what people think of as their "investments" in the current rarified high end comic book market.

 

One can already "see" a lot of 40s comic books garnering less interest than in days of yore as the "custome base" simply is dying off for many of the 40s comics.

 

I vehemently disagree re OPB not being a proper vehicle to have initially presented the data then being uncovered more than a decade ago now. The "origins" of the comic book as presented in OPG for some 15 years now were vetted by a world wide group of comics collector scholar friends of mine.

 

What ended up in OPG and which has evolved over the years there, in many a case "older" presented data being force dropped out due to space constraints - those last few years I still had interest in building in OPG they held my sections to an aggrecate of 72 pages -

The late Gabriel Laderman NYC had a HUGE holdings in 18th & 19th century American humor pubs, thousands of examples, of which his comics stuff was a more minor sub-set. I gleaned a couple hundred out of his collection alone

 

I, also, once upon a time, tied in the Sunday Color-printed comics sections which cranked up in the 1890s, however, use of comic strips as a selling point in that sort of periodical actually dates back to the 1850s and was wide spread by the early 1870s with such pubs as Wild Oats among many others. One can check out how far I got in indexing Wild Oats for the Vict section of Overstreet.

 

[font:Times New Roman]Again, the minutiae isn't what collectors find persuasive. Arguable facts tend to supersede tenuous theoretical connections if a strong enough foundation is laid.

 

The success of the Yellow Kid and the development of Sunday color comic strips though Buster Brown, Little Nemo et. al., has a direct connection to the evolution of comic books. Obediah Oldbuck's contribution is much less obvious except as historical anecdote and from a marketing standpoint it's a tough sell. [/font]

 

Huh? You are simply wrong and make no sense. Comic Strips in Books and periodicals in all their varied myriad formats have been evolving in the USA since 1842. Yellow Kid is not a comic strip - simply a large single panel ilustration to an accompanying text by Townsend - until its last half dozen apperances and presents nothing which is not already "invented". Simple Fact.

 

Color? "Daily" newspaper comic strips now become not part of your equation. One must simply throw out all of the Cupples & Leon black and white comic books from 1919-1933; or to bring it in to more "modern" times, stuff like Zap Comics, Slow Death, on in to Cerebus, Elfquest, etc etc etc?

 

All I have presented here are a few thumb nail sketches.

 

You keep bringing up concepts of "....marketing standpoint it's a tough sell..." which makes me wonder your intent of replying to the snippets I presented in the first place. All three of the history articles as I worked on them inside Overstreet covering 1840s-1880s, 1880s-1930s and "Origins of the Modern Comic Book" have zero hints of marketing same for bucks.

[font:Times New Roman]The early origins of the word balloon are relevant, but far less important than it's wide-spread use. It's origins are quaint, but it's implementation later on as part of a package that included sequential art and color was in response to a need of the expanding medium.[/font]

 

Huh? The above statement makes no sense other than fulfilling a need by you to think refutation is important. What you wrote here makes no sense.

Here is a colored in title page to America's first home grown stand alone comic book dating from 1849:

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Bob, that's interesting, but not ground-breaking, IMO. That could just as easily be a label on a mid-19th century tuna can. To get any context the entire book needs to be seen and evaluated.[/font]

 

OK, have your tuna can fun. It is a long sequential art story. I agree, it needs to be reprinted and placed out for others to read.

 

Here now are some American home grown examples of early comic strips. First up is the cover to Elton's Comic Almanac for 1853.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Interesting and quaint, but again, it doesn't provide any gosh-wow revelation for comic book origins. IOW, another tenuous connection.[/font]

 

and two pages of a longer comic strip story contained therein.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]In desperation Bill Gaines tried to revive this in his Picto-Fiction line. Alas, the results were less than spectacular and suggest a failed branch of the comic evolutionary tree.[/font]

 

Huh? Bill Gaines? Either sarcasm on your part or simply lack of seeing very many - if any, I suspect - comic strips from the 1800s. There are 1000s of comic strips in 100s of pubs from the 1800s.

Now, here are just a few of the hundreds of comic strips inside Wild Oats, an irreverant magazine akin to a National Lampoon of its day. This seminal weekly periodical, akin to a weekly Sunday newspaper, is incredibly rare. I have exactly three issues in my collection after more than a decade of fruitless searching. There are broken runs in a few institutions of higher learning. Not one of these places I found has even a near complete run. Lost is dust bowls of history, way too long over-looked by almost every comics historian seeking to impart "truth" as it were. I indexed what is in Overstreet about a decade ago now.

 

This first example is by Frank Bellew Sr whom we aptly named "Father of the American comic strip starting in the first Victorian article in OPG #32 2002. Forget Richard Outcault and/or Yellow Kid being the first of ANYTHING.

 

Frank Bellew Sr was hugely prolific doing many many hundreds of comic strips beginning in the early 1850s. This nice example dates circa 1873, I feel lazy right now, am devoting too much time here as it is from what I have to get accomplished today for my "real" life and am not looking for the exact issue number. Maybe later. but please scope out the detail in this wonderful art

 

 

Now here is an example by Livingston Hopkins who also did wonderful comic strip work. This example dates to circa the same year 1873 or so. Hopkins moved to Australia some time later and became that country's premiere political cartoonist according to some history books I gleaned info about him.

 

 

and this last example for today is by one Palmer Cox who some years later went on to create The Brownies. Outcault patterned a lot of his activities with Yellow Kid, but especially Buster Brown, on what Cox was doing with the Brownies.

 

But prior to The Brownies Palmer Cox was doing detailed sequential comic strips. This example dates from 1875. This is a double page spread. He created many double page spread comic strips for Wild Oats

 

 

The American comic strip prior to Outcault creating Yellow Kid has thousands of examples in hundreds of publications. I would think those who cling to their myths simply have not seen very many yet.

 

For good measure am tossing in the cover to the 1908 The Three Funmakers which is the first "anthology" comic book published with more than a single character strip. This comic book is fairly scarce these days. I love it.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Very impressed by the depth and scholarship of your work even though I differ with you somewhat about it's direct relationship with comics as we know them today.[/font]

 

 

I presented just a very few of what i have as examples here. So you "differ" in what way? The three presented are very much sequential comic strips as "we" know them today. Brings to mind on one level the format used by Hal Foster in Prince Valiant from 1937 onwards, a "comic strip," never using word balloons. And the one presented with out words at all, also sequential comics.

 

Obviously, I did not address all of your "points" as some of your statements simply make no sense to even begin to attempt to understand actual intent on your part of where you came up with what you have here. My apologies.....

I have no point to make, or have any rebuttal for the points made above.

I am just quoting for those who like to scroll.

 

You son of a spoon! I lol'd.

[porcupine48]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

[MrBedrock]

[font:Times New Roman]I concur on this viewpoint, the caveat being that some things have had a much greater influence on that development than others. Some connections are tenuous at best and others are virtual dead-ends.

 

which really doesn't say anything

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershon_Legman

 

[font:Times New Roman]While Love and Death is a fascinating read, Legman's scholarship is debatable although that isn't quite the word that comes to mind given his prurient interest in the erotic. [/font]

 

I referenced Love & Death only to ID the man to some of those (not you) who might not recognize who he is. His 'scholarship' (I agree with your assessment BTW, and one can draw a line to LG's L&D article to Wertham's later SOTI) as such in L&D has no relation to the article in a years earlier magazine wherein Legman discusses early 1800s comic books. It is quite long.

 

Some where in my computer files I have a transcription of this fascinating Legman article which became the foundational basis for searching out 1800s comic books when we began the work to add in 1800s comic books in to what was then still a "Platinum" price index section of OPG. I transcribed it back in 1999

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]I applaud this if for no other reason than the Platinum expansion of the Guide into the history of Victorian illustration art provides a deeper understanding of the genealogy of the comic family tree.

 

That said, I'm resistant to making too many direct connections to the theoretical origins of comics in a guide that also has as it's main criteria establishing a baseline for investment values. Some of the branches of the family tree are dead-ends and have little to do with the evolution of comics as we know them today.

 

From a collecting standpoint Platinum books have less market potential to comic collectors because the interest is going to be narrower and much more specialized. My [/font]

 

In all actuality I agree with you regarding the "investment" aspects of these earlier comic books and extend that thought to the 20th century comic books as well. I think many a comic book bringing in "record" prices to be 4th Stage Tulip Mania ie the "bigger fool" theory. At some point the reality of "gravity" is going to snap back on what people think of as their "investments" in the current rarified high end comic book market.

 

One can already "see" a lot of 40s comic books garnering less interest than in days of yore as the "custome base" simply is dying off for many of the 40s comics.

 

I vehemently disagree re OPB not being a proper vehicle to have initially presented the data then being uncovered more than a decade ago now. The "origins" of the comic book as presented in OPG for some 15 years now were vetted by a world wide group of comics collector scholar friends of mine.

 

What ended up in OPG and which has evolved over the years there, in many a case "older" presented data being force dropped out due to space constraints - those last few years I still had interest in building in OPG they held my sections to an aggrecate of 72 pages -

The late Gabriel Laderman NYC had a HUGE holdings in 18th & 19th century American humor pubs, thousands of examples, of which his comics stuff was a more minor sub-set. I gleaned a couple hundred out of his collection alone

 

I, also, once upon a time, tied in the Sunday Color-printed comics sections which cranked up in the 1890s, however, use of comic strips as a selling point in that sort of periodical actually dates back to the 1850s and was wide spread by the early 1870s with such pubs as Wild Oats among many others. One can check out how far I got in indexing Wild Oats for the Vict section of Overstreet.

 

[font:Times New Roman]Again, the minutiae isn't what collectors find persuasive. Arguable facts tend to supersede tenuous theoretical connections if a strong enough foundation is laid.

 

The success of the Yellow Kid and the development of Sunday color comic strips though Buster Brown, Little Nemo et. al., has a direct connection to the evolution of comic books. Obediah Oldbuck's contribution is much less obvious except as historical anecdote and from a marketing standpoint it's a tough sell. [/font]

 

Huh? You are simply wrong and make no sense. Comic Strips in Books and periodicals in all their varied myriad formats have been evolving in the USA since 1842. Yellow Kid is not a comic strip - simply a large single panel ilustration to an accompanying text by Townsend - until its last half dozen apperances and presents nothing which is not already "invented". Simple Fact.

 

Color? "Daily" newspaper comic strips now become not part of your equation. One must simply throw out all of the Cupples & Leon black and white comic books from 1919-1933; or to bring it in to more "modern" times, stuff like Zap Comics, Slow Death, on in to Cerebus, Elfquest, etc etc etc?

 

All I have presented here are a few thumb nail sketches.

 

You keep bringing up concepts of "....marketing standpoint it's a tough sell..." which makes me wonder your intent of replying to the snippets I presented in the first place. All three of the history articles as I worked on them inside Overstreet covering 1840s-1880s, 1880s-1930s and "Origins of the Modern Comic Book" have zero hints of marketing same for bucks.

[font:Times New Roman]The early origins of the word balloon are relevant, but far less important than it's wide-spread use. It's origins are quaint, but it's implementation later on as part of a package that included sequential art and color was in response to a need of the expanding medium.[/font]

 

Huh? The above statement makes no sense other than fulfilling a need by you to think refutation is important. What you wrote here makes no sense.

Here is a colored in title page to America's first home grown stand alone comic book dating from 1849:

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Bob, that's interesting, but not ground-breaking, IMO. That could just as easily be a label on a mid-19th century tuna can. To get any context the entire book needs to be seen and evaluated.[/font]

 

OK, have your tuna can fun. It is a long sequential art story. I agree, it needs to be reprinted and placed out for others to read.

 

Here now are some American home grown examples of early comic strips. First up is the cover to Elton's Comic Almanac for 1853.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Interesting and quaint, but again, it doesn't provide any gosh-wow revelation for comic book origins. IOW, another tenuous connection.[/font]

 

and two pages of a longer comic strip story contained therein.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]In desperation Bill Gaines tried to revive this in his Picto-Fiction line. Alas, the results were less than spectacular and suggest a failed branch of the comic evolutionary tree.[/font]

 

Huh? Bill Gaines? Either sarcasm on your part or simply lack of seeing very many - if any, I suspect - comic strips from the 1800s. There are 1000s of comic strips in 100s of pubs from the 1800s.

Now, here are just a few of the hundreds of comic strips inside Wild Oats, an irreverant magazine akin to a National Lampoon of its day. This seminal weekly periodical, akin to a weekly Sunday newspaper, is incredibly rare. I have exactly three issues in my collection after more than a decade of fruitless searching. There are broken runs in a few institutions of higher learning. Not one of these places I found has even a near complete run. Lost is dust bowls of history, way too long over-looked by almost every comics historian seeking to impart "truth" as it were. I indexed what is in Overstreet about a decade ago now.

 

This first example is by Frank Bellew Sr whom we aptly named "Father of the American comic strip starting in the first Victorian article in OPG #32 2002. Forget Richard Outcault and/or Yellow Kid being the first of ANYTHING.

 

Frank Bellew Sr was hugely prolific doing many many hundreds of comic strips beginning in the early 1850s. This nice example dates circa 1873, I feel lazy right now, am devoting too much time here as it is from what I have to get accomplished today for my "real" life and am not looking for the exact issue number. Maybe later. but please scope out the detail in this wonderful art

 

 

Now here is an example by Livingston Hopkins who also did wonderful comic strip work. This example dates to circa the same year 1873 or so. Hopkins moved to Australia some time later and became that country's premiere political cartoonist according to some history books I gleaned info about him.

 

 

and this last example for today is by one Palmer Cox who some years later went on to create The Brownies. Outcault patterned a lot of his activities with Yellow Kid, but especially Buster Brown, on what Cox was doing with the Brownies.

 

But prior to The Brownies Palmer Cox was doing detailed sequential comic strips. This example dates from 1875. This is a double page spread. He created many double page spread comic strips for Wild Oats

 

 

The American comic strip prior to Outcault creating Yellow Kid has thousands of examples in hundreds of publications. I would think those who cling to their myths simply have not seen very many yet.

 

For good measure am tossing in the cover to the 1908 The Three Funmakers which is the first "anthology" comic book published with more than a single character strip. This comic book is fairly scarce these days. I love it.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Very impressed by the depth and scholarship of your work even though I differ with you somewhat about it's direct relationship with comics as we know them today.[/font]

 

 

I presented just a very few of what i have as examples here. So you "differ" in what way? The three presented are very much sequential comic strips as "we" know them today. Brings to mind on one level the format used by Hal Foster in Prince Valiant from 1937 onwards, a "comic strip," never using word balloons. And the one presented with out words at all, also sequential comics.

 

Obviously, I did not address all of your "points" as some of your statements simply make no sense to even begin to attempt to understand actual intent on your part of where you came up with what you have here. My apologies.....

I have no point to make, or have any rebuttal for the points made above.

I am just quoting for those who like to scroll.

 

You son of a spoon! I lol'd.

Good to see you posting again (thumbs u

[Sqeggs]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

[Shield]

[font:Times New Roman]I concur on this viewpoint, the caveat being that some things have had a much greater influence on that development than others. Some connections are tenuous at best and others are virtual dead-ends.

 

which really doesn't say anything

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershon_Legman

 

[font:Times New Roman]While Love and Death is a fascinating read, Legman's scholarship is debatable although that isn't quite the word that comes to mind given his prurient interest in the erotic. [/font]

 

I referenced Love & Death only to ID the man to some of those (not you) who might not recognize who he is. His 'scholarship' (I agree with your assessment BTW, and one can draw a line to LG's L&D article to Wertham's later SOTI) as such in L&D has no relation to the article in a years earlier magazine wherein Legman discusses early 1800s comic books. It is quite long.

 

Some where in my computer files I have a transcription of this fascinating Legman article which became the foundational basis for searching out 1800s comic books when we began the work to add in 1800s comic books in to what was then still a "Platinum" price index section of OPG. I transcribed it back in 1999

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]I applaud this if for no other reason than the Platinum expansion of the Guide into the history of Victorian illustration art provides a deeper understanding of the genealogy of the comic family tree.

 

That said, I'm resistant to making too many direct connections to the theoretical origins of comics in a guide that also has as it's main criteria establishing a baseline for investment values. Some of the branches of the family tree are dead-ends and have little to do with the evolution of comics as we know them today.

 

From a collecting standpoint Platinum books have less market potential to comic collectors because the interest is going to be narrower and much more specialized. My [/font]

 

In all actuality I agree with you regarding the "investment" aspects of these earlier comic books and extend that thought to the 20th century comic books as well. I think many a comic book bringing in "record" prices to be 4th Stage Tulip Mania ie the "bigger fool" theory. At some point the reality of "gravity" is going to snap back on what people think of as their "investments" in the current rarified high end comic book market.

 

One can already "see" a lot of 40s comic books garnering less interest than in days of yore as the "custome base" simply is dying off for many of the 40s comics.

 

I vehemently disagree re OPB not being a proper vehicle to have initially presented the data then being uncovered more than a decade ago now. The "origins" of the comic book as presented in OPG for some 15 years now were vetted by a world wide group of comics collector scholar friends of mine.

 

What ended up in OPG and which has evolved over the years there, in many a case "older" presented data being force dropped out due to space constraints - those last few years I still had interest in building in OPG they held my sections to an aggrecate of 72 pages -

The late Gabriel Laderman NYC had a HUGE holdings in 18th & 19th century American humor pubs, thousands of examples, of which his comics stuff was a more minor sub-set. I gleaned a couple hundred out of his collection alone

 

I, also, once upon a time, tied in the Sunday Color-printed comics sections which cranked up in the 1890s, however, use of comic strips as a selling point in that sort of periodical actually dates back to the 1850s and was wide spread by the early 1870s with such pubs as Wild Oats among many others. One can check out how far I got in indexing Wild Oats for the Vict section of Overstreet.

 

[font:Times New Roman]Again, the minutiae isn't what collectors find persuasive. Arguable facts tend to supersede tenuous theoretical connections if a strong enough foundation is laid.

 

The success of the Yellow Kid and the development of Sunday color comic strips though Buster Brown, Little Nemo et. al., has a direct connection to the evolution of comic books. Obediah Oldbuck's contribution is much less obvious except as historical anecdote and from a marketing standpoint it's a tough sell. [/font]

 

Huh? You are simply wrong and make no sense. Comic Strips in Books and periodicals in all their varied myriad formats have been evolving in the USA since 1842. Yellow Kid is not a comic strip - simply a large single panel ilustration to an accompanying text by Townsend - until its last half dozen apperances and presents nothing which is not already "invented". Simple Fact.

 

Color? "Daily" newspaper comic strips now become not part of your equation. One must simply throw out all of the Cupples & Leon black and white comic books from 1919-1933; or to bring it in to more "modern" times, stuff like Zap Comics, Slow Death, on in to Cerebus, Elfquest, etc etc etc?

 

All I have presented here are a few thumb nail sketches.

 

You keep bringing up concepts of "....marketing standpoint it's a tough sell..." which makes me wonder your intent of replying to the snippets I presented in the first place. All three of the history articles as I worked on them inside Overstreet covering 1840s-1880s, 1880s-1930s and "Origins of the Modern Comic Book" have zero hints of marketing same for bucks.

[font:Times New Roman]The early origins of the word balloon are relevant, but far less important than it's wide-spread use. It's origins are quaint, but it's implementation later on as part of a package that included sequential art and color was in response to a need of the expanding medium.[/font]

 

Huh? The above statement makes no sense other than fulfilling a need by you to think refutation is important. What you wrote here makes no sense.

Here is a colored in title page to America's first home grown stand alone comic book dating from 1849:

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Bob, that's interesting, but not ground-breaking, IMO. That could just as easily be a label on a mid-19th century tuna can. To get any context the entire book needs to be seen and evaluated.[/font]

 

OK, have your tuna can fun. It is a long sequential art story. I agree, it needs to be reprinted and placed out for others to read.

 

Here now are some American home grown examples of early comic strips. First up is the cover to Elton's Comic Almanac for 1853.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Interesting and quaint, but again, it doesn't provide any gosh-wow revelation for comic book origins. IOW, another tenuous connection.[/font]

 

and two pages of a longer comic strip story contained therein.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]In desperation Bill Gaines tried to revive this in his Picto-Fiction line. Alas, the results were less than spectacular and suggest a failed branch of the comic evolutionary tree.[/font]

 

Huh? Bill Gaines? Either sarcasm on your part or simply lack of seeing very many - if any, I suspect - comic strips from the 1800s. There are 1000s of comic strips in 100s of pubs from the 1800s.

Now, here are just a few of the hundreds of comic strips inside Wild Oats, an irreverant magazine akin to a National Lampoon of its day. This seminal weekly periodical, akin to a weekly Sunday newspaper, is incredibly rare. I have exactly three issues in my collection after more than a decade of fruitless searching. There are broken runs in a few institutions of higher learning. Not one of these places I found has even a near complete run. Lost is dust bowls of history, way too long over-looked by almost every comics historian seeking to impart "truth" as it were. I indexed what is in Overstreet about a decade ago now.

 

This first example is by Frank Bellew Sr whom we aptly named "Father of the American comic strip starting in the first Victorian article in OPG #32 2002. Forget Richard Outcault and/or Yellow Kid being the first of ANYTHING.

 

Frank Bellew Sr was hugely prolific doing many many hundreds of comic strips beginning in the early 1850s. This nice example dates circa 1873, I feel lazy right now, am devoting too much time here as it is from what I have to get accomplished today for my "real" life and am not looking for the exact issue number. Maybe later. but please scope out the detail in this wonderful art

 

 

Now here is an example by Livingston Hopkins who also did wonderful comic strip work. This example dates to circa the same year 1873 or so. Hopkins moved to Australia some time later and became that country's premiere political cartoonist according to some history books I gleaned info about him.

 

 

and this last example for today is by one Palmer Cox who some years later went on to create The Brownies. Outcault patterned a lot of his activities with Yellow Kid, but especially Buster Brown, on what Cox was doing with the Brownies.

 

But prior to The Brownies Palmer Cox was doing detailed sequential comic strips. This example dates from 1875. This is a double page spread. He created many double page spread comic strips for Wild Oats

 

 

The American comic strip prior to Outcault creating Yellow Kid has thousands of examples in hundreds of publications. I would think those who cling to their myths simply have not seen very many yet.

 

For good measure am tossing in the cover to the 1908 The Three Funmakers which is the first "anthology" comic book published with more than a single character strip. This comic book is fairly scarce these days. I love it.

 

 

[font:Times New Roman]Very impressed by the depth and scholarship of your work even though I differ with you somewhat about it's direct relationship with comics as we know them today.[/font]

 

 

I presented just a very few of what i have as examples here. So you "differ" in what way? The three presented are very much sequential comic strips as "we" know them today. Brings to mind on one level the format used by Hal Foster in Prince Valiant from 1937 onwards, a "comic strip," never using word balloons. And the one presented with out words at all, also sequential comics.

 

Obviously, I did not address all of your "points" as some of your statements simply make no sense to even begin to attempt to understand actual intent on your part of where you came up with what you have here. My apologies.....

I have no point to make, or have any rebuttal for the points made above.

I am just quoting for those who like to scroll.

 

You son of a spoon! I lol'd.

Good to see you posting again (thumbs u

 

All I want for Christmas Richard, is for you to find that thread where you say Metropolis is like a hot girl with 2 huge boobs. Every time I see your username I think of that and laugh. How's my old Pep 33 9.2 CGC?

[Shield]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

 

Link to the thread that "cast" Bob out? I've wondered where he was.

[Sqeggs]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

 

Link to the thread that "cast" Bob out? I've wondered where he was.

 

I'm pretty sure the mods poofed it.

[Shield]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

 

Link to the thread that "cast" Bob out? I've wondered where he was.

 

I'm pretty sure the mods poofed it.

 

What was the crime? Brief summary is fine.

 

[Bronty]

How does one summarize a raving loon?

[Sqeggs]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

 

Link to the thread that "cast" Bob out? I've wondered where he was.

 

I'm pretty sure the mods poofed it.

 

What was the crime? Brief summary is fine.

 

You really had to be there because some of the stuff that went on in those threads defies summary.

 

In the end I think it may have been intemperate remarks about CGC that he posted to his FB page that finally got him banned.

[Cat-Man_America]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

 

Link to the thread that "cast" Bob out? I've wondered where he was.

 

I'm pretty sure the mods poofed it.

 

What was the crime? Brief summary is fine.

 

You really had to be there because some of the stuff that went on in those threads defies summary.

 

In the end I think it may have been intemperate remarks about CGC that he posted to his FB page that finally got him banned.

 

Conflicting views over the origins of one particular pedigree and Obadiah Oldbuck's historical importance in the comic book timeline always got his bile boiling. OTOH, his knowledge and wealth of source materials were impressive, attitude notwithstanding.

 

Bottom line: You're right, vitriolic rants directed at CGC probably had a lot to do with his banishment.

[Straw-Man]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

 

Link to the thread that "cast" Bob out? I've wondered where he was.

 

I'm pretty sure the mods poofed it.

 

What was the crime? Brief summary is fine.

 

summary: tread lightly in the pulps section of his ebay store.

[Sqeggs]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

 

Link to the thread that "cast" Bob out? I've wondered where he was.

 

I'm pretty sure the mods poofed it.

 

What was the crime? Brief summary is fine.

 

summary: tread lightly in the pulps section of his ebay store.

 

Maybe the strangest thing about that imbroglio is that, as I remember, it actually was resolved.

[Cat-Man_America]

Can't wait to give this a good reading...

 

BLB has been cast into the outer darkness but I did find a lot of the stuff he posted in this thread to be interesting.

 

Of course, there were other threads ....

 

Link to the thread that "cast" Bob out? I've wondered where he was.

 

I'm pretty sure the mods poofed it.

 

What was the crime? Brief summary is fine.

 

summary: tread lightly in the pulps section of his ebay store.

 

Maybe the strangest thing about that imbroglio is that, as I remember, it actually was resolved.

 

I'd describe it more as an intervention fraught with complications.