Popular Post comicwiz Posted January 29, 2023 Popular Post Share Posted January 29, 2023 (edited) One of my favourite artists is Samm Schwartz. Not only because he is without question the best artist to have ever worked on Jughead, but because of his sight gags. It's the stuff of legends. Referred also to as the "double-take", this is a gag strategy to take the reader into a background area of the panel where the artist draws in a comedic element to the strip. Seen below is an example where Jughead is persuading Archie to give the fencing gig up because he's not very good at it, and is more likely to hurt himself. As he's balancing the sabre on his finger, he relieves a passer-by's hat. This sight gag appeared Jughead #122 (1965) in a 6-page strip called "Duel Personality." NOTE: I've rearranged the strip in this linear fashion to suit the boards formatting, this is otherwise a two column, two panel, 6 panel per page layout. In 2021, I discovered a series of comic strips which date from the Platinum era. I would later publish a 4-part article on the discovery, and the amazing history of this strip, if anyone is interested, feel free to PM me and I'll direct you to where the article can be read. The strips date to between the late 1800's through to about the 1920's. One of the strips shows a sight gag in the first panel, where the driver of the horse drawn carriage appears to be bracing himself for a pioneer era backfire, as seen below: I wondered if anyone knew when this comedic element known as the sight gag first began being a part of the comic/strip repertoire? Edited January 29, 2023 by comicwiz steveinthecity, wormboy, letsgrumble and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pantodude Posted January 30, 2023 Share Posted January 30, 2023 (edited) Interesting topic! If this counts, it looks like sight gags might have been part of early comic books since the get-go, or at least our first comic book, which kicked off the Victorian Age. The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck was originally published in French in 1828 by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer, and here is p27 of the first English edition published by Tilt & Bogues (London: 1841): In the first panel, the main action--as described in the short caption below it--relates to the discovery of the love letter, but there is something curious/humorous going on with the dog and rats in the background. This book arguably was a "first" in various ways, and it's cool to see how certain aspects continued/evolved over the centuries now. Edited January 30, 2023 by Pantodude KCOComics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
comicwiz Posted January 30, 2023 Author Share Posted January 30, 2023 On 1/29/2023 at 7:46 PM, Pantodude said: Interesting topic! If this counts, it looks like sight gags might have been part of early comic books since the get-go, or at least our first comic book, which kicked off the Victorian Age. The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck was originally published in French in 1828 by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer, and here is p27 of the first English edition published by Tilt & Bogues (London: 1841): In the first panel, the main action--as described in the short caption below it--relates to the discovery of the love letter, but there is something curious/humorous going on with the dog and rats in the background. This book arguably was a "first" in various ways, and it's cool to see how certain aspects continued/evolved over the centuries now. That is interesting. I could see this straddling a finer line of humour and grim reality - on the latter, of how bad things were at the time with rodents, in terms of their invasiveness, and the potential threat posted to food supply and spread of disease. On the former, his dog as some pied piper or trained "rat-catcher. It's got the "double-take" factor going for it, thanks for the share! Pantodude 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...