Obadiah Oldbuck vs. Superman

[gifflefunk]

Let me quess, I'm a sucker for spending $20k on Obadiah, but a savvy investor on this purchase:

 

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=11225&si=121

 

No, I would never accuse you of ever being a savvy investor.

[showcase4]

I've got news for you Gifflefunk, no one "takes" my money.

 

You're saying Robert Beerbohm is a no one?

 

 

[showcase4]

Let me quess, I'm a sucker for spending $20k on Obadiah, but a savvy investor on this purchase:

 

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=11225&si=121

 

No, I would never accuse you of ever being a savvy investor.

 

I have to admit Gifflefunk, when I read this I laughed out loud, and for the 1st time you now qualify for this:

[gifflefunk]

Actually, I have no real issues with what you spend your money on. My issue is with calling these early picture story books "comic books". These items have been known all along to historians and it isn't until recent times that someone has decided to blur the line between the two... and the only reason I can think of is for financial gain.

 

As for your $17k GD+ Yellow Kid... based on prior sales of a PR (2005 $1,275), FR (2004 $2,901), and an apparent VF (2005 $10,500), I think you made a reasonable purchase.

[showcase4]

thought it was time to remind everyone what the comic book looked like that is causing all the fuss....this is the nicest of the 3 copies that I purchased last year. It was from a private seller - not Bob Beerbohm. It is a VG unrestored, and was purchased for $20,000. Please note its outstanding page color and quality given the fact that it is 164 years old........

 

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/news_images/10275_28983_5.jpg

[Aces]

thought it was time to remind everyone what the comic book looked like that is causing all the fuss....this is the nicest of the 3 copies that I purchased last year. It was from a private seller - not Bob Beerbohm. It is a VG unrestored, and was purchased for $20,000. Please note its outstanding page color and quality given the fact that it is 164 years old........

 

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/news_images/10275_28983_5.jpg

 

EXTRA number IX (9)?

Where's issues 1 - 8?

[Earl Davis]

thought it was time to remind everyone what the comic book looked like that is causing all the fuss....this is the nicest of the 3 copies that I purchased last year. It was from a private seller - not Bob Beerbohm. It is a VG unrestored, and was purchased for $20,000. Please note its outstanding page color and quality given the fact that it is 164 years old........

 

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/news_images/10275_28983_5.jpg

 

EXTRA number IX (9)?

Where's issues 1 - 8?

 

1 to 8 were text publications.

 

Earl.

[mica]

thought it was time to remind everyone what the comic book looked like that is causing all the fuss....this is the nicest of the 3 copies that I purchased last year. It was from a private seller - not Bob Beerbohm. It is a VG unrestored, and was purchased for $20,000. Please note its outstanding page color and quality given the fact that it is 164 years old........

 

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/news_images/10275_28983_5.jpg

 

EXTRA number IX (9)?

Where's issues 1 - 8?

 

1 to 8 were text publications.

 

Earl.

You mean official COMIC BOOK text publications.

[ft88]

You mean official COMIC BOOK text publications.

 

That depends on what you define as a comic book.

[mica]

You mean official COMIC BOOK text publications.

 

That depends on what you define as a comic book. Which apparently is an ever increasing field. Being too flexible usually gets one in trouble.

[showcase4]

 

As for your $17k GD+ Yellow Kid... based on prior sales of a PR (2005 $1,275), FR (2004 $2,901), and an apparent VF (2005 $10,500), I think you made a reasonable purchase.

 

this is new positive ground for you and I Gifflefunk....just when we are about to start playing nicely together, Bob Beerbohm is about to hop on this thread....well, it was nice while it lasted

[mica]

is about to hop on this thread....well, it was nice while it lasted

Everyone get out the insult eye protection goggles.

[BLBcomics-migration]

It is wraparound, 40 pages long, about mad magazine size, one long sequential story combining words and pictures, just no word balloons

 

I've always been amazed at how cavalierly you dismiss one of the key components that separate comics from captioned cartoons and picture stories. The merging of dialogue into the artwork is what separates a comic from an illustration with captioned text.

 

 

Back from Chicago Wizard comicon, jumping into this i will respond to parts of this post as i have time for, but will not be able to address all of it here right now, for which i apologize as i have to get my two tons of comics stuff fresh from Chicago unpacked properly and sorted to get my mail order business back to operational status:

 

there are MANY wordless comic strips: just one example is Henry - i still like that wordless GI JOE from Marvel a while back for you newbies on the block

 

So, have you read Oldbuck yet in the original 1842 Wilson & Co new Yawk City format?

 

i have tracked down the origin of teh Yellow Kid "first comic strip" myth...

 

Prior historians understood the importance of the Yellow Kid/word balloon marriage that turned cartoon strips into comic strips. James Swinnerton, quoted in Narrative Illustration, identifies Outcault as the man responsible for creating the modern trend of using word balloons.

 

 

RB: Oh, i have both of the Charlie Gaines articles fom PRINT 1942 and 1943 with the first one being reprinted as Narrative Illustration to accompany a huge comic art exhibit which opened in NYC area just before Pearl Harbor 1941

 

- the Swinnerton quote you reference is from a much longer interview in Editor and Publisher circa 1933, which i also have. I have 100s of comics history items dating to the earliest one i have uncovered ttiled Caricatures And Other Comic Art by Parton (1877) a green hard cover - paron being a relative of Thomas Nast

 

Keep in mind that Yellow Kid ala Hogan's Alley and all its other incarnations in the 1890s was, except for a very very few instances, a single panel cartoon many times accompanying a text story by a fellow named Townsend

 

I do not consider Yellow kid a comic strip

 

- the Wilson & Co 1842 NYC Obadiah Oldbuck is light years ahead in being not only a sequential comic strip, but, also, format wise, discounting the fact that color printing had not yet been invented, neither had staples been invented yet, as much a comic magazine (in the format of the Comic Magazines Assoc of America, aka The Comics Code) as Famous Funnies and/or Action Comics #1, or ay other in that format vein

 

Yes, there is a modern trend towards word balloons which cranks back up in the late 1890s - a very common practice in cartoons prior to the Civil War in most all the cartoons of the day in America dating to as easrly as the early 1700s,

 

i have read hundreds upon hundreds of examples in the 1700s and early to mid 1800s which are in the same format as 99% of all the Yellow Kid "comic strips" ala single panel cartoons

 

 

This is the reason the Yellow Kid has been identified by other scholars as the starting point

 

RB: Um, hate to rain on your little arade here, but you are wrong - so are a lot of the earlier comics scholars who wrote books, but did not bother to do proper research

 

 

and why it is given credit as the first comic strip (and not just another captioned "cartoon" strip). When you strip away the relevance of word balloons you create the impression of a “myth” whereas the reality is more factual than mythical.

 

RB: Opper's Happy Hooligan debuting March 1900 is what many scholars call the first true "modern" sequential comic strip with all its components in place hitting the ground

 

 

And yes, I'm sure there were other comic strips using word balloons prior to Outcault somewhere in the history of the United States (although I cannot name one), but it is his strip that is credited, not only by the public at the time, but also by his contemporaries, as being the start of the comic strip. And it is the reprinting of that strip in book form that gives us our first “comic book” in 1897.

 

RB: Yes, there are quite a few sequential comic strips prior to YK's debut which utilized word balloons - but extenzive use of word balloons is not what makes a comic strip be - it is merely one component which can be there or not

 

AB Frost's Stuff and Nonsense 1884 is a comic book, hard cover to boot, as just one example

 

Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats is a smallish digest-size "Big Little Book" format-type - i differ from Showcase as its heavy duty historical importance

 

The Yellow Kid was not the first of ANY THING, other than it taught Pulitzer, Hearst and Gordon Bennett (who debuted Outcault's Pore Lil Mose in 1901, and RFO's Buster Brown in may 1902 as well as McCay's Little Nemo among many other important newspaper comic strips back in the day), the three main NYC newspaper publisher rivals that people will pay money just to get the color comic strips - that is just about ALL that is truly important about Yellow Kid

 

And that, my friend, is VERY important cuz without those three publishers, there would not be a modern 20th Century comic strip business as we know it today

 

 

 

I do give you credit for researching picture story books, but there is clearly an agenda afoot to call these items "comic books" when the likes of MC Gaines himself only gave Daumier, Doré, Töpffer and Busch credit for their "picture-tales" and "picture books" in Narrative Illustration (1942).

 

RB: MC Gaines was a [embarrassing lack of self control]

 

 

Clearly the works of these men were known to him but were not considered comic books. Picture Stories are certainly related to comics from an illustration and sequential art standpoint and they do pre-date comics, which is why Gaines mentions them along with cave etchings and other forms of narrative art that influenced the origins of comic books, but they are not comic books themselves.

 

RB: MC Gaines had an agenda to make himself the "inventor" of the modern format comic book we all love - Wildenberg is the true inventor

 

All what happened when Funnies ON Parade got invented was they utilized the "modern" Dime Novel format - slick cover, pulp interior, two staples, Wha-La -

 

OK, all i have time for, will come back to this comics thread shortly - gotta get back to work "hacking and hewing" at my comics business for a while - thus endeth the lesson for right now

 

Sincerely

 

Robert Beerbohm

[showcase4]

 

Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats is a smallish digest-size "Big Little Book" format-type - i differ from Showcase as its heavy duty historical importance

 

The Yellow Kid was not the first of ANY THING, other than it taught Pulitzer, Hearst and Gordon Bennett (who debuted Outcault's Pore Lil Mose in 1901, and RFO's Buster Brown in may 1902 as well as McCay's Little Nemo among many other important newspaper comic strips back in the day), the three main NYC newspaper publisher rivals that people will pay money just to get the color comic strips - that is just about ALL that is truly important about Yellow Kid

)

 

Bob, I am very happy to have you contribute on this post, but I can't accept you diminshing the greatness and dominance of The Yellow Kid, or especially The Yellow Kid in McFaddens's Flats . The Yellow Kid is the 1st US comic strip superstar, and The Yellow Kid in McFaden's Flats is one of the greatest comic books ever printed, as it is:

 

1. The 1st Platinum Age comic book

2. The ONLY comic book featuring The Yellow Kid ever printed.

3.The 1st comic book to use the printed words "comic books"- rear cover

4. The 1st comic book featuring a key character

 

welcome back form Chicago, and thanks again for your input on this very important post.

[BLBcomics-migration]

What i find boring in comics is concentrating on how few spine bends some of your CGC slabbed "treasures" contain - 9.8. 9.6. 9.4, 9.2, etc

 

Its too bad that the fine lines of grading bore Beerbohm. Based on passion and value, it doesn't seem to bore the majority in the hobby. That majority drives prices not fancy articles and ad hoc sections in Overstreet.

 

I wanted to address this misconception before Chicago, but ran out of time, so will try to do so now: I like minty books a smuch as the next person. Heck, we all would prefer mint over anything else,

 

Thing is, that is not all what drives my interest in comics. I actually want to look at the Frazetta stories in say issues of Personal Love, or a Real Life 52 or a Happy #33 or Barnyward 20 22 and numerous other comics but find that a tad difficult when all slabbed up.

 

Same goes for enjoying great Wally Wood comics or a thousand+ other craftsmen we all like -

 

I go for as nice a shape as i canacquire, but if push comes to shove, VG/F works just as well

 

What i get bored with is getting hung up on simple spine stress mark craziness over the contents of the art form some call comic books.

 

The history articles i have done is merely hsaring some knowledge and passing on same to future generations - stuff i gealne dform knowing a lot of old timer collectors 20-30-40 years ago when they were still alive - that generation is now passing on

 

I am now 54 years old - and realize i have lived more of my life than i have in the future, so it is time to pass on the jig saw puzzle mozaic i have put together over the course of 40 years of study - especially the knowledge i have picked up concerning a burgeoning comics business in the 1800s which got forgotten about.

 

wish i still had all those Tom Reilly books i co-discovered back in 1973

 

Robert Beerbohm

[BLBcomics-migration]

HI Steve

 

Oh, Yellow Kid is truly important - and gifflefink is only partially correct

 

the strip itself is not the FIRST of anything a sfar as strips go other than pointing out to the major newspaper publishers that people will pay money to get the color cartoons, single panels that they may be - and i will allow YKL being the first major super star of the comics, but definitely not the first comic strip, not even in the newspapers or as a continuing character

 

I am going to spend some time now to read thru this longish thread and see where it all went off to and then come back with more thoughts and observations

 

At some point i need to get mystuff ready for Mark Nathan's upcoming Baltimore show

 

best

 

Robert Beerbohm

[BLBcomics-migration]

I have no agenda on where prices go...

 

 

I sho'nuff do not have an agenda on ANY comics rising in value - you simply do nto know me and your ignorance is showing. The mor eprices rise, the harder it becomes to collect and/or replace material - having been at this comics game for nigh 40 years now

 

Robert Beerbohm

[BLBcomics-migration]

thats just one of the more glaring contradictions to OO. It cant be the first "comic book" since it was published elsewhere before the American edition. It might be the first "comic book" published in America, but, "first" means "originality", and the celebration of OO as the first American comic book connotes that it "began" the art form now known as comic books.

 

But if all OO was was just the first one printed here...well, its lack of specialness is obvious. Is the very first BOOK published in America similarly lauded by collectors if it was originally published and written in France, or England (excepting the Bible of course) ?

 

In my mind and understanding, comic books are generally thought to be an American invention, like jazz. Perhaps neither is still considered to be true. But going back and determining which was the FIRST American comic has great appeal. However, as you say, it CANNOT be something created and published outside of America first! Because it A) cant be American and B) cant be 'first' except in a truly blindered self-deluding fashion that makes specific rules and then claims to meet them.

 

Which is exactly what we state in the Victorian section of OPG:

 

The 1842 Wilson & Co Obadiah Oldbuck is the first comic book printed in America - and we got into heavy detail pointing out it is a reprint of the Tilt & Bogue 1841 Brit first ZEnglish translation of the 1833 French version out of Paris which in itself is a re-working of Töpffer's 1828 first version created in Geneva Switzerland of which maybe upwards of 60 copies were originally printed

 

Question fro gifflefink: Do You consider Krazy Kat a comic strip?

 

Robert Beerbohm

[gifflefunk]

there are MANY wordless comic strips: just one example is Henry - i still like that wordless GI JOE from Marvel a while back for you newbies on the block

 

Henry doesn't speak, other members of that strip do and when they do the dialogue is embedded with the artwork, just like a comic strip should have. If the GI JOE issue has no dialogue or narration embedded into the artwork then I'm sure it makes for a nice series of cartoon drawings packaged up into a comic book format.

 

So, have you read Oldbuck yet in the original 1842 Wilson & Co new Yawk City format?

 

Yes, an entertaining picture-tale, not a comic book by any stretch.

 

RB: Oh, i have both of the Charlie Gaines articles fom PRINT 1942 and 1943 with the first one being reprinted as Narrative Illustration to accompany a huge comic art exhibit which opened in NYC area just before Pearl Harbor 1941

 

Bully for you.

 

- the Swinnerton quote you reference is from a much longer interview in Editor and Publisher circa 1933, which i also have. I have 100s of comics history items dating to the earliest one i have uncovered ttiled Caricatures And Other Comic Art by Parton (1877) a green hard cover - paron being a relative of Thomas Nast

 

I'm aware of these also.

 

Keep in mind that Yellow Kid ala Hogan's Alley and all its other incarnations in the 1890s was, except for a very very few instances, a single panel cartoon many times accompanying a text story by a fellow named Townsend

 

Fully aware of this fact also... I'm also aware that Outcault was experimenting with various layouts and formats from Cartoon panels (captions only) to Comic panels (embedded dialogue) to the full blown Comic Strip.

 

I do not consider Yellow kid a comic strip

 

Wow. I'm rather stunned by this... Obadiah is a "comic book" but these do not qualify as Comic Strips??

 

THE YELLOW KID WRESTLES WITH THE TOBACCO HABIT

THE YELLOW KID TAKES A HAND AT GOLF

THE YELLOW KID GOES HUNTING BECOMES A DEAD GAME SPORT

MAD DOG

THE YELLOW KID'S NEW PHONOGRAPH CLOCK

 

Sorry Bob, but if you truly believe this you need to sit down and consider just how far from the pack you've actually strayed.

 

i have read hundreds upon hundreds of examples in the 1700s and early to mid 1800s which are in the same format as 99% of all the Yellow Kid "comic strips" ala single panel cartoons.

 

Ditto. And I agree with that assement, but what makes the Yellow Kid special is the fact that the above linked comic strips by Outcault are what triggered an explosion of comic strip art. Swinnerton had a cartoon strip before Outcault (captions beneath the art) but he didn't start creating comic strips until after Outcault and either did Opper. Which is why the man, a contemporary of Outcault should be listened to when it comes to such matters... the man lived through that revolution. Opper, Dirks, Schultze, Fisher and Swinnerton all give credit, or a least a nod in his direction, to Outcault with the modern adoption of word balloons. This is the reason the Yellow Kid has been identified by other scholars as the starting point and not a picture-tale book.

 

RB: Um, hate to rain on your little arade here, but you are wrong - so are a lot of the earlier comics scholars who wrote books, but did not bother to do proper research

 

You call it a lack of proper research, I call it accurate research.

 

RB: Opper's Happy Hooligan debuting March 1900 is what many scholars call the first true "modern" sequential comic strip with all its components in place hitting the ground

 

I agree with it being the first strip to start out as a comic strip without having evolved from a cartoon strip.

 

RB: Yes, there are quite a few sequential comic strips prior to YK's debut which utilized word balloons - but extenzive use of word balloons is not what makes a comic strip be - it is merely one component which can be there or not.

 

Embedding dialogue into the artwork is the key defining criteria, without it you simply have cartoons and picture-tales.

 

AB Frost's Stuff and Nonsense 1884 is a comic book, hard cover to boot, as just one example

 

Admittedly I have not seen this particular tome, but based on you calling Obadiah a comic book and stating that the Yellow Kid is not a comic strip I seriously question the accuracy of the statement and reserve judgment until I've seen the book myself.

 

Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats is a smallish digest-size "Big Little Book" format-type - i differ from Showcase as its heavy duty historical importance

 

The Yellow Kid was not the first of ANY THING, other than it taught Pulitzer, Hearst and Gordon Bennett (who debuted Outcault's Pore Lil Mose in 1901, and RFO's Buster Brown in may 1902 as well as McCay's Little Nemo among many other important newspaper comic strips back in the day), the three main NYC newspaper publisher rivals that people will pay money just to get the color comic strips - that is just about ALL that is truly important about Yellow Kid

 

Again, if you disregard the word balloon revolution that spawned the growth of the comic strip in America you can discredit the achievement and importance of the book... but I don't buy it and I doubt most collectors and scholars will either (this is one of the points that I believe makes you a hack of a writer).

 

And that, my friend, is VERY important cuz without those three publishers, there would not be a modern 20th Century comic strip business as we know it today

 

I agree that the Yellow Kid spawned the industry too. No disagreement from me on this point.

 

RB: MC Gaines was a [embarrassing lack of self control]

 

RB: MC Gaines had an agenda to make himself the "inventor" of the modern format comic book we all love - Wildenberg is the true inventor

 

Maybe so on both counts, but he does correctly identify those earlier works as picture tales and he was smart enough to find the Swinnerton quote that gives credit to Outcault... something you cannot alter no matter how hard you try... contemporaries of Outcault give the man credit for starting the modern comic strip.

 

OK, all i have time for, will come back to this comics thread shortly - gotta get back to work "hacking and hewing" at my comics business for a while - thus endeth the lesson for right now

 

Hack away my good man, hack away. Feel free to "educate" me some more on this topic. I love hearing why you think others "got it wrong."

[ShoNuff-migration]

I...do not have an agenda on ANY comics rising in value...