Obadiah Oldbuck vs. Superman

[lou_fine]

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

 

Hi Robert;

 

Hope you had a nice time down in Chicago!

 

Based upon your statment and what you have written in the OS guides over the years, it seems that you place Harry Wildenberg far higher up the totem pole in being the driving force behind the development of the comic book at Eastern Colour, as opposed to MC Gaines. Any idea why old Max always seems to be given the credit for the "creation" of the modern comic book, or was he just better at hyping himself?

 

Would you know if Wildenberg was a collector of comics himself or just provided with complimentary copies from the company? I've always wondered if the Wildneberg copies of FF #1 to #5 which I have in my collection was something he personally collected, or just some company file copies with his name on the exterior leather binder?

[BLBcomics-migration]

Quote:

 

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??

 

a word got left out

 

should read "sequential" in there on 99% of all Yellow Kids

 

as in a sequential comic strip

 

just a few, very few, towards the end of YK's all too brief existence as a regular feature were of a sequential comic strip nature

 

sequential comic strips do not have to have word balloons to be same

 

I consider hal Foster's tarzan Sunday strip as well a shis presonal creation Prince Valiant, to be comic strips

 

your def sez they be not so, methinks

 

Robert Beerbohm

[BLBcomics-migration]

Gifflefink: 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 come 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.

 

BLBCOMICS: well, i have read sequential comic strips by Fred Opper in Wild Oats magazine dating as far back as 1875 - in the same mold as Hal Foster's Prince Valiant - words below the art in the panels - a quarter century before he created Happy Hooligan

 

And i consider Bellew's sequential comic strips dating as far back as the early 1850s to be comic strips - and what i would give if some publisher would issue a compilation of that guy's work - the fellow we dubbed the Father of the American Comic Strip as he was truly prolific - i show a couple examples in the Vict article

 

And i own an article by Outcault dated 1923 which pays deep homage to Opper - have you read this one yet? be glad to dig it out and scan it for you

 

Robert Beerbohm

[BLBcomics-migration]

Quote:

 

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 the 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.

 

Quote:

 

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."

 

RB: So far all you have quoted from is Gaine's narrative Illustration, one piece, from which Gaines pulled a smallish quote form an earlier Swinnerton interview from 1933.

 

Gaines had a definite agenda to be self-serving. Wildenburg and Gaines ended up hating each other. W got out of the comics biz early on, Charlie G stayed at it till the day he was murdered in that boating accident.

 

Gaines tried horning in like crazy on the Superman franchise - wanting a peice of that "action" from Donenfeld, which is why All American comics was created

 

Can't blame a guy for trying

 

If Siegel and Shuster had not sued Donenfeld back in the mid 1940s, they would have gotten royalties like Bob kane did onBatman till the day they died, not having to go thru that long winter of little money

 

But back on some sort of topic here, word balloons is not what i consider the main component of what makes a sequential comic strip

 

If that is considered "revisionist" by you and/or others, well, maybe we can agree to disagree

 

No one claims that Obadiah Oldbuck is the first sequential comic book - there are actually some books from the late 1700s in Europe that might qualify for that honor

 

what i do categorally state is the 1842 Wilson & Co Obadiah Oldbuck Brother Jonathan Extra #9 is the first comic book printed in America - important ultimately most likely only to Americans

 

Now, over in France, the people at the Angouleme Comics Museum consider Töpffer's woprks the first comic strip books created.

 

Aspects of that has to do with the technology used to create and print them

 

They hosted a Topffer exhibition at the Angouleme Festival back when our postal service issued those postage stamps concerning "first" comic strips in 1995

 

I used to be just like you. I used to believe the Yellow Kid was the first comic strip and Funnies ON Parade was the first comci book. . Had to be so, Charlie gaines said so

 

But i have seen the light and cannot go back -

 

Robert Beerbohm

[gifflefunk]

a word got left out

should read "sequential" in there on 99% of all Yellow Kids

as in a sequential comic strip

 

Well I'm glad you cleared that up... I was starting to suspect senility.

 

I consider hal Foster's tarzan Sunday strip as well a shis presonal creation Prince Valiant, to be comic strips

 

your def sez they be not so, methinks

 

Correct. I consider them to be the same as Gaines' Picto-Fiction material, very well done illustrated narratives (i.e. no embeded dialogue).

 

Sometimes that material is reprinted in a modern comic book "format" and you've used that fact in the past to convince others that if those are comic books then so is Oldbuck. I do not hold the position that all material packaged in a modern comic book format is a comic book. Clearly not the Marvel Universe Handbook issues, or the Marvel Fanfare issues, or cartoon issues like Marvel's Groovy from 1968. None of these are comic books even though they are packaged the same as a modern comic book and either are reprints of Prince Valiant that exist in a comic book format (still beautiful to look at and entertaining to read).

[BLBcomics-migration]

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

 

Hi Robert;

 

Hope you had a nice time down in Chicago!

 

Based upon your statment and what you have written in the OS guides over the years, it seems that you place Harry Wildenberg far higher up the totem pole in being the driving force behind the development of the comic book at Eastern Colour, as opposed to MC Gaines. Any idea why old Max always seems to be given the credit for the "creation" of the modern comic book, or was he just better at hyping himself?

 

Would you know if Wildenberg was a collector of comics himself or just provided with complimentary copies from the company? I've always wondered if the Wildneberg copies of FF #1 to #5 which I have in my collection was something he personally collected, or just some company file copies with his name on the exterior leather binder?

 

Hi Lou Fine,

 

Yes i do - based on years of research isfting thru 1000s of documents and publications as well as talking with old timers 30 some years ago when some of them were still alive

 

Ernie McGee (New Jersey) taught me a lot, a fellow who was 84 when i first met him in 1971 and i was just 19 - his run was used to print the 1995 yellow Kid book Kitchen Sink put out

 

Ernie gave me triplicates of the first, 2nd and 4th yellow Kid Sunday pages that first night - i was amazed and astounded, but he thought some one such as myself would be a good caretaker of his carefully archived treasures

 

Ernie had begun collecting in 1914

 

ernie documented the first newspaper comic strips were done by Mark Fenderson in Jan 1894, followed by Fenderson and Walt McDougall on Feb 4 1894 in the NY World - a year before Yellow Kid got into the NY World feb 1895 following several one panel B&W jobs in Truth magazine

 

He railed on that Steve Becker misquoted Ernie and got it all wrong in Becker's 1959 COMIC ART IN AMERICA comics history book - something Ernie was upset about till the day he died

 

Ernie supplied all the stuff for Becker's first five chapters

 

We recently found out that Becker did not actually write his book. He got deathly ill and his wife wrote it so they could get paid from the publisher so they could have food money

 

I do not believe everything i read in earlier comics history books

 

I have spent a decade going out to many many repositories to examine the original artifacts

 

So, yes, i have been re-writing comics history to dispell the myths

 

 

 

best

 

Robert Beerbohm

[BLBcomics-migration]

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

 

Hi Robert;

 

Hope you had a nice time down in Chicago!

 

Based upon your statment and what you have written in the OS guides over the years, it seems that you place Harry Wildenberg far higher up the totem pole in being the driving force behind the development of the comic book at Eastern Colour, as opposed to MC Gaines. Any idea why old Max always seems to be given the credit for the "creation" of the modern comic book, or was he just better at hyping himself?

 

Would you know if Wildenberg was a collector of comics himself or just provided with complimentary copies from the company? I've always wondered if the Wildneberg copies of FF #1 to #5 which I have in my collection was something he personally collected, or just some company file copies with his name on the exterior leather binder?

 

back to the original queries as it is easy to get sidetracked with this thread

 

I do not know if Wildenberg was a collector of comics. How do you know your Fantastic Four comics were his personal copies? Can you give me mor ehistory of provenence as i am truly interested in learning something new every day i live the comics scene

 

Max gets mor ethan his share of the credt because he went out there and wrote it, and no one at the time disputed much of it - he was good buddies with Coulton Waugh, who created "yellow ink" myth re the Yellow Kid, who was blue in the first YK color strips

 

And the yellow in the 1890s comics sections i have studied at Bill blackbeards as well a sown myself do not have any problem with yellow

 

that is a myth created much later

 

best

 

Robert Beerbohm

[gifflefunk]

And i own an article by Outcault dated 1923 which pays deep homage to Opper - have you read this one yet? be glad to dig it out and scan it for you

 

I would love to see it. From the material I've gathered I have found little by way of Outcault giving interviews. I have found other material in various art journals, etc., during my research that I will be using in my own article. I'll be sure to make extra copies of the material for you during my next trip to MSU.

 

But back on some sort of topic here, word balloons is not what i consider the main component of what makes a sequential comic strip

 

If that is considered "revisionist" by you and/or others, well, maybe we can agree to disagree

 

Clearly it is not something you consider to be important in the least, contrary to the body of evidence that gives that period of time context and makes prior research "truth" and not "myth". As I've stated before, if you can strip away the importance of word balloons (i.e. embedded dialogue) you can push forth another theory.

 

No one claims that Obadiah Oldbuck is the first sequential comic book - there are actually some books from the late 1700s in Europe that might qualify for that honor

 

I just seriously question calling it a comic book to begin with.

 

I used to be just like you. I used to believe the Yellow Kid was the first comic strip and Funnies ON Parade was the first comci book. . Had to be so, Charlie gaines said so

 

I don't buy into Funnies On Parade either... I'm sold on the Comic Monthly as the first comic book periodical series. I do however give credit where credit is due on the Yellow Kid, not based on Gaines but based on statements by others involved in the medium at the time that give credit to Outcault.

 

But i have seen the light and cannot go back -

 

Personally I think you've become blinded by the light and have clearly lost sight of the Peanut Butter Cup.

[lou_fine]

Would you know if Wildenberg was a collector of comics himself or just provided with complimentary copies from the company? I've always wondered if the Wildneberg copies of FF #1 to #5 which I have in my collection was something he personally collected, or just some company file copies with his name on the exterior leather binder?

 

back to the original queries as it is easy to get sidetracked with this thread

 

I do not know if Wildenberg was a collector of comics. How do you know your Fantastic Four comics were his personal copies? Can you give me mor ehistory of provenence as i am truly interested in learning something new every day i live the comics scene

 

Hi Robert;

 

Sorry to confuse the issue here!

 

Didn't mean Fantastic Four #1 to #5 with my comment here. Not even sure if Wildenberg would still have been alive when the Marvel FF's came out. I was referring to Famous Funnies #1 to #5 which he was so instrumental in developing.

 

Anyways, I purchased the books in an auction from a long-time dealer out of Berkely at the time. For the life of me, I just can't remember the name right now. Like all bound volumes, however, the books were trimmed to fit the the hardcover binder which had his name embossed on the exterior cover.

 

Based upon your experience, is there any reason to trimmed books to fit some stupid binder? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to find a binder that fitted the comic books instead?

[Aman619]

if I may, I believe the impetus ti bind and trim comics into "real" bookshelf worthy books was just that - - to "elevate" the loose shoddy pamphlets into a lasting timeless form, a "real book" . Trimming the edges made them cleaner so they look like books.

[showcase4]

 

 

But i have seen the light and cannot go back -

 

Personally I think you've become blinded by the light and have clearly lost sight of the Peanut Butter Cup.

 

[Earl Davis]

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

 

 

Yes those are comic strips alright, but from what I understand most? Yellow Kid pages looked liks this...

 

 

which just looks like a page of illustrated text.

 

So it depends if McFadden's Flats contains the type of comic strip you link or the single panel cartoons in whether the compilation was a Comic Book or not.

 

The difference between the image I posted is this is a single illustration to accompany text whereas the Oldbuck story is sequential art.

 

Earl.

 

[Earl Davis]

 

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

 

This is one I do have. For me it much less resembles a modern comic stip than say the Oldbuck story.

 

Going back to the McCloud definition of comics (and still not saying I agree with that) , Stuff and Nonsense seems be lacking in the 'juxtaposition' part of McCloud’s definition.

 

Earl.

[BLBcomics-migration]

 

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

 

This is one I do have. For me it much less resembles a modern comic stip than say the Oldbuck story. Going back to the McCloud definition of comics (and still not saying I agree with that) , Stuff and Nonsense seems be lacking in the 'juxtaposition' part of McCloud’s definition.

Earl.

 

Hi Earl

 

Thanks for posting a typical Yellow Kid

 

I pulled merely an example as Frost did his sequentials for that book one panel per page, clearly telling a sequential comic strip story -

 

How many have seen a lot of work by Frank Bellew Sr yet?

 

I show just two examples due to a critical lack of room in Overstreet #36 2006:

 

1) page 354 Merryman's Comic Monthly v3#5 May 1865, 4 panels from a longer story of a hot air balloon leaving America, going into the stratosphere, landing in Afirca, adventures there, then coming back to America

 

2) Page 357 a one pager from Wild Oats #190 Aug 16 1876, done Hal Foster Prince valiant style, words below the panels, not inside the panels which seems to be a hang up for some people here

 

the Livingston Hopkins example I show from from Wild OAts 26 Mar 14 1872 is as comic strip as it gets, methinks - look on page 356

 

Thomas Nast did sequential comic stirps prior to the Civil War - at least four that i have seen

 

Howard Pyle did a few sequential comic strips circa 1880s

 

Opper was doing sequential comic strips sans word balloons as early as 1875 in Wild Oats - strips i have read at Library of Congress and New York Historical Society - i would have more examples to show but it costs $45 a page to get camera shots at both places and they do not allowi scans to be made - you can use digital cameras, but no tripod - dumb, to be sure

 

Page 353: I really like the Abe Lincoln strip i show from Harper's Weekly Mar 9 1861 - also using word balloons in most of the panels, inside the panel borders even

 

For some one to even hint that Outcault invented anything along these lines is simply silly

 

We discussed all this word balloon origins stuff on my Plat List at yahoogroups.com some years back - we have over 16,000 research posts there archived from over 400 list members in over 30 countries - we have pushed back the concept of word ballons being used to 450 AD -

 

Coulton Waugh in his 1947 THE COMICS history book merely listed 1910 Mutt & Jeff oblong as the earliest comic book - and just a giveaway to boot - when i have CARTOONS magazines from back then (Cartoons begins Jan 1912 and i have 80% of them now) with ads selling the Mutt & Jeff series thru the mail and mention made of available at news stands at most rail road stations, the way most Americans traveled back in the day

 

The misinformation he perped in his book, well intentioned as it may be, is huge.

 

The last decade, becuase of the internet and eBay, has enabled research to leap forward tremendously - i have been doing eBay since 1997, the early days for it, and picked up all kind sof stuff back then - the competition is fierce these days

 

I also studied articles by Gersham Legman re pre Yellow Kid comic strip stuff - and i do not like Peanut Butter Cups -

 

Bob Beerbohm

[BLBcomics-migration]

Would you know if Wildenberg was a collector of comics himself or just provided with complimentary copies from the company? I've always wondered if the Wildneberg copies of FF #1 to #5 which I have in my collection was something he personally collected, or just some company file copies with his name on the exterior leather binder?

 

back to the original queries as it is easy to get sidetracked with this thread

 

I do not know if Wildenberg was a collector of comics. How do you know your Fantastic Four comics were his personal copies? Can you give me mor ehistory of provenence as i am truly interested in learning something new every day i live the comics scene

 

Hi Robert;

 

Sorry to confuse the issue here!

 

Didn't mean Fantastic Four #1 to #5 with my comment here. Not even sure if Wildenberg would still have been alive when the Marvel FF's came out. I was referring to Famous Funnies #1 to #5 which he was so instrumental in developing.

 

Anyways, I purchased the books in an auction from a long-time dealer out of Berkely at the time. For the life of me, I just can't remember the name right now. Like all bound volumes, however, the books were trimmed to fit the the hardcover binder which had his name embossed on the exterior cover.

 

Based upon your experience, is there any reason to trimmed books to fit some stupid binder? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to find a binder that fitted the comic books instead?

 

A big "duh" to me - was tired and still coming down from the fiasco of old comic book sales at Chicago Wizard, long drive, unloading the van and trailer, etc

 

Of course, Famous Funnies - you have a real coup there, i think, Wildenberg's personal set of the first issues - trimmed or not, is something to be proud of

 

There is an interview with Wildenberg in a 1949 Commenweal magazine where he gives his version of events surrounding the origins of Famous Funnies, Funnies On Parade, etc plus there is a two page article in a late 1960s RBCC from some one who was there at the time writing baout origins of FF FoP etc - Eatsern Color and Dell were partners in this project, Dell sells out with #7 and comes back soon thereafter with his own stuff

 

New research i mention in the last two Overstreets in the Origin of the Modern Comic Book article proves that Eastern Color and Dell were partners also in THE FUNNIES 1929-30 project, pushing back these sort of projects to before Charlie Gaines was working at Eastern Color

 

READ my stuff in Overstreet and some of these questions get answered in more detail there

 

hope this helps in understsanding my position

 

best

 

Robert Beerbohm, and i will haven't bveen able to read all of this long thread yet

[BLBcomics-migration]

Wildenberg follow up

 

He was the head sales manager at Eastern Color

 

gaines and another future major comics publisher Lev Gleason both orked under him as sales persons to keep the printing presses moving. W had glowing words for Gleason in that 1949 interview. One quickly picked up on the concept that W did not like Gaines in the slightest. Wildenberg was also sorry he had invented the modern comics format back in 1933, so he sez in that interview. This being in 1949, just a coup0le years after Waugh's THE COMICS with its overly gratuitous homage to MC Gaines as "inventor" of the comics magazine, from whence that myth was begotten

 

a lot of myth comes out of Waugh's THE COMICS history books, i have learned after decades of comics scholar study. He meant well, but got sooooo much wrong it ain't even funny

 

and for the record, i am back researvhing in the 20th century once again after a decade of me learning about the 1800s comics business and sharing that research

 

bob beerbohm

[showcase4]

Hi Bob,

I tihnk it would be a big help if you could address one of the main issues that has surfaced from this post.

 

Approx.90% of respondants did not consider Obadiah Oldbuck a "comic book". What are the characteristics as far as you're concerned that do qualify Oldbuck as a comic book, and what do you think is the cause of the inconsistancy in the proper classification of this book and others like it?

[gifflefunk]

Will Eisner defined a comic as "the printed arrangement of art and balloons in sequence, particularly in comic books."

 

This is the same definition most of us still operate under and is what makes the Yellow Kid important in the history of comics. Despite Bob's opinion on the matter, the Kid did trigger the modern usage of word balloons and the prior research of other historians and scholars trace the revolution back to Outcault.

 

I believe Bob operates under a different definition of comics where sequential art is all that matters. This expands comics to include nearly everything under the Sun... things that had previously been classified as something else (like picture-stories and cartoon strips).

 

Bob's tactic thus far has been to claim that other's have gotten it "wrong" even though he is fully aware of the word balloon criteria and usually prefaces his articles with statements to the effect of "if you can just get over word balloons." Sadly I think Bob has either forgotten or never fully understood the importance of word balloons... perhaps this is why he feels that others have gotten it wrong. Maybe Bob never had a clue that picture-stories existed prior to the Yellow Kid during his early days as a collector and dealer, so that when he first "discovered" that older forms of story telling using sequential art existed his mind snapped and he has been on this crusade ever since.

 

Personally, I think Bob was frightened by someone popping a balloon when he was a child and he harbors some latent hatred towards balloons in any form. I also suspect Bob hates Eisner as much as Gaines.

[BLBcomics-migration]

what i just read from gifflefink, real name unknown, choosing to hide behind pseudo-name, is preposterous.

 

Will Eisner was a very good friend of mine, having first met him one on one at a Oklahoma City convention called Multicon back in June 1972, his 2nd comicon ever, whereat we discussed what was then needed to "save" the comics industry.

 

Will was highly instrumental in my joining forces with John Barrett and Bud Plant to place a comic book store on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley by August 1972 right on top of the UC-Berkeley campus, soon thereafter within a year evolving into the first comic book chain store operation which i named as Comics & Comix.

 

I do not hate Gaines - that also is plain stupid to suggest.

 

He merely gets way more credit than he deserves in "inventing" the comic book/magazine.

 

Was he a powerful force in the comics industry for some time - you betcha

 

Did he invent the comic book/magazine in 1933 single-handedly as some history books purport?

 

defnitely not

 

I run into similar scenarios that Phil Seuling "invented' the direct sales market.

 

He did not. It comes from the birth of the underground comics movement mainly HQ'd in the San Francisco bay Area beginning with Print Mint and ZAP COMICS. Phil even says as much in his interview in Will Eisner Quarterly #3 1984. For further data on this concept, i refer you to my articles in Comic Book Artist #6 and #7, and i am not trying to change the subject.

 

there is a huge body of us self-described comics "scholars" who some time ago realized that word balloons may or not be included in what constitutes sequential comics story telling.

 

This debate has raged off and on for some seven years on the PlatinumAgeComics group i activated in Dec 1999. For the most part, the consensus is that word balloons are nopt the be-all end-all of sequential comics story telling.

 

Was yellow Kid important?

 

you betcha

 

Was he the first of anything in the evolution of comics?

 

definitely not

 

and definitely not the big bang of the use of word ballons as suggested by die-hards who have obviosuly not done enough research into the aspect of comics evolution origins.

 

Nor did Outcault invent the concept of sequential comics story telling.

 

Go to Library of Congress and/or the New York Historical Society and check out their volumes of Wild Oats just as one example - and then READ the hundreds upon hundreds of sequential comics contained therein.

 

I suggest gifflefink go to my Plat list archives and read thru the 16,000 archived posts there where 100s of comic scholars and interested parties have disected this very subject like an MRI tocome to the conclusions i set forth with Richard Olson and later with Doug Wheeler and Richard Samuel West on this contentious subject.

 

The origins simply do not begin with Yellow Kid and Richard Outcault.

 

Newspapers taking note and expanding the audience in a huge circulation war do begin with the Yellow Kid as Pulitzer, Hearst and Bennet battled for the soul of New York City. They forced most all other news papers to have to contain a color Sunday supplement with sequential comics in order to survive.

 

but that is not an origin story.

 

To present an analogy most will understand her, most of you having not read early American comics predating Famous Funnies, I sure, is like saying that Action Comics #1, because it contains the super star Superman, has more important origin aspects than Famous Funnies beginning in 1934 or The Funnies beginning in late 1928 or Comic Monthly beginning in late 1921.

[comicdonna]

 

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

 

This is one I do have. For me it much less resembles a modern comic stip than say the Oldbuck story. Going back to the McCloud definition of comics (and still not saying I agree with that) , Stuff and Nonsense seems be lacking in the 'juxtaposition' part of McCloud’s definition.

Earl.

 

Hi Earl

 

Thanks for posting a typical Yellow Kid

 

I pulled merely an example as Frost did his sequentials for that book one panel per page, clearly telling a sequential comic strip story -

 

How many have seen a lot of work by Frank Bellew Sr yet?

 

I show just two examples due to a critical lack of room in Overstreet #36 2006:

 

1) page 354 Merryman's Comic Monthly v3#5 May 1865, 4 panels from a longer story of a hot air balloon leaving America, going into the stratosphere, landing in Afirca, adventures there, then coming back to America

 

2) Page 357 a one pager from Wild Oats #190 Aug 16 1876, done Hal Foster Prince valiant style, words below the panels, not inside the panels which seems to be a hang up for some people here

 

the Livingston Hopkins example I show from from Wild OAts 26 Mar 14 1872 is as comic strip as it gets, methinks - look on page 356

 

Thomas Nast did sequential comic stirps prior to the Civil War - at least four that i have seen

 

Howard Pyle did a few sequential comic strips circa 1880s

 

Opper was doing sequential comic strips sans word balloons as early as 1875 in Wild Oats - strips i have read at Library of Congress and New York Historical Society - i would have more examples to show but it costs $45 a page to get camera shots at both places and they do not allowi scans to be made - you can use digital cameras, but no tripod - dumb, to be sure

 

Page 353: I really like the Abe Lincoln strip i show from Harper's Weekly Mar 9 1861 - also using word balloons in most of the panels, inside the panel borders even

 

For some one to even hint that Outcault invented anything along these lines is simply silly

 

We discussed all this word balloon origins stuff on my Plat List at yahoogroups.com some years back - we have over 16,000 research posts there archived from over 400 list members in over 30 countries - we have pushed back the concept of word ballons being used to 450 AD -

 

Coulton Waugh in his 1947 THE COMICS history book merely listed 1910 Mutt & Jeff oblong as the earliest comic book - and just a giveaway to boot - when i have CARTOONS magazines from back then (Cartoons begins Jan 1912 and i have 80% of them now) with ads selling the Mutt & Jeff series thru the mail and mention made of available at news stands at most rail road stations, the way most Americans traveled back in the day

 

The misinformation he perped in his book, well intentioned as it may be, is huge.

 

The last decade, becuase of the internet and eBay, has enabled research to leap forward tremendously - i have been doing eBay since 1997, the early days for it, and picked up all kind sof stuff back then - the competition is fierce these days

 

I also studied articles by Gersham Legman re pre Yellow Kid comic strip stuff - and i do not like Peanut Butter Cups -

 

Bob Beerbohm

Gees. The rate we are going, we will be calling "Heaven Helps Only Those Who Help Themselves" "Join Or Die" or "The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated In King Street" The first American comic books.