Obadiah Oldbuck vs. Superman

[Aman619]

thanx! I really dont care which 30s comic gets the nod. (especially since as I have posted before, I did buy the first Famous Funnies years ago thinking it WAS the first because everyone said so... and chossing it would be too easy and self -serving) But anyone in this era or all of them that led to Action 1 which solidified the format for all time (?)

[showcase4]

Hey Bob,

I just checked the listing for the 2nd printing of Obadiah Oldbuck on Ebay, and the seller has added to his listing that the copy he has is 100% complete per you, and OPG page count is incorrect. Is this true?

 

If this is true, that book just went from a poor .05 (incomplete) to a VG+ 4.5 real quick

 

P.S. How rare is it ?

[ArnoldTBlumberg]

see, thats why I hate that laughing emoticon. Its too harsh and reads like a baiting laugh AT someone. I typed l o l which appears as but (to me) just means Im kidding. Im not well versed in them, so I suppose I should use the other one I know, the simple : ) from now on. But I was asking in a friendly way, not attacking you. But I just wonder sometimes why many people here are content to mostly just read and occasionally post a response. And that they must keep up pretty well cause they seem to know just when to speak up... so it sseems (kinda) that they get some kind of beeper going that alerts them to respond... cause anytime Oversteet is talked about, you are there in a Flash! thats all.

 

Well if I sounded like I thought you were attacking, that wasn't my intent, sorry about that. Damn, these smiley things don't really work at all, do they?

[Earl Davis]

well, I'd have to do some reading and research, wouldnt I? I'd rather fly by the seat of my pants, so somewhere in there when comics arrived at their "final" format: glossy covers, newsprint interiors, stories with dialogue and panels, and sold on newstands. Makes sense to me.... even while acknowledging that stories with "comics" were appearing for decades already before this format came along. (after all, mankind learned to tell stories with words and pictures centuries ago...) My strongest reasons are based on the fact that this format has not changed in 70 years; which sounds to me like the mutating had finally settled on a successful format. And it's the same format we have all collected, and have been called "comics" by everyone... isnt it?

 

You know it when you see it!

 

No. That's the format from the last (20th) centry.

 

Most kids seeing comics material in mass market outlets are seeing the 'Modern' Tokyopop style format of presentation.

 

Earl.

[Theagenes]

Hey Bob,

I just checked the listing for the 2nd printing of Obadiah Oldbuck on Ebay, and the seller has added to his listing that the copy he has is 100% complete per you, and OPG page count is incorrect. Is this true?

 

If this is true, that book just went from a poor .05 (incomplete) to a VG+ 4.5 real quick

 

P.S. How rare is it ?

 

 

 

Here is Bob's post regarding this from a couple of pages ago:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...A%3AIT&rd=1

 

THE ADVENTURES OF OBADIAH OLDBUCK (#320020507032)

 

2nd printing 1849 missing just the front cover

 

After a discussion on my Plat list, we figured out this is complete,

it never came with a hard cover originally - the page count will read 84 next Guide

 

- the 92 page count data in the current Guide was from counting a hard cover and blank end papers in a rebound copy that had a hard cover added

 

- a mistake had been made back when we were first creating the Victorian section

 

- and I will fix it in the next Guide

 

I might bid on it now - it is truly rare, maybe rarer than the 1842 first printing

 

That certainly makes this auction a lot more interesting with only one day left, especially if you and Bob end up going head-to-head over it.

 

BTW, some friendly advice (seriously) - before you go and plop down a five figure bid on this book, I would recommend that you get on Bob's Platinum list and read their discussion there so that you can understand the process by which they've come to their conclusion. I say this because it seems, based on your early posts here and in our discussion in the other thread about the Humor books, that you don't seem very interested in the historiographical methodology that goes into determining what these books are, when they date to, etc., but simply leave it up to others and take their word for it. You seem like a genuinely nice person, so please don't take this the wrong way, but this disinterested approach seems a little odd for someone who is willing to invest so much money in these books and who is planning to open a museum dedicated to them, but that is your business, not mine and maybe my impressions are totally wrong.

 

As you can see with these older books the information that exists on them is often scanty and incomplete and new discoveries may sometimes force the data to be reevaluated and changed as Bob and his colleagues are doing here. That is why it's important to understand the nature of the evidence from which these historians are drawing their conclusions, rather than just going by what it happens to say in OPG at the moment. How solid is a particular piece of evidence? Was a particular piece of information based on a primary or secondary source or is it just educated speculation? How likely is it to be overturned by future discoveries? These are questions that should be considered before making such a large investment, or at least they would be for me (not that I'm anywhere close to being in that league; it's rare that I spend more than $200 on a book, much less $20K). Again, in no way was I intending this as a personal attack; I don't know anything about you except from what you've posted here over the last few weeks so maybe I'm totally off-base, but I just wanted to offer you that advice - take it as you will. And good luck if you decide to bid again.

[showcase4]

 

I I don't know anything about you except from what you've posted here over the last few weeks

 

[BLBcomics-migration]

Hey Bob,

I just checked the listing for the 2nd printing of Obadiah Oldbuck on Ebay, and the seller has added to his listing that the copy he has is 100% complete per you, and OPG page count is incorrect. Is this true?

 

If this is true, that book just went from a poor .05 (incomplete) to a VG+ 4.5 real quick

 

P.S. How rare is it ?

 

 

 

Here is Bob's post regarding this from a couple of pages ago:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...A%3AIT&rd=1

 

THE ADVENTURES OF OBADIAH OLDBUCK (#320020507032)

 

2nd printing 1849 missing just the front cover

 

After a discussion on my Plat list, we figured out this is complete,

it never came with a hard cover originally - the page count will read 84 next Guide

 

- the 92 page count data in the current Guide was from counting a hard cover and blank end papers in a rebound copy that had a hard cover added

 

- a mistake had been made back when we were first creating the Victorian section

 

- and I will fix it in the next Guide

 

I might bid on it now - it is truly rare, maybe rarer than the 1842 first printing

 

That certainly makes this auction a lot more interesting with only one day left, especially if you and Bob end up going head-to-head over it.

 

BTW, some friendly advice (seriously) - before you go and plop down a five figure bid on this book, I would recommend that you get on Bob's Platinum list and read their discussion there so that you can understand the process by which they've come to their conclusion. I say this because it seems, based on your early posts here and in our discussion in the other thread about the Humor books, that you don't seem very interested in the historiographical methodology that goes into determining what these books are, when they date to, etc., but simply leave it up to others and take their word for it. You seem like a genuinely nice person, so please don't take this the wrong way, but this disinterested approach seems a little odd for someone who is willing to invest so much money in these books and who is planning to open a museum dedicated to them, but that is your business, not mine and maybe my impressions are totally wrong.

 

As you can see with these older books the information that exists on them is often scanty and incomplete and new discoveries may sometimes force the data to be reevaluated and changed as Bob and his colleagues are doing here. That is why it's important to understand the nature of the evidence from which these historians are drawing their conclusions, rather than just going by what it happens to say in OPG at the moment. How solid is a particular piece of evidence? Was a particular piece of information based on a primary or secondary source or is it just educated speculation? How likely is it to be overturned by future discoveries? These are questions that should be considered before making such a large investment, or at least they would be for me (not that I'm anywhere close to being in that league; it's rare that I spend more than $200 on a book, much less $20K). Again, in no way was I intending this as a personal attack; I don't know anything about you except from what you've posted here over the last few weeks so maybe I'm totally off-base, but I just wanted to offer you that advice - take it as you will. And good luck if you decide to bid again.

 

Most everything which ends up being listed in the Overstreet Victorian and Plat price indexes is vetted thru the Plat list on yahoogroups.com i activated in December 1999.

 

There is a reason a lot of collectors are listed in the credits in the first paragraphs of each section as they contributed data which made it into the listings. Anyone not listed there who did were accidently left out to to oversight on my part and will be happily listed next Guide.

 

Steve and I talk on the phone a lot, as i talk on the phone with a great many collectors every day - this is what i do - as I yam what i yam - a comics collector who let this hobby get way out of hand decades ago becoming a full time dealer operating comic book stores for 22 years 1972-1994 and for the past dozen years have gravitated more so into doing research on where this all originated.

 

I can easily come off as arrogant to some posters here, as i am supremely confidant in the history presented in the Overstreet PG these days. That said, i am very quick, as i have been writing here all along, that when i notice something is askew, i am the first to jump onto the wagon to lead the charge to fix the data and inform collectors about same.

 

To wit, yes, the page count in OPG as we have had it there on the second printing of Obadiah Oldbuck was ascertained maybe 7-8 years ago. We used a hard bound copy which had blank end papers. Other copies have turned up also bound, but with different looking covers

 

What we are figuring out over on my Plat list is that data on page count on the 2nd print is wrong

 

84 pages is what it should be, thin paper cover counts as four plus 80 pages of comic strip story telling.

 

I already have a copy in basicly the same condition - missing its front cover

 

I know my friend in New Mexico does not yet have one, and there are other players i know who do not either, and the sniping will be interesting at the end of this auction, i believe, but we will find that out when the dust settles soon

 

It is not VG+ per se, as it is missing its front cover, so it remains incompete

 

What gets me in proof reading the data on the 1849 Obadiah Oldbuck 2nd printing is i could have fixed this a couple years ago as i have had my 2nd printing for a few years, but never noticed the discrepancy until yesterday

 

At $500 where the bidding is at now remains a bargain as i think the 2nd is scarcer than the first printing from 1842 - i have seen more firsts than seconds is my only criteria

[BLBcomics-migration]

well, I'd have to do some reading and research, wouldnt I? I'd rather fly by the seat of my pants, so somewhere in there when comics arrived at their "final" format: glossy covers, newsprint interiors, stories with dialogue and panels, and sold on newstands. Makes sense to me.... even while acknowledging that stories with "comics" were appearing for decades already before this format came along. (after all, mankind learned to tell stories with words and pictures centuries ago...) My strongest reasons are based on the fact that this format has not changed in 70 years; which sounds to me like the mutating had finally settled on a successful format. And it's the same format we have all collected, and have been called "comics" by everyone... isnt it?

 

You know it when you see it!

 

I have been reading this for awhile and this post sums up my understanding.

 

I see the word 'book' as problematic in this discussion. If what we know today as comic books had been called comic 'magazines' since the thirties, would all these very early Victorian and platinum comic publications simply be comic 'books' and prototypes to the comic 'magazine'?

 

That is one of the points i have been trying to make:

 

back in the 1930s 1940s 1950s the publishers & distributor literature I have been collecting for a long time now all calls what we today call "comic book" as "comics magazines"

 

Me, i do not differentiate between the printed formats

 

- it can all be "comic book" to me and a large segment of the collecting mix.

 

It appears to be this CGC crowd, all hung up on slabbing certain sizes, which wants to have such narrow blinders on - and i have nothing against the slab trip, contrary to what others may think, but the concept does put some blinders on doing research inside the books.

 

the earliest issues of JUMBO, MASTER COMICS, NEW FUN 1-6, THE FUNNIES from 1929-30, COMIC MONTHLY from 1922, TOPS COMICS 1 2 from 1949 (scarce Lev Gleason). and others do not fit the formula some choose to devise.

 

I think of Creepy and Eerie, Savage Sword of Conan and the other comic books in the magazine format size as comic books. Every bit as much as Calvin & Hobbes comic books.

 

Under that main heading you have a host of sizes and formats

 

I leave it to some one else to devise the master sub-listing

[Theagenes]

I I don't know anything about you except from what you've posted here over the last few weeks

 

 

Fair enough.

[Earl Davis]

Hey Bob,

I just checked the listing for the 2nd printing of Obadiah Oldbuck on Ebay, and the seller has added to his listing that the copy he has is 100% complete per you, and OPG page count is incorrect. Is this true?

 

If this is true, that book just went from a poor .05 (incomplete) to a VG+ 4.5 real quick

 

P.S. How rare is it ?

 

 

 

Here is Bob's post regarding this from a couple of pages ago:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...A%3AIT&rd=1

 

THE ADVENTURES OF OBADIAH OLDBUCK (#320020507032)

 

2nd printing 1849 missing just the front cover

 

After a discussion on my Plat list, we figured out this is complete,

it never came with a hard cover originally - the page count will read 84 next Guide

 

- the 92 page count data in the current Guide was from counting a hard cover and blank end papers in a rebound copy that had a hard cover added

 

- a mistake had been made back when we were first creating the Victorian section

 

- and I will fix it in the next Guide

 

I might bid on it now - it is truly rare, maybe rarer than the 1842 first printing

 

That certainly makes this auction a lot more interesting with only one day left, especially if you and Bob end up going head-to-head over it.

 

BTW, some friendly advice (seriously) - before you go and plop down a five figure bid on this book, I would recommend that you get on Bob's Platinum list and read their discussion there so that you can understand the process by which they've come to their conclusion. I say this because it seems, based on your early posts here and in our discussion in the other thread about the Humor books, that you don't seem very interested in the historiographical methodology that goes into determining what these books are, when they date to, etc., but simply leave it up to others and take their word for it. You seem like a genuinely nice person, so please don't take this the wrong way, but this disinterested approach seems a little odd for someone who is willing to invest so much money in these books and who is planning to open a museum dedicated to them, but that is your business, not mine and maybe my impressions are totally wrong.

 

As you can see with these older books the information that exists on them is often scanty and incomplete and new discoveries may sometimes force the data to be reevaluated and changed as Bob and his colleagues are doing here. That is why it's important to understand the nature of the evidence from which these historians are drawing their conclusions, rather than just going by what it happens to say in OPG at the moment. How solid is a particular piece of evidence? Was a particular piece of information based on a primary or secondary source or is it just educated speculation? How likely is it to be overturned by future discoveries? These are questions that should be considered before making such a large investment, or at least they would be for me (not that I'm anywhere close to being in that league; it's rare that I spend more than $200 on a book, much less $20K). Again, in no way was I intending this as a personal attack; I don't know anything about you except from what you've posted here over the last few weeks so maybe I'm totally off-base, but I just wanted to offer you that advice - take it as you will. And good luck if you decide to bid again.

 

Good advice.

 

Earl.

[BLBcomics-migration]

PLEASE READ THIS AND MAKE COMMENTS ON WHAT YOU THINK:

 

Here is a transcription i made circa 1998 which appeared in the old comics@indra.com list, from whence a tremendous amount of off-shoot lists came out of. This became the basis for the hunt for 1800s comic strips books. There are typo errors for which i apologize in advance, and not all of Legman's data was 100% accurate as we later found out.

 

If we are going to have a serious discussion of the origins of the comic strip in America, i have a LOT more stuff where this comes from.

____________________________________

 

Recently comics scholar Jay Maeder <jmaeder@XXXXXXX.com> posted portions onto the comicscholar-list from a letter titled "The First Comic Books In America: Revisions And Reflections," by Gershon Legman, published in the January 1946 issue of a small-size zine named American Notes & Queries (NY:NY).

 

At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I finally tracked down a complete bound set of this zine in one of their sub-basements, wiped the cobwebs off, was lucky to be able to check out for 3 weeks the complete 4 volume set (1941-1950) and have herewith transcribed all the comics references I could so far locate. There may be a few strays.

 

Beginning with the earliest question, originally posed by none other than August Derleth, in 1941, an e-mail-like "thread" of comics history was slowly discussed by various early comics fans extending thru the zine's demise in 1950.

 

What follows a few preliminary letters is the complete text of an absolutely extraordinary letter by LOVE AND DEATH (1949) author Gershon Legman tying a lot of concepts together. All { } and [ ] are Legman's but for two of mine, noted.

 

Legman appears to be personally in possession of all/most of the 1800s material he references. One must keep in mind that there was very little prior historical reference work to double-check facts. I welcome scholarly feedback on this post iff you have the time & inclination.

 

Robert Beerbohm

 

****************************************

 

AMERICAN NOTES AND QUERIES #1 was April 1941

 

*********AN&Q July 1941*********

 

A. D. CONDO. Does anyone know anything of the whereabouts of A. D. Condo, creator of the comic strip "Everett True"?

 

August Derleth

 

*********AN&Q Aug 1941*********

 

LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND. I am at the moment much interested inall information concerning comics - in fact I am preparing a book on the subject.

 

Winsor McCay (d. 1934) created "Little Nemo in Slumberland" sometimes called "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" in 1904. It was syndicated by the New York HERALD TRIBUNE from 1905 until about 1911 or 1912, when King Features took it over an dran it as "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" until 1915. It was again syndicated by the HERALD TRIBUNE in August, 1924, under its original title, and survived until August (?), 1927.

 

Most libraries, et al., remove the comics from the regular newspaper files before binding, and comics bound spearately are not plentiful. A complete file of this series would represent not more than 676 full pages. Of this my own copies - from the New York HERALD TRIBUNE, the Chicago RECORD-HERALD (after May, 1918, the Chicago HERALD AND EXAMINER), the Boston POST, etc. - total abou thalf. I am particularly anxious to fill out the 1909-1912 sequence. Have your readers any suggestions?

 

August Derleth

 

*********AN&Q Sept 1941*********

 

LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND (1:70 Aug '41). "Little Nemo," it would seem, still has a following. Rand McNally has just issued a ten cent LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMERLAND (Chicago, 1941).

 

McCay's DREAMS OF A RAREBIT FIEND may, in its way, have been as popular as LITTLE NEMO. The New York Public Library's copy of this tale of the rueful rarebit roue' is signed "Silas," contains sixty one-page episodes, and was published (c. 1905) by Stokes and the New York EVENING TELEGRAM. For a kind of highly imaginative and innocuous horror, parts of it are, I think, every bit as good as the best of Walt Disney.

 

H. N.

 

*********AN&Q March 1942********

 

COMICS BEFORE 1925. I should like some information as to where I might find copies of some of the comic books issued by a variety of publishers before 1925: Clare Victor Dwiggens' SCHOOL DAYS (N.Y., 1919), which I am anxious to own myself; Saalfield Mager's (sic) HAWKSHAW THE DETECTIVE; BUSTER BROWN, issued by Cupples & Leon, publishers of George McManus' BRINGING UP FATHER series; LITTLE SAMMY SNEZE, issued by Stokes, and Clare A. Brigg' O. MAN!

 

I am also hunting stray bits of anecdote about many of the earlier cartoonists, specifically, Briggs, Dirks, Dwig, Herriman, McManus, Outcault, and Sterrett.

 

August Derleth

 

 

*********AN&Q April 1942*********

 

COMICS BEFORE 1925 (1:185). Clare Brigg's OH, MAN! was published by P. F. Volland Company, Chicago, in 1919. It contained a "breezy foreward by Franklin P. Adams." Some years later it was remaindered, and is now probably only available seconfhand.

 

W. L. Werner

 

[RB here: There then seems to be a comics content gap as we fight World

War Two and everybody seemed to be getting drafted or enlisted.]

 

*********AN&Q May 1944**********

 

COMICS BEFORE 1925 (2:13 et al.). Obituaries of the late George Herriman, who died on April 25, will yield Mr. Derleth some rather good material. He was the creator of "Krazy Kat" comic strip and notoriously silent on his own affairs. Yet several interesting snatches emerge - his journey to New York in search of a fortune, his painting of canvases for Coney Island concessionaires, his adventures as a "talker for a snake-eaters act." A few facts about Krazy Kat's unsuccessful predecessors as well as the locale of the sketches (assumed to be Coconino County, Arizona) are mentioned.

 

Y. A.

 

*********AN&Q October 1944********

 

COMICS BEFORE 1925 (4:29et al.). "Mr. and Mrs. Beans," the adventures of two Boston terriers, appearing in the SATURDAY EVENING POST, began in the early twenties. Their creator, Robert L. Dickey, well-known for his drawings of dogs and horses, died in Cleveland on Oct. 21. A brief obituary states that he moved from New York about four years ago and had

since lived in Ohio with his son Ralph L. Dickey. He was a native of Marshall, Michigan; stuidued at the Art Institute of Chicago; and began his career as a cartoonist for th eold Chicago INTEROCEAN.

L. O.

 

*********AN&Q July 1945**********

 

COMIC BEFORE 1925 (4:110 et al). TIME (July 16, 1945) stated that the American Antiquarian Society had discovered a comic strip antedating by at least thirty years Richard Outcault's "YELLOW KID," long regarded as the original in this field.

 

The newly-found character was FERDINAND FLIPPER, and he appeared in the New York weekly, BROTHER JONATHAN, between 1858 and 1863. The strip, according to TIME, was evidently the work of several cartoonists whose names are not known.

 

W. H. P.

 

*********AN&Q August 1945**********

 

THE FIRST COMIC BOOKS . Unfortunately, the TIME article, quoted on page 62 of the July, 1945, issue of AN&Q, was inaccurate. FREDINAND FLIPPER was not a comic strip but a comic book. And it was published by - not in BROTHER JONATHAN.

 

Nor was it, however, the only known one of its kinds. There are, to our knowledge, three contemporaries or predecessors:

 

1. THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCES OF ICHBOD ACADEMICUS, illustrated by William T. Peters, [New Haven, 1847].

2. A similar Harvard picture book beginning with THE FIRST MATIN BELL DOTH REMIND THE FRESHMEN, etc

3. THE ADVENTURES OF MR. OBADIAH OLDBUCK (N.Y, 1843-45?]).

 

We would be gald to hear of any additions to this little bibliography.

 

Clifford K. Shipton

American Antiquarian Society

 

************************************

******Gershon Legman AN&Q Jan 1946*********

************************************

 

THE FIRST COMIC BOOKS IN AMERICA:

 

REVISIONS AND REFLECTIONS {AN&Q Jan 1946}

 

The usual statement on the early history of the comics in America runs about like this:

 

"The first comics didn't appear in the United States until the latter half of the 19th century. Richard F. Outcault, a former draftsman for ELECTRICAL WORLD, created a little roughneck character from the slums and called him THE YELLOW KID." --Martin Sheridan, COMICS AND THEIR CREATORS, Boston, 1942, revised 1944, pp. 16-17.

 

Numerous variations have been rung on this theme, and perhaps the most absurd of them is this excerpt from "Judaism in the 'Comics' Corrupting our Native Tongue," an annonymous article of 1924:

 

"The 'comic strip' and the Sunday 'comics,' which are devoured so voraciously by children throughout the land, are peculiar to America. Before 1890, they are unknown. They have made their appearance since the Jews came here in large masses . . . They [the Jews and the 'Romanists'] would apparently convert Sunday into a day for the children to absorb the blatant vulgarities, evil suggestions and language corruption of the 'comics.'" --THE AMERICAN STANDARD, New York, Vol. 1, 1924, #8, page 7.

 

Nevertheless, the comic strip is not originally an American art-form, and Outcault's comic-stories in the NEW YORK WORLD in 1894 ("THE YELLOW KID" was not his first) were half a century later than the first comics appearing in the United States, and an unknown number of centuries later than the first that appeared at all.

 

The history of the comic strip has not yet been traced.

 

[RB here: Twenty five years later we were blessed with Kunzle #1.]

 

Its descent can be roughly seen in the bison-drawings of the cave dwellers; the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt (in which the cartouche, or conversation-balloon, first appears); the architectural friezes of Babylonia, Central America, and Indonesia; the ceramic decorations of

Greece; the silver-chasing Roman arms and armor; the wall graffiti of Pompeii; the hunting tapestries of the Middle Ages; the playing-cards and fortune-telling Tarot of the Renaissance; the horizontal scrolls (makimono) of Japan; and the crowded canvases of the Flemish peasant painters, particularly Pieter Breughel, the Elder.

 

Its popularity as a folk-art waited until the habit of reading supplanted listening in the transmission of folk-tale fantasy, in the early 19th century in western Europe.

 

Combined with the growing popularity of political caricature and satirical almanacs, there was at hand the AUDIENCE, the MATERIAL, the METHOD, and the VEHICLE for the fantasy-story told in a cycle of drawings.

 

For as far as the impact on the experiencing mind is concerned it makes little difference whether it is the djinni of the Arabian Nights, the Roland and Arthur of legend, the Tyl and Robin Hood of ballad and jest, the fairy-tale witches of Basile's "Pentamerone (even in the watered-down versions of Grimm and Anderson), or the virile, three-color exploits of Superprig in the 60th Century, brandishing a ray-gat in each mitt.

 

Clifford K. Shipman has drawn attention (AN&Q 5:71) to several early American comic books, FERDINAND FLIPPER, ICHABOD ACADEMICUS and others. The earliest of these, THE ADVENTURES OF MR. OBADIAH OLDBUCK, is not an American original but a piracy of a Swiss album of 1837, a fact already noted by William Murrell in 1933:

 

"Under the classification: 'Early American Humor' in booksellers' catalogues, one occasionally meets with THE ADVENTURES OF BACHELOR BUTTERFLY and OBADIAH OLDBUCK IN SEARCH OF A BRIDE, 1846.

 

"These album-like little volumes each contain some two hundred excellent comic illustrations, and the texts printed at the bottom of every page illuminate the antics of the hero. But these drawings were the work of the famous Swiss, Rodolphe Toepffer [sic], and the items classified as 'Early American Humor' were pirated editions with English texts. True there is no indication of this in the albums, and only those familiar with Toeppfer's (sic) work would raise a questioning eyebrow." --William Murrell, "A History Of American Graphic Humor", New York, Vol. 1, 1933, pp. 164-65.

 

According to the NEW YORK TIMES (Sept 3, 1904), the first American reprint of Topffer was issued as a supplement to BROTHER JONATHAN (New York, Sept. 14, 1842).

 

The & Fitzgerald reprints, which followed, can be gotten out of the way most conveniently by listing Topffer's original works and what appear to be their American piracies.

 

Topffer, Rodolphe (1799-1846):

 

-- LE DOCTEUR FESTUS (1829, published 1840)

-- HISTOIRE DE MONSIEUR JABOT (Geneve, 1833)

-- HISTOIRE DE MONSIEUR CREPIN (Geneve, 1837)

-- HISTOIRE DE MONSIEUR VIEUX-BOIS (Geneve, 1837)

-- HISTOIRE DE MONSIEUR PENCIL (Geneve, 1840)

-- HISTOIRE D'ALBERT (Geneve, 1845)

-- MONSIEUR CRYPTOGAME (1845) (in L'ILLUSTRATION, 1845, redrawn by "Cham" [Amedee de Noe], published separately 1846-1847.)

-- COLLECTION DES HISTOIRES EN ESTAMPES (Geneve, 1846-47) 6 vol., reprinted as Komische Bilderromane (Esslingen, 1899).

 

Three of the illustrations from M. VIEUX-BOIS (appear) later in OBADIAH OLDBUCK, are reproduced by Ernst Schur in KUNST UND KUNSTLER (Berlin, Vol. 7,1909, pp. 502-503, 506), but several (other) sequences do not appear in OLDBUCK, suggesting that one or all of the American piracies may be abridged.

 

Except for OLDBUCK the relation of these originals to the following ( & Fitzgerald) reprints is not known to me, but owners of copies will be able to determine this very easily by comparison:

 

-- THE ADVENTURES OF MR. OBADIAH OLDBUCK. Wherein are set forth his unconquerable passion for his lady-love, his utterable despair on losing her, his five attempts at suicide and his surprising exploits in search of the beloved object. Also, his final success. New York: & Fitzgerald, publishers, 18 Ann Street (1846?) 80 p. oblong 8vo

 

The rest are quoted from & Fitzgerald's catalogue for 1878. The alternative titles are not necessarily those appearing on the printed works; OLDBUCK - title page as above - is advertised this:

 

"THE MISHAPS AND ADVENTURES OF OBADIAH OLDBUCK. Wherein are set forth the crosses, chagrins, calamities, checks, chills, the changes, circumgyrations, by which his courtship was attended. Showing also the issue of his suit, and his espousal to his Lady love [&c.]"

 

-- THE LAUGHABLE ADVENTURES OF MESSRS. BROWN, JONES AND ROBINSON Showing where they went, and how they went, what they did, and how they did it. ("Illustrated with nearly 200 thrillingly comic engravings." [A later catalogue adds "By Richard Doyle."]

 

-- THE COURTSHIP OF CHEVALIER SLY-FOX WYKOFF Showing his heart-rending, astounding and most wonderful love adventures with Fanny Elssler and Miss Gambol. [N.B. "Elssler - German for "the Alsatian."]

 

-- THE STRANGE AND WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF BATCHELOR BUTTERFLY [sic]. Showing how his passion for natural history completely eradicated the tender passion implanted in his breast -also, detailing his extraordinary travels, both by sea and land. ("The book is printed on fine plate paper in the neatest manner, and is the cheapest pictorial work ever issued in America. Price: 30 cts.") [The pirates apparently had no shame.]

 

-- THE COMIC ADVENTURES OF DAVID DUFFICKS ("Illustrated with over 100 funny engravings.")

 

-- THE EXTRAORDINARY AND MIRTH-PROVOKING ADVENTURES BY SEA AND LAND, OF OSCAR SHANGHAI (All told in a series of nearly 200 of the most risible, quizzible, provoking, peculiar, saucy and spicy cuts ever gathered within the leaves of any one book . . . Price 25 cts.") [This in spite of the Comstock Law of 1872.]

 

I do not know what the first comic strip, sheet or book by an American-born artist may have been. The original Swiss editions are very limited and it seems likely that & Fitzgerald used the 1846-47 collected edition, which would date these reprints four years later than the BROTHER JONATHAN Topffer of 1842.

 

It is possible that comic BOOKS in America took their inspiration from Toppfer, but in only a quick glance at Murrell's HISTORY OF AMERICAN GRAPHIC HUMOR one comes across a number of American artists who were, in the 1830s and earlier, producing material that may properly designated "comics."

 

William Charle's TOM THE PIPER'S SON (reissued: Salem 1814) and Edward Clay's satirical "This Is The House That Jack Built" (1837) [Murrell 1:82-3, 149] obviously stem from the 18th-century children's horn-books of the TRAGICAL DEATH OF AN APPLE PIE type ("A apple-pye, B bit it, C cut it" etc). The anonymous "Illustrations Of Masonry" (Boston ca. 1826) and Frank Bellew's eight "Trials Of A Witness" (in THE LANTERN, ceased publication in 1853) [Murrell, 10:100-101, 183] are evident reprises of the older static frieze-drawings.

 

Lear and the comic historians in England led directly into the comic story in pictures, as in the mid-century humor magazines of England and the continent; and John Camden Hotten, just before his death in 1873, published in London a complete comic book, THE FOOLS PARADISE, colored illustrations and all.

 

A sequel, FURTHER ADVENTURES IN FOOLS PARADISE, was issued by his successors, Chatto & Windus; both were largely reprints of the great German comic artist, Wilhelm Busch, from FLIEGENDE BLATTER, 1859, ff. A decade before it was taken into the American newspaper in 1894, the comic story in pictures had been accepted as completely natural by a number of American artists -- A.B. Frost (STUFF AND NONSENSE. NY., 1884-88), E.W. Kemble and probably others.

 

The groundwork for the comic book in America was laid when the comic almanacs, beginning with Charles Ellms' AMERICAN COMIC ALMANAC (Boston 1831), created a demand for humorous drawings in pamphlets rather than broadsides. The illustrations of jokes and scenes of static humor -- the cartoon as opposed to the caricature -- continued in the tradition of book

illustration, while the caricature became strictly a feature of the newspapers and magazines which later took over the cartoon as well.

 

The comic -- involving continued action through a series of drawings -- combined the reduplicative frieze-motif, the nursery-tale and horn-book presentation, the comic almanac format, and the emergent European protracted story form (as in Topffer's work) into the comic book.

 

Apparently 1946 is its American centennial.

 

Gershon Legman

 

*****NEXT LETTER AN&Q April 1946*****

 

FIRST COMIC BOOKS IN AMERICA (5:189 et al). Mr Legman rightly notes (5:148) that the history of the comic strip has not been fully traced. Besides the Egyptian forms he cites there is the pictorial representation of a sequence of acts found in mediaeval art, where, e.g., within one pictorial unit are portrayals of a man on the scaffold and the same man beheaded.

 

A longer sequence, depicting a complete narrative - from the first meeting of the "actors" on through the significant episodes to the final murder (or executiuon) - can be seen in the thirty chapter headings in John Reynolds' THE TRIUMPH OF GOD'S REVENGE AGAINST THE CRYINGE AND EXCREIBLE SINNE OF .... MURTHER (4th ed., London, 1663).

 

There are twelve scenes in the first heading; eight on the second, third and fourth; and fourteen in the twenty-fourth. The resemblance to a comic strip in form (but not matter) is striking. I have not seen the earlier editions of this book.

 

Archer Taylor

 

[RB here: AMERICAN NOTES & QUERIES seems to become eratic in publishing schedule like many a small press zine ala ALTER EGO. -]

 

*****NEXT LETTER Jan 1950*****

 

FIRST COMIC BOOK IN AMERICA (6:14, et al). The excellent material that has appeared under this heading has been concerned largely with comics in general as a literary or art form - and not specifically with comic books.

 

The comic book, obviously, is merely an adaptation of an already popular medium. In fact, according to John R. Vosburgh's "How the Comic Book Started" (COMMONWEAL, May 2, 1949), it is only about 17 years old.

 

Harry I. Wildenberg, who in 1932 was sales manager for Eastern Color Printing Company in New York, producers of the comic sections of deozens of papers along the Atlantic Seaboard, had the task of digging up ideas that would sell color printing for his firm. The popularity of the funny sheets baffled him, but he became convinced that they constituted a good advertising medium. He suggested a tabloid of comics, and one of his clients, Gulf Oil, carried out the notion, supplying their own artists and creator. Gulf Oil stations distributed 3,000,000 copies a week.

 

The book notion did not strike him until one day somewhat later he was :idly folding a newspaper in halves, then quarters." He immediately set to work, got pulication rights to Bell Syndicate comics, had an artist make up some dummies, and sent these off to a number of his largest advertisers. When Proctor & Gamble fired back an order for a million 32-page comic magazines in color, "the first comic book ever printed or distributed" was with us. The sponsor called it "(Funnies) on Parade" and in it were many of the popular newspaper strips.

 

Thus far it was all a distribution scheme; the notion that a comic book could be SOLD was for the moment beyond Wildenberg's eye.

 

Not long, however, for soon he invaded the retail market and sounded out the five-and-ten-cent stores. But the idea was thoroughly rejected. Even the comics syndicates turned him down, insisting that nobody wanted to read comics. Yet Wildenberg felt that the field had been scarcely touched. He at last induced Dell Publishing Company to get out a first edition of 40,000; every copy was sold. Nevertheless, the comic book was still considered a gamble, from the advertiser's point of view.

 

In July,m 1934, eaterm put out a trial edition of 200,000 and sold 90 per cent. Each issue thereafter snowballed, month by month. Within less than a year three competitors entered the field.

 

Strangely enough, Wildenberg strongly disapproves of comics in any form. It never occurred to him, he said, that the effect might be disastrous.

 

P. E. R.

 

*****end of the comics history letters*****

 

AN&Q's March 1950 issue had this definition of the term fanzine:

 

"FANZINES": fantasy magazines, or magazines for fantasy fans; term cited in an article on California writers in the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, May 7, 1950.

 

*************FINIS**************

 

One must embrace the concept that the just maybe comic book came first, then the comic strip in newspapers, followed by the four color saddle stiched format we recognize today.

 

There is much research still to be accomplished. Yes?

 

Robert Beerbohm,

who thanks to Jay Maeder for pointing him down this path.

[showcase4]

It is not VG+ per se, as it is missing its front cover, so it remains incompete

 

At $500 where the bidding is at now remains a bargain as i think the 2nd is scarcer than the first printing from 1842 - i have seen more firsts than seconds is my only criteria

 

Bob,

what does the missing front cover look like on the 2nd printing? The sellers pics shows a missing light green page in the front of the book, with the 1st intact page showing the reprinted Cruikshank art. Is the missing page a cover to the Cruikshank art page, which would make that the books title page? Is the missing cover an image of the D.C.Johnston masthead for Borther Jonathan found at the top of the 1st printing?

[BLBcomics-migration]

The front cover and title page are identical

 

Front cover is a green color, the identical title page is same paper as the rest of the book

 

We also know of a "subscriber" copy of Obadiah 1842 with a thin yellow paper cover, identical to the front of what you have - i saw it ONCE at a 92 year old lady's house in Boston which is why the note in Overstreet mentions this - the lady did not want to sell

[showcase4]

We also know of a "subscriber" copy of Obadiah 1842 with a thin yellow paper cover, identical to the front of what you have - i saw it ONCE at a 92 year old lady's house in Boston which is why the note in Overstreet mentions this - the lady did not want to sell

 

I'll help you retire a little earlier if you come up with this one for me

[BLBcomics-migration]

PLEASE READ THIS AND MAKE COMMENTS ON WHAT YOU THINK,

 

This was a major part of the original core data for making the Victorian section.

This is a transcription i typed up back in 1998

 

 

AMERICAN NOTES AND QUERY jan 1946

 

***************************************

Gershon Legman AN&Q Jan 1946

***************************************

 

THE FIRST COMIC BOOKS IN AMERICA:

 

REVISIONS AND REFLECTIONS {AN&Q Jan 1946}

 

The usual statement on the early history of the comics in America runs about like this:

 

"The first comics didn't appear in the United States until the latter half of the 19th century. Richard F. Outcault, a former draftsman for ELECTRICAL WORLD, created a little roughneck character from the slums and called him THE YELLOW KID." --Martin Sheridan, COMICS AND THEIR CREATORS, Boston, 1942, revised 1944, pp. 16-17.

 

Numerous variations have been rung on this theme, and perhaps the most absurd of them is this excerpt from "Judaism in the 'Comics' Corrupting our Native Tongue," an annonymous article of 1924:

 

"The 'comic strip' and the Sunday 'comics,' which are devoured so voraciously by children throughout the land, are peculiar to America. Before 1890, they are unknown. They have made their appearance since the Jews came here in large masses . . . They [the Jews and the 'Romanists'] would apparently convert Sunday into a day for the children to absorb the blatant vulgarities, evil suggestions and language corruption of the 'comics.'" --THE AMERICAN STANDARD, New York, Vol. 1, 1924, #8, page 7.

 

Nevertheless, the comic strip is not originally an American art-form, and Outcault's comic-stories in the NEW YORK WORLD in 1894 ("THE YELLOW KID" was not his first) were half a century later than the first comics appearing in the United States, and an unknown number of centuries later than the first that appeared at all.

 

The history of the comic strip has not yet been traced.

 

[RB here: Twenty five years later we were blessed with Kunzle #1.]

 

Its descent can be roughly seen in the bison-drawings of the cave dwellers; the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt (in which the cartouche, or conversation-balloon, first appears); the architectural friezes of Babylonia, Central America, and Indonesia; the ceramic decorations of

Greece; the silver-chasing Roman arms and armor; the wall graffiti of Pompeii; the hunting tapestries of the Middle Ages; the playing-cards and fortune-telling Tarot of the Renaissance; the horizontal scrolls (makimono) of Japan; and the crowded canvases of the Flemish peasant painters, particularly Pieter Breughel, the Elder.

 

Its popularity as a folk-art waited until the habit of reading supplanted listening in the transmission of folk-tale fantasy, in the early 19th century in western Europe.

 

Combined with the growing popularity of political caricature and satirical almanacs, there was at hand the AUDIENCE, the MATERIAL, the METHOD, and the VEHICLE for the fantasy-story told in a cycle of drawings.

 

For as far as the impact on the experiencing mind is concerned it makes little difference whether it is the djinni of the Arabian Nights, the Roland and Arthur of legend, the Tyl and Robin Hood of ballad and jest, the fairy-tale witches of Basile's "Pentamerone (even in the watered-down versions of Grimm and Anderson), or the virile, three-color exploits of Superprig in the 60th Century, brandishing a ray-gat in each mitt.

 

Clifford K. Shipman has drawn attention (AN&Q 5:71) to several early American comic books, FERDINAND FLIPPER, ICHABOD ACADEMICUS and others. The earliest of these, THE ADVENTURES OF MR. OBADIAH OLDBUCK, is not an American original but a piracy of a Swiss album of 1837, a fact already noted by William Murrell in 1933:

 

"Under the classification: 'Early American Humor' in booksellers' catalogues, one occasionally meets with THE ADVENTURES OF BACHELOR BUTTERFLY and OBADIAH OLDBUCK IN SEARCH OF A BRIDE, 1846.

 

"These album-like little volumes each contain some two hundred excellent comic illustrations, and the texts printed at the bottom of every page illuminate the antics of the hero. But these drawings were the work of the famous Swiss, Rodolphe Toepffer [sic], and the items classified as 'Early American Humor' were pirated editions with English texts. True there is no indication of this in the albums, and only those familiar with Toeppfer's (sic) work would raise a questioning eyebrow." --William Murrell, "A History Of American Graphic Humor", New York, Vol. 1, 1933, pp. 164-65.

 

According to the NEW YORK TIMES (Sept 3, 1904), the first American reprint of Topffer was issued as a supplement to BROTHER JONATHAN (New York, Sept. 14, 1842).

 

The & Fitzgerald reprints, which followed, can be gotten out of the way most conveniently by listing Topffer's original works and what appear to be their American piracies.

 

Topffer, Rodolphe (1799-1846):

 

-- LE DOCTEUR FESTUS (1829, published 1840)

-- HISTOIRE DE MONSIEUR JABOT (Geneve, 1833)

-- HISTOIRE DE MONSIEUR CREPIN (Geneve, 1837)

-- HISTOIRE DE MONSIEUR VIEUX-BOIS (Geneve, 1837)

-- HISTOIRE DE MONSIEUR PENCIL (Geneve, 1840)

-- HISTOIRE D'ALBERT (Geneve, 1845)

-- MONSIEUR CRYPTOGAME (1845) (in L'ILLUSTRATION, 1845, redrawn by "Cham" [Amedee de Noe], published separately 1846-1847.)

-- COLLECTION DES HISTOIRES EN ESTAMPES (Geneve, 1846-47) 6 vol., reprinted as Komische Bilderromane (Esslingen, 1899).

 

Three of the illustrations from M. VIEUX-BOIS (appear) later in OBADIAH OLDBUCK, are reproduced by Ernst Schur in KUNST UND KUNSTLER (Berlin, Vol. 7,1909, pp. 502-503, 506), but several (other) sequences do not appear in OLDBUCK, suggesting that one or all of the American piracies may be abridged.

 

Except for OLDBUCK the relation of these originals to the following ( & Fitzgerald) reprints is not known to me, but owners of copies will be able to determine this very easily by comparison:

 

-- THE ADVENTURES OF MR. OBADIAH OLDBUCK. Wherein are set forth his unconquerable passion for his lady-love, his utterable despair on losing her, his five attempts at suicide and his surprising exploits in search of the beloved object. Also, his final success. New York: & Fitzgerald, publishers, 18 Ann Street (1846?) 80 p. oblong 8vo

 

The rest are quoted from & Fitzgerald's catalogue for 1878. The alternative titles are not necessarily those appearing on the printed works; OLDBUCK - title page as above - is advertised this:

 

"THE MISHAPS AND ADVENTURES OF OBADIAH OLDBUCK. Wherein are set forth the crosses, chagrins, calamities, checks, chills, the changes, circumgyrations, by which his courtship was attended. Showing also the issue of his suit, and his espousal to his Lady love [&c.]"

 

-- THE LAUGHABLE ADVENTURES OF MESSRS. BROWN, JONES AND ROBINSON Showing where they went, and how they went, what they did, and how they did it. ("Illustrated with nearly 200 thrillingly comic engravings." [A later catalogue adds "By Richard Doyle."]

 

-- THE COURTSHIP OF CHEVALIER SLY-FOX WYKOFF Showing his heart-rending, astounding and most wonderful love adventures with Fanny Elssler and Miss Gambol. [N.B. "Elssler - German for "the Alsatian."]

 

-- THE STRANGE AND WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF BATCHELOR BUTTERFLY [sic]. Showing how his passion for natural history completely eradicated the tender passion implanted in his breast -also, detailing his extraordinary travels, both by sea and land. ("The book is printed on fine plate paper in the neatest manner, and is the cheapest pictorial work ever issued in America. Price: 30 cts.") [The pirates apparently had no shame.]

 

-- THE COMIC ADVENTURES OF DAVID DUFFICKS ("Illustrated with over 100 funny engravings.")

 

-- THE EXTRAORDINARY AND MIRTH-PROVOKING ADVENTURES BY SEA AND LAND, OF OSCAR SHANGHAI (All told in a series of nearly 200 of the most risible, quizzible, provoking, peculiar, saucy and spicy cuts ever gathered within the leaves of any one book . . . Price 25 cts.") [This in spite of the Comstock Law of 1872.]

 

I do not know what the first comic strip, sheet or book by an American-born artist may have been. The original Swiss editions are very limited and it seems likely that & Fitzgerald used the 1846-47 collected edition, which would date these reprints four years later than the BROTHER JONATHAN Topffer of 1842.

 

It is possible that comic BOOKS in America took their inspiration from Toppfer, but in only a quick glance at Murrell's HISTORY OF AMERICAN GRAPHIC HUMOR one comes across a number of American artists who were, in the 1830s and earlier, producing material that may properly designated "comics."

 

William Charle's TOM THE PIPER'S SON (reissued: Salem 1814) and Edward Clay's satirical "This Is The House That Jack Built" (1837) [Murrell 1:82-3, 149] obviously stem from the 18th-century children's horn-books of the TRAGICAL DEATH OF AN APPLE PIE type ("A apple-pye, B bit it, C cut it" etc). The anonymous "Illustrations Of Masonry" (Boston ca. 1826) and Frank Bellew's eight "Trials Of A Witness" (in THE LANTERN, ceased publication in 1853) [Murrell, 10:100-101, 183] are evident reprises of the older static frieze-drawings.

 

Lear and the comic historians in England led directly into the comic story in pictures, as in the mid-century humor magazines of England and the continent; and John Camden Hotten, just before his death in 1873, published in London a complete comic book, THE FOOLS PARADISE, colored illustrations and all.

 

A sequel, FURTHER ADVENTURES IN FOOLS PARADISE, was issued by his successors, Chatto & Windus; both were largely reprints of the great German comic artist, Wilhelm Busch, from FLIEGENDE BLATTER, 1859, ff. A decade before it was taken into the American newspaper in 1894, the comic story in pictures had been accepted as completely natural by a number of American artists -- A.B. Frost (STUFF AND NONSENSE. NY., 1884-88), E.W. Kemble and probably others.

 

The groundwork for the comic book in America was laid when the comic almanacs, beginning with Charles Ellms' AMERICAN COMIC ALMANAC (Boston 1831), created a demand for humorous drawings in pamphlets rather than broadsides. The illustrations of jokes and scenes of static humor -- the cartoon as opposed to the caricature -- continued in the tradition of book

illustration, while the caricature became strictly a feature of the newspapers and magazines which later took over the cartoon as well.

 

The comic -- involving continued action through a series of drawings -- combined the reduplicative frieze-motif, the nursery-tale and horn-book presentation, the comic almanac format, and the emergent European protracted story form (as in Topffer's work) into the comic book.

 

Apparently 1946 is its American centennial.

 

Gershon Legman

 

*****NEXT LETTER AN&Q April 1946*****

 

FIRST COMIC BOOKS IN AMERICA (5:189 et al). Mr Legman rightly notes (5:148) that the history of the comic strip has not been fully traced. Besides the Egyptian forms he cites there is the pictorial representation of a sequence of acts found in mediaeval art, where, e.g., within one pictorial unit are portrayals of a man on the scaffold and the same man beheaded.

 

A longer sequence, depicting a complete narrative - from the first meeting of the "actors" on through the significant episodes to the final murder (or executiuon) - can be seen in the thirty chapter headings in John Reynolds' THE TRIUMPH OF GOD'S REVENGE AGAINST THE CRYINGE AND EXCREIBLE SINNE OF .... MURTHER (4th ed., London, 1663).

 

There are twelve scenes in the first heading; eight on the second, third and fourth; and fourteen in the twenty-fourth. The resemblance to a comic strip in form (but not matter) is striking. I have not seen the earlier editions of this book.

 

Archer Taylor

 

[RB here: AMERICAN NOTES & QUERIES seems to become eratic in publishing schedule like many a small press zine ala ALTER EGO. -]

 

*****NEXT LETTER Jan 1950*****

 

FIRST COMIC BOOK IN AMERICA (6:14, et al). The excellent material that has appeared under this heading has been concerned largely with comics in general as a literary or art form - and not specifically with comic books.

 

The comic book, obviously, is merely an adaptation of an already popular medium. In fact, according to John R. Vosburgh's "How the Comic Book Started" (COMMONWEAL, May 2, 1949), it is only about 17 years old.

 

Harry I. Wildenberg, who in 1932 was sales manager for Eastern Color Printing Company in New York, producers of the comic sections of deozens of papers along the Atlantic Seaboard, had the task of digging up ideas that would sell color printing for his firm. The popularity of the funny sheets baffled him, but he became convinced that they constituted a good advertising medium. He suggested a tabloid of comics, and one of his clients, Gulf Oil, carried out the notion, supplying their own artists and creator. Gulf Oil stations distributed 3,000,000 copies a week.

 

The book notion did not strike him until one day somewhat later he was :idly folding a newspaper in halves, then quarters." He immediately set to work, got pulication rights to Bell Syndicate comics, had an artist make up some dummies, and sent these off to a number of his largest advertisers. When Proctor & Gamble fired back an order for a million 32-page comic magazines in color, "the first comic book ever printed or distributed" was with us. The sponsor called it "(Funnies) on Parade" and in it were many of the popular newspaper strips.

 

Thus far it was all a distribution scheme; the notion that a comic book could be SOLD was for the moment beyond Wildenberg's eye.

 

Not long, however, for soon he invaded the retail market and sounded out the five-and-ten-cent stores. But the idea was thoroughly rejected. Even the comics syndicates turned him down, insisting that nobody wanted to read comics. Yet Wildenberg felt that the field had been scarcely touched. He at last induced Dell Publishing Company to get out a first edition of 40,000; every copy was sold. Nevertheless, the comic book was still considered a gamble, from the advertiser's point of view.

 

In July,m 1934, eaterm put out a trial edition of 200,000 and sold 90 per cent. Each issue thereafter snowballed, month by month. Within less than a year three competitors entered the field.

 

Strangely enough, Wildenberg strongly disapproves of comics in any form. It never occurred to him, he said, that the effect might be disastrous.

 

P. E. R.

 

*****end of the comics history letters*****

 

AN&Q's March 1950 issue had this definition of the term fanzine:

 

"FANZINES": fantasy magazines, or magazines for fantasy fans; term cited in an article on California writers in the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, May 7, 1950.

 

*************FINIS**************

[Theagenes]

PLEASE READ THIS AND MAKE COMMENTS ON WHAT YOU THINK:

 

[snip]

 

 

I read this with amazement the first time you posted it early in this thread, but we were talking about other things at the time and I didn't get a chance to comment on it. It really is like a parallel universe isn't it. And with August Derleth involved, no less! It's shame he never finished his book on comics; what a read that would be. I wonder if any drafts survive in his papers.

 

Gershon Legman's wealth of knowledge is amazing and it does sound like he's speaking from firsthand experience when he's discussing many of those books. (Actually he sounds a lot like you! ) I wonder if his collection survives intact somewhere. One point that he makes, about Ancient Egyptian illustrated narrative is not entirely correct. Cartouches were not word balloons, they were used to designate royal (and only royal) names, similar to how pronouns referring to God or Jesus are capitalized in Christian writings. The Egyptians did, however, often place text representing dialogue close to a figure's head, like word balloons without the balloons. The text and illustrations were often completely integrated in Egyptian writing, both parts being necessary to complete the whole, and they did often have sequential graphic narratives. I mentioned the Book of the Dead as an example earlier in this thread, because it is one the best examples of this and because it isn't an inscription carved on a wall, but an actual book written on paper (albeit in the form of a scroll rather than a codex). It is much closer to a more modern comic strip than you would think, though it's purpose is religious rather than entertaiment (but then so is Illustrated Stories from the Bible).

 

 

The last letter from P.E.R. completes the parallel universe feel by repeating the standard Wildenberg genesis. If not for the dates this exchange of letters really could be easily mistaken for a modern forum thread just like this one. Amazing stuff!

[esquirecomics]

I purchased this copy of Historie de Mr. Jabot tonight on ebay. It is also by Rodolphe Topffer who created Obadiah Oldbuck. The seller described it as being from the 1840s. However, according to Bob B, it is actually a French reprint from the 1860s. No matter. Apparently still in great shape for a 150 year old book!

 

[showcase4]

I purchased this copy of Historie de Mr. Jabot tonight on ebay. It is also by Rodolphe Topffer who created Obadiah Oldbuck. The seller described it as being from the 1840s. However, according to Bob B, it is actually a French reprint from the 1860s. No matter. Apparently still in great shape for a 150 year old book!

 

 

Mark,

Congratulations...this is a very nice Victorian Age purchase.

[Comicdey]

So which one of you is going to purchase the complete 2nd printing OO on ebay in the next 10 hours or so?

 

Now that Mr. B has retracted his statement about it being incomplete?

 

It should be very appealing at it's currently levels. $675??

[BLBcomics-migration]

Hi Mark

 

You did not mention it was an Paris Aubert edition

 

- this would be earlier than the 1860s, as Aubert editions get closer to when Töpffer's originals were published. I do not make any sort of claim to being an expert in Euro comics editions

 

- i know a lot about them, but not like i have grown to learn USA comic books.

 

I asked you about red hard cover, this is not exactly the red of the 1860s reprint HCs which Töpffer's son published

 

- this is more a question to go to the Euro listers on my Plat list to ascertain exactly what this is

 

- but my money is on it being pre 1860s being an Aubert, according to the scan i read.

 

It was from an Aubert edition of Veiux Bois that Tilt & Bogue made the first English translation which became Obadiah Oldbuck in 18141, with those printing blocks going to America to become the Bro Jonathan EXtra #9 1842 edition.

 

Like I told you on the phone, i was buying my French mid 1800s hard covers in Paris antiquarian book stores circa 2000-2001 for $100 to $150 a pop, buying two of each over time - six years later what you paid is decent

 

bob beerbohm