Obadiah Oldbuck vs. Superman

[showcase4]

:

 

To quote that site:

 

"Oldbuck may not have qualified as a comic book by every possible definition of the word. It used captions instead of word balloons. It didn't have continuing characters. More important, the pictures carried relatively little of the narrative load — a bare bones version of the story can be understood from the short captions alone, tho the pictures did add a great deal to the humor."

 

 

 

very interesting...out of all the info. provided on this web page, you focused on the 1 or 2 scentences that when magnified support your negative views. Not much of a convincing discredit to this credible site.

[Psiknight]

 

To quote that site:

 

"Oldbuck may not have qualified as a comic book by every possible definition of the word. It used captions instead of word balloons. It didn't have continuing characters. More important, the pictures carried relatively little of the narrative load — a bare bones version of the story can be understood from the short captions alone, tho the pictures did add a great deal to the humor."

 

 

 

very interesting...out of all the info. provided on this web page, you focused on the 1 or 2 scentences that when magnified support your negative views. Not much of a convincing discredit to this credible site.

 

I could care less either way, but all I did was put the info that deals with whether it is or is not a comic book. Please add more from that site where he says "it is a comic book." Other than the classification at the top of the page, he seems to say it's a comic book...sort of.

 

I'm sure you won't be able to as there is no such information on that page.

[showcase4]

 

I could care less either way.

 

thanks for your input...perhaps you would be more comfortable in the Comics General section of the Boards

[comicdonna]

It sounds like showcase-4 is trying to kick you out of the gold comics forum. Amazing, since he's only been here for three months.

[Psiknight]

He can't refute what I said so he tries to "insult" my posting ability (as well as a veiled insult against my intelligence).

[BLBcomics-migration]

Don Markstein's Toonopedia™ http://www.toonopedia.com/oldbuck.htm Showcase brought to the table here brings up an aspect of the confining definition gifflefink neglected to conjure up in his word balloon quest, invoking the dead spirits of Swinnerton and Eisner along the way, and i suspect the Hoary Hosts of Hoggarth some time soon,

 

that being the same comics definition he clings to also stipulates in no uncertain terms that a comic strip MUST contain recurring characters, an aspect i also reject out of hand

 

So, does the CGC body general think a comic strip must contain recurring characters to be a comic strip? That any stand alone single issue comic book containing word balloons, but a one shot which never had a 2nd issue, also, by this narrow definition devised in the 1960s by a small group of guys who twisted it all so Yellow Kid ends up becoming "first", are not to be considered comic books either?

 

Just wondering

 

Me, i think in terms of a glass as being half full

 

that the house of the comic ghods should be more inclusive, which, once one disgards such narrow mindedness, opens the doors to a host of creators long neglected for serious study

 

In the same vein, Overstreet has long considered the undergound comix movement which HQ'd for a long time out in the Bay Area of San Francisco with the likes of Crumb, Shelton, Bode, Corben, Sheridan, Spain, etc etc etc not to be "real" comic books either, denying them their rightful place in the comics collecting community as non-entities unworthy of inclusion

 

The doors to my comic strip research will always remain wide open, casting as wide a net as one has the vision to accept.

[Earl Davis]

Hi Bob. Whilst I think we are in broad agreement about a lot of the early comics I have two questions about areas where we appear to have different opinions.

 

1) How prevalent amongst ‘comics scholars’ is the acceptance of sequential single page illustrations as comics and do they have to appear on every page?

 

RB: do you m ean single panel? they are accepted as comics, but not necessarily as sequential comics - but something like Dennis the Menace daily single panel would due to recurring characters

 

 

When is something like this a comic and when does it become an illustrated story? For example Stuff and Nonsense is rather like a lot of what we call ‘Ladybird Books’ here in the UK. Some of these have a large illustration on each page with a paragraph or two of text at the bottom. The art and text move the story on from page to page. Some Lady bird books have a single page illustration then a page of text then another illustration and so on. Are these still comics?

 

RB: Denis Gifford, the most famous of all UK comics historians made STUFF AND NONSENSE the first comic book liste din his THE AMERICAN COMIC BOOK 1884-1938 tome which came out maybe 15-20 years ago.

 

I sometimes view comics the way some USA judge said about porn: I know it when i see it -

 

And if there is several pages of text between each illustration but the illustrations still sequentially move on the story is this still a comic? Where is the division between a comic and an illustrated story?

 

That is a hard question with no easy answer. Usually i wwould say not - we use a code in the Victorian and price indexes first devised by my friend world class comics history and long time editor at Sergio Bonelli comics publisher in Milan, Alfredo Castelli (Italy) to try to deferentiate what is a "real" comic book, what contains some sequentials, whether it is newspaper reprint or original material, what is merely a book containing illustrations by some famous comic strip artist, etc

 

 

2) A lot of the publications you list in the Victorian Section of Overstreet contain comics. When does a publication that contains comics become a comic book?

 

Again, refer to the code we use in the Price Index section to help you along with what we think - we try very hard to show the collector how to tell a first print, what it should contain to be complete, and how it fits in the pantheon of layers of what it is

 

 

If 60% is comics I think most people would say it’s a comic book. CGD says 50% to qualify for inclusion in the CGD database. If it’s 40% is it still a comic book?

 

RB: I was part of those GCD discussions back in the mid 1990s - our criteria there was devised to try to bring some order out of potential chaos as to what to index first. There was some talk of trying to index Sunday sections from all over th world as well, but so far no one has tackled any aspect of that area of comics collecting.

 

How much sequential comic content does something like Wild Oats have?

 

 

RB: it varies. each issue is 16 pages - some issues are half comics, others contain very little - the first strips begin with the 3rd issue or so, and are Busch reprints - and quickly Wild Oats begins running stuff from all kind sof creators.

 

Opper begins sequential comic strips in there as early as 1875 - oh, how i would LOVE to get a WILD OATS comic strip reprint book published - limiting it to 200 pages would be difficult to figur eout what to leave out of such a tome

 

 

The Punch’s I have a certainly less than 25% content. When does a publication go from being a comic book to a publication that just contains some comics?

 

RB: Again, we have puzzled thur this very difficult question with the code. Here is the preamble I wrote for the Victorian Price Index OPG #36 2006:

 

COLLECTOR'S NOTE: Some of books listed in this section were published well over a century before organized comics fandom began archiving and helping to preserve these fragile popular culture artifacts. Consequently, copies of most all of these comics almost never surface in Fine+ or better shape. Most are in the Poor to VG range. If you want to collect these only in high grade, your collection will be extremely small. Each year we are filling in the price blanks on more items. The past few years we have been more concerned with simply establishing what is known to exist. The prices given for Fair, Good and Fine categories are for strictly graded editions. If you need help grading your item, we refer you to the grading section in this book or contact the authors of this essay. Items marked rare we are trying to figure out how many copies might still be in existence. We welcome help.

For ease ascertaining the contents of each item of this listing and the Platinum index list, we offer the following list of categories found immediately following most of the titles:

E - REPRINT OF EUROPEAN COMICS MATERIAL

G - GRAPHIC NOVEL (LONGER FORMAT COMIC TELLING A SINGLE STORY)

H - "HOW TO DRAW CARTOONS" BOOKS

I - ILLUSTRATED BOOKS NOTABLE FOR THE ARTIST, BUT NOT A COMIC.

M - REPRINT OF MAGAZINE / PERIODICAL COMICS MATERIAL

N - REPRINT OF NEWSPAPER COMICS MATERIAL

O - ORIGINAL COMIC MATERIAL NOT REPRINTED FROM ANOTHER SOURCE

P - PROMOTIONAL COMIC, EITHER GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE, OR A PREMIUM GIVEN IN

CONJUNCTION WITH THE PURCHASE OF A PRODUCT.

S - SINGLE PANEL / NON-SEQUENTIAL CARTOONS (ENTIRELY OR

PREDOMINANTLY)

Measurements are in inches. The first dimension given is Height and the second is Width. Some original British editions are included in the section, so as to better explain and differentiate their American counterparts. This section created, revised, and expanded by Robert Beerbohm with acknowledgment to Bill Blackbeard, Chris Brown, Alfredo Castelli, Darrell Coons, Leonardo De Sá, Scott Deschaine, Joe Evans, Ron Friggle, Terry Keegan, Tom Gordon, Michel Kempeneers, Andy Konkykru, Don Kurtz, Richard Olson, Robert Quesinberry, Steve Rowe, Randy Scott, John Snyder, Art Spiegelman, Steve Thompson, Richard Samuel West, Doug Wheeler and Richard Wright. Kudos to Gabriel Laderman.

 

 

Interested in your views.

 

Thanks Earl.

 

 

HI Earl

 

Hopefully i have addressed adequately what you bring up in this post. Feel free to expannd upon that which is still unclear. I already tried to make the Victorian and Plat price indexes as user friendly as possible, previously anticipating some of the very queries you made above

 

best

 

Robert Beerbohm

 

Yes, thanks Robert.

 

Interesting that Denis Gifford went with Stuff and Nonsense in his book on American Comics. I have his works on UK comics but nothing he wrote exclusively about the American works. The first Comics history book I read was 'Discovering Comics' by Gifford from our school library at the tender age of 11. It was full of covers of 19th and early 20th century comics.

 

Earl.

[BLBcomics-migration]

Yes, thanks Robert.

 

Interesting that Denis Gifford went with Stuff and Nonsense in his book on American Comics. I have his works on UK comics but nothing he wrote exclusively about the American works. The first Comics history book I read was 'Discovering Comics' by Gifford from our school library at the tender age of 11. It was full of covers of 19th and early 20th century comics.

 

Earl.

 

Denis Gifford's 1990 book THE AMERICAN COMIC BOOK 1884-1938 is an index listing dimensions, page count, contents of everything in his collection he had from America. It began with this Frost book, then the Kansas City Missouri Humoristic Publishing Company Images d'Epinal he dated to 1888, and goes on from there.

 

His 1800s stuff was obviously minimal, a function of pre ebay days when stuff was a lot harder to find as one had to sift thru 100s of antique shops and garage sales before finding any nuggets - how well i remember those days, feeling like a prospector out hunting down a treasure trove.

 

It is Gifford's only work on strictly American material that i am aware of, as he produced some 60 comics history books, mostly in UK stuff, which is only natural as he lived there. I think i have that Discovering Comics, a smallish pamphlet? Having hundreds of reference books on comics lads to one not remembering all the titles of fhand.

 

He was always quite adamant that Alley Sloper predated Yellow Kid as the "first" recurring character in comics, a concept easily agreed to by simple chronology.

 

Rowlandson's Doctor Syntax recurring character concept predates Alley Sloper by decades, but does not quite hit the sequential comic strip criteria. There was even Doctor Syntax products to buy, as there was a huge out-pouring of Alley Sloper stuff to buy, the latter's stuff hitting the markets about the same time as Palmer Cox THE BROWNIES material became a hit, and the The Brownies are not comics per se, cartoon type characters to be sure, but there was not a Brownies comic strip until after Yellow Kid and only one compilation of Brownies strips was made in 1908.

[BLBcomics-migration]

Bob keep the history on this coming, very interesting stuff.

 

Thanks, glad people are getting something positive out of this material.

 

so who wants to see more? There are some 300 Ernie McGee letters in the trove i have posted from, of which his niece and myself have transcribed about 50 of them to date from his hand written monologues teaching his friend Joe Campbell

[Earl Davis]

Yes, thanks Robert.

 

Interesting that Denis Gifford went with Stuff and Nonsense in his book on American Comics. I have his works on UK comics but nothing he wrote exclusively about the American works. The first Comics history book I read was 'Discovering Comics' by Gifford from our school library at the tender age of 11. It was full of covers of 19th and early 20th century comics.

 

Earl.

 

Denis Gifford's 1990 book THE AMERICAN COMIC BOOK 1884-1938 is an index listing dimensions, page count, contents of everything in his collection he had from America. It began with this Frost book, then the Kansas City Missouri Humoristic Publishing Company Images d'Epinal he dated to 1888, and goes on from there.

 

His 1800s stuff was obviously minimal, a function of pre ebay days when stuff was a lot harder to find as one had to sift thru 100s of antique shops and garage sales before finding any nuggets - how well i remember those days, feeling like a prospector out hunting down a treasure trove.

 

It is Gifford's only work on strictly American material that i am aware of, as he produced some 60 comics history books, mostly in UK stuff, which is only natural as he lived there. I think i have that Discovering Comics, a smallish pamphlet? Having hundreds of reference books on comics lads to one not remembering all the titles of fhand.

 

He was always quite adamant that Alley Sloper predated Yellow Kid as the "first" recurring character in comics, a concept easily agreed to by simple chronology.

 

Rowlandson's Doctor Syntax recurring character concept predates Alley Sloper by decades, but does not quite hit the sequential comic strip criteria. There was even Doctor Syntax products to buy, as there was a huge out-pouring of Alley Sloper stuff to buy, the latter's stuff hitting the markets about the same time as Palmer Cox THE BROWNIES material became a hit, and the The Brownies are not comics per se, cartoon type characters to be sure, but there was not a Brownies comic strip until after Yellow Kid and only one compilation of Brownies strips was made in 1908.

 

Yep, 'Discovering Comics' was his small digest type size book. Probably not much to look back on now, but absolute magic stuff to my 11 year old self.

 

Earl.

[showcase4]

Thank you Earl for your contributions. You appear to "get it". I am a comic book collector, and have been since 1992. I started in the Silver Age, and that led to other areas of comic collecting...Gold, Promotional, some unlisted, and in 2003 I graduated to the Platinum and Victorian Age. As an owner of an 1842 Brother Jonathan / Obadiah Oldbuck, no one can or will ever tell me that what I have is not a comic book. With 14 years experience under my belt, I know what a comic book is when it's in my hands....I don't need a website or encylopedia to calrify it. All the reference guides and various definitions in the world will not undermine my experience of reading a comic book when I read Obadiah Oldbuck....it may look different, feel different, smell different, and be bound different than an All American 16, but that is due to changes over the past 164 years in printing, technology, and manufacturing advancements. This is by far one of the greatest comic books I have ever owned, and I am proud to be its new owner, and protector of the American history that it represents and is.

 

To put my money where my mouth is, I will up my buy price to $25,000 to any of you who can find me a VG or better unrestored Brother Jonathan / Obadiah Oldbuck dated Spet. 14th, 1842.

[Crowzilla]

Steve,

it looks like I was spot-on in my prediction for the Suspense Comics #3 - $40,000 plus the buyer's premium.

So I'll take some applause now along with my Christmas card.

 

I guess there really is a market value even for things that rarely turn up for sale.

[HouseofComics.Com]

Bob keep the history on this coming, very interesting stuff.

 

Thanks, glad people are getting something positive out of this material.

 

so who wants to see more? There are some 300 Ernie McGee letters in the trove i have posted from, of which his niece and myself have transcribed about 50 of them to date from his hand written monologues teaching his friend Joe Campbell

 

I actually enjoyed those letters quite a bit. I'd enjoy seeing more.

 

About the only other thing I have to add on this thread, besides that I've been enjoying it from day one, is that I can vouch for both Steve and Gifflefunk. I received an enquiry from Steve last year and sent a package to Gifflefunk as well. Plus I got an order from the guy who people said was a krazycat shill (Haman) and it certainly wasn't Steve.

 

Marc

[showcase4]

Steve,

it looks like I was spot-on in my prediction for the Suspense Comics #3 - $40,000 plus the buyer's premium.

So I'll take some applause now along with my Christmas card.

 

I guess there really is a market value even for things that rarely turn up for sale.

 

you nailed it allright ...thougth of you when I looked up this sale yesterday. This does prove a predictable pricing pattern for great and rare books.......$40,000 for Supense #3, $20,000 for Obadiah Oldbuck...makes perfect sense to me---if a rare and high demand classic cover from the 1940's is worth $40k, then America's extremely rare 1st comic book from the 1840's is a no brainer at $20k.

 

Suspense 3...Heritage has 2 more for sale right now in their upcoming auctions over the next few months. Obadiah Oldbuck...may never come on the market again in yours or my lifetime, or could surface tomorrow...no way to know for sure. I can tell you as a collector of books from the Vic/Plat era, you have to do what it takes to buy a key book when it surfaces, or you may never get another shot. When the previous Obadiah Oldbuck sold on Ebay for $3,500 in 2002, that book had no where near the following or publicity that it does now. I'll bet you back then when it was listed, 80% of ebay comic book potential buyers had no idea what it is...that is no longer the case. If an Obadiah where to be listed on Ebay today, virtually everyone who saw the listing would know what it is, and the demand would be MUCH greater than 4 years ago ( in my opinion ). The same is the case with #1 big little book...Mickey Mouse The Mail Pilot #731 - rare variation. Last recorded sale was $5,090 for a fine back in 2001. I'll bet you collectors thought that buyer was nuts back then...he's not...if one of those comes on the market again, I will blow away that price with what I'm willing to spend. The difference----- more knowledge and exposure to that great and rare book will create a many multiplier price factor to what I as a collector would be willing to pay just a few years later. With Suspnse 3 ------- everyone has known about that book for decades, and it has always been on the radar screen as a high profile book. I stick to my price of $20,000 as very justifiable for the above reasons....I am now willing to pay even more to add another copy to my collection.

[gifflefunk]

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

 

C'mon, did you really just try to use this lame tactic? Try again, Bob. I know Gifflefunk's real name. I've seen it published. Arnold B can vouch for him too.

 

He's legit and he knows his schit.

 

One of Bob's usual tactics. Along with posting tons of information in an attempt to mask the fact that he is avoiding areas he doesn't wish to discuss such as the definition prior historians and scholars operated under with which he does not agree.

 

My sources at MSU tell me no one has been there in recent memory working on an article to refute the concept of 1800s comic strips predating the advent of Yellow Kid.

 

Again, another tactic designed to make it sound like I've never been to MSU. Fact is I haven't been to MSU in over five years and on my last trip my primary purpose was delving into some Chicago newspaper holdings for another project. But I did spend some time in Special Collections checking on a few things and making notes for my own edification. I decided to start an article to rebut the claims that others are "dead wrong" when it comes to the Yellow Kid after this thread got started.

 

Debating with me without having read thru the original artifacts strikes me as disingenuous at best, dispalying lack of comics wisdom.

 

I have admitted previously on these boards that I haven't read McFadden's Flats. I don't know for certain that it contains any true comic strip material (reprints or original art). What I do know it Outcault is given credit by his contemporaries as the man that triggered the artwork revolution at the end of the 1890s. This includes Swinnerton who, as you pointed out, had a cartoon strip in San Francisco prior to the Yellow Kid ever showing up in a comic strip.

 

But I have also asked that you show to me another artist or comic strip where contemporary artists place credit for triggering the adoption of word balloons. You claim it was the newspaper bosses that triggered that revolution. But why? It was due to the success of the Yellow Kid. Perhaps the bosses did put pressure on their artists to produce such content but the Yellow Kid is still the trigger regardless of whether the artists adopted it themselves to sell a strip or if the bosses put pressure on their house artists to make a strip that could compete with Outcault's material.

 

Any serious comics scholar knows of Ernie Mcgee...

 

Lots of interesting information in the series of posts that follow this statement. But I don't see anything that demonstrates a comic strip w/ word balloons that can be credited for starting the artwork revolution at the end of the 1890s.

 

"However- Swinnerton's Little Bears and Tigers of 1892 were consecutive repitition, of the same characters - but these were black and white prints..."

 

As noted above, these predate the Yellow Kid and were the same art-format as Obadiah... illustrations with captions. The embedding of dialogue and narration into the artwork was the key to converting cartoons w/ captions into comics [per the Eisner defintion] and is why others have given credit to the Yellow Kid as the historical starting point to the comic industry. Swinnerton gives credit to Outcault in 1934 (as you pointed out) prior to anyone compiling one of the histories you claim as being "dead wrong" (btw, you used "dead wrong" in one of your Scoop articles).

 

The "old" cartooning format of illustrations with captions was known to other researchers, including Gaines (of whom your opinion is noted). It is not like these earlier artists were unknown to prior scholars; fact is, they didn't consider the material produced by the likes of Busch and Töpffer to be comic strips. You have a different view that accepts that material as being comics by the definition you use, but it doesn't make their view wrong in not accepting them as comics by their definition.

 

...an aspect of the confining definition gifflefink neglected to conjure up in his word balloon quest, invoking the dead spirits of Swinnerton and Eisner along the way, and i suspect the Hoary Hosts of Hoggarth some time soon,

 

that being the same comics definition he clings to also stipulates in no uncertain terms that a comic strip MUST contain recurring characters, an aspect i also reject out of hand

 

Hoggarth? Only if we decide to start a discussion on the origins of word balloons (which even predate Hoggarth so he might only show up in passing). And the Eisner definition of a comic from "Graphic Storytelling" is "the printed arrangement of art and balloons in sequence, particularly in comic books". No mention of recurring characters in that definition.

 

And personally I don't feel that recurring characters are necessary. Any series of illustrations where dialogue or narration is rendered as part of the artwork is a comic. With only captions you have cartoons and picture-stories. And with no text related directly to the image at hand you simply have illustrations.

 

...this narrow definition devised in the 1960s by a small group of guys who twisted it all so Yellow Kid ends up becoming "first", are not to be considered comic books either

 

Swinnerton gives credit to Outcault as early as 1934. So I'm not sure what twisting was going on other than those you disagree with operating under the same definition that was later put forth by Eisner. Although I'm interested in learning more about this small group with plans to make the Yellow Kid the "first" (i.e. the conspiracy).

 

I accept that you operate under a more inclusive definition and I only wish that you could understand that others operate under a more exclusive definition including scholars, historians, and artists that came before you. Their research is correct under the definition they used and if you are going to prove them "dead wrong" you should do it under their own definition or make it clear that they used a definition that is different from your own and then give your views on the matter. But to continually use straw man tactics to make it appear that you've uncovered something they've overlooked makes you a hack in my eyes and if you take offense to that then so be it.

[*paull*]

you nailed it allright ...thougth of you when I looked up this sale yesterday. This does prove a predictable pricing pattern for great and rare books.......$40,000 for Supense #3, $20,000 for Obadiah Oldbuck...makes perfect sense to me---if a rare and high demand classic cover from the 1940's is worth $40k, then America's extremely rare 1st comic book from the 1840's is a no brainer at $20k.

 

On top of your misguided and unsuccessful attempt to get people to acknowledge that illustrated book, you have absolutely no understanding of the vintage comic book market. You are comparing two books at total opposite ends of the demand spectrum. After the Gerber books were released, it rocketed to the top of the charts of desirability by horror fans, Schomburg fans, Golden Age fans, and rare comic fans. That copy Suspense Comics #3 is one of the hottest books to be offered by Heritage in years.

 

I question whether Heritage would even list your illustrated book. I think it's hilarious that you bought that book at BLB's ransom price. I'd bet anything that if it was sold at auction, it wouldn't have been anywhere near that 20K price that you paid.

[showcase4]

you nailed it allright ...thougth of you when I looked up this sale yesterday. This does prove a predictable pricing pattern for great and rare books.......$40,000 for Supense #3, $20,000 for Obadiah Oldbuck...makes perfect sense to me---if a rare and high demand classic cover from the 1940's is worth $40k, then America's extremely rare 1st comic book from the 1840's is a no brainer at $20k.

 

That copy Suspense Comics #3 is one of the hottest books to be offered by Heritage in years.

 

I question whether Heritage would even list your illustrated book. I think it's hilarious that you bought that book at BLB's ransom price. I'd bet anything that if it was sold at auction, it wouldn't have been anywhere near that 20K price that you paid.

 

Hello...is there a brain in that head of yours? I called Suspense 3 a rare high demand classic cover...what else would you like me to do...give it a hummer? The fact that you think I paid too much for Obadiah Oldbuck is your problem..not mine. We'll see how my $50,000 investment in 3 copies pans out over the next 10 years.

I also challenge you to contact Heritage Auctions, and see their interest level in having America's 1st comic book in one of their auctions.....go ahead, and then let us all know on this post what they said. Sounds to me like you are the one lacking in vintage comic knowledge...I have used Suspense 3 as an example several times witihin this thread due to its superior market demand and rarity...it is one of my favorite Golden Age books. Go back to reading your Classics Illustrated and stop questioning my knowledge.

[BLBcomics-migration]

Some of you are missing the point re Steve buying my nicer Obadiah Oldbuck for $20K

 

I did not persue him, he came at me relentless to sell it like a pitbull.

 

Ask him.

 

Meyer has said as much here, and more, which some of you choose to ignore, rather, some of you seem to choose to live in a fantasy land wherein i have some sort of ultimate power over Steve Geppi, John Snyder, Robert Overstreet, and the rest of the Gemstone crew setting the market for 1800s and early 1900s comic books.

 

I did not even name these "ages" of comics.

 

Victorian was named by Doug Wheeler and Platinum came from John Snyder. Ask them.

 

I am sure you know who John Snyder is?

 

Without his perseverence in making the space available, the Plat and Vict sections would never have been, much less grown with the direct input of dozens of collectors of these eras of comic strip books who are duly noted in credits for all to see.

 

As a matter of fact, not fantasy, John Snyder and i fought a few years back as i was adamant that the time was not yet ripe to insert prices on anything pre 1870 - I am a comics researcher, not a market maker when it comes to these sections of the price guide.

 

- if you look at earlier incarnations of these sections, you will ntoice innumerbale in lieu of prices many of the items an dvisrtually everything listed pre 1870.

 

The first batch of years building this section of the Price Guide was spent merely ascertaining what existed out there in this long neglected area of comics collecting. What proper dimensions were, accurate page counts, what was a reprint or not - and i wanted to feel 99% comfortable with such data before layering in prices

 

- and John argued right back at me that The Overstreet is a price guide, and we needed to begin guiding those prices. Since it is their book, not mine, prices have been placed for most all the items listed now. And the boys in Timonium raise prices on some of the material without any input from me and my body of advisors. It is their book.

 

I have merely shared some of the fruits of my research into the origins of the American comic book focusing on those with sequential comic strips, pointing out that material which does not fit the criteria.

 

I have lowered prices on some of these artifacts as eBay proved them to be very common, and raised prices on others, a function of documented sales patterns on eBay and elsewhere.

 

And as far as what NP gifflefink has to pstcho-babble, I take what Ernie McGee has to say, a man who had it all back then in the day to conduct proper research as to where the origins of newspaper comic strips come from, over ANY BODY in the history of comics.

 

Will Eisner was one of the greatest creator geniuses the comics world will ever know, but that does not necessarily make him the greatest comics historian

 

Read the few letters i posted written by the man who was such. Ernie McGee, letters many of us comics scholars analyzed years ago on my yahoogroups Plat list - figuring out where Earnie had it right, and where he was not.

 

All right there in the Plat archives stretching back to late 1999. To read more letters by Ernie, go to teh FILES section on the Plat home page.

 

All Yellow Kid did was teach Pulitzer, Hearst, Bennett, and othe rmajor news paper publishers that customers would fork over their hard earned pennies for the Sunday color comics section, the rest of the newspaper was secondary. He wasn't even the first recurring character in newspaper comic strips, he was definitely the first super star in newspaper comics, to be sure.

 

And that is the consensus of a majority of comics scholars the world over these days.

 

It was solely thru the collecting efforts of Ernie McGee, who knew a great many of these old masters personally, who compiled the world's only known complete tear sheet run of the Yellow Kid, a run of YKs which first went to Jack Herbert, then willed to Bill Blackbeard's San Francisco Acamdey of Comic Art, a place i hung out at more times than i can remember when i had comic book stores since 1972.

 

This narrow definition of what constitutes a "real" comic strip NP gifflefink keeps bringing up, the one which supposedly has to contain word balloons, must be accepted in toto to be properly discussed here.

 

And that narrow definition also must include the concept of recurring characters.

 

Both of which i reject out of hand as not necessary to be a sequential comic strip.

 

It took me 30 years to get to the conclusion of tossing out both of these criteria, and the last decade i have dealt with a great many die hards who cling to what they want to believe, including this, discarding that. If you include must having word balloons, then you must include the recurring character aspect ofthat same narrow definition.

 

I have answered the questions asked - go back and read what i placed here.

 

Obadiah Oldbuck was in print in America beginning in 1842 and still for sale in New York City as late as 1904, that from The New York Times article i have from the same year, but maybe we will choose now to make the NY Times suspect as well, eh?

 

ALL of the comic strip artists worth any kind of salt would have read these early American comic books, Obadiah Oldbuc, Bachelor Butterfly and the others & Fitzgerald kept in print until the early 20th century. They all learned from Töpffer.

[BLBcomics-migration]

NP: Swinnerton gives credit to Outcault as early as 1934. So I'm not sure what twisting was going on other than those you disagree with operating under the same definition that was later put forth by Eisner. Although I'm interested in learning more about this small group with plans to make the Yellow Kid the "first" (i.e. the conspiracy).

 

NP: I accept that you operate under a more inclusive definition and I only wish that you could understand that others operate under a more exclusive definition including scholars, historians, and artists that came before you. Their research is correct under the definition they used and if you are going to prove them "dead wrong" you should do it under their own definition or make it clear that they used a definition that is different from your own and then give your views on the matter. But to continually use straw man tactics to make it appear that you've uncovered something they've overlooked makes you a hack in my eyes and if you take offense to that then so be it

 

RB: Saying Yellow Kid is "first" comic strip is like saying Action #1 is "first" comic book in the modern era. I have noticed a shift in the cultural space time continuum of late that seeks to name Action #1 as the beginning of the "Golden" Age of comics.

 

Me, i think the "Golden" Age was the decade before World War One, when Little Nemo,Krazy Kat, and other classics began.

 

And that "Golden" Age surely begins with Yellow Kid being the first super star recurring character.

 

Your slur of hack, something you mentioned here before i got on this thread, is what brought me to refer to you as insufficiently_thoughtful_person in the first place.

 

Poor much maligned NP, what "conspiracy" to you refer to?

 

Methinks you confuse me with Doug Wheeler, who contributed into the Vict section for a couple years, who very much did refer to such a "conspiracy" in his posted research on this subject - to very vocal outcrys from many comics scholars. It was Doug Wheeler, who has a very large collection of 1800s comics material, who was all up in arms about this word balloon thing you malign me with. He has comic strips with word balloons datingback as erly as 1828 published in the UK - I have seen them incredible stuff, but i have never been a party to this conspiracy theory you throw at me now - you must be a Mel Gibson fan.

 

And once you start messing with such an exclusive definition as you refer to worked out by a small group back in the 1960s, you need to start all over again from scratch.

 

Which is what a large group of us did by not making word balloons and recurring characters be-all, end-all in the definiton of a comic strip.

 

Where did I say they "overlooked" this earlier material?

 

I have stated all along, and do so upfront in the Vict section of Overstreet and in innumerable writings archived in my Plat list, that we choose to pull out the concepts of recurring characters and word balloons as having to be in a comic strip.

 

See, i just LOVE Hal Foster, and have near complete full page tear sheet runs of his Tarzan (1931-1937) and Prince Valiant (1937-1970) - and many full pages of 1930s Alex raymond Flash Gordon as well. Word balloons in these giants of comic strips? Nope.

[infinite_comics-migration]

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

 

C'mon, did you really just try to use this lame tactic? Try again, Bob. I know Gifflefunk's real name. I've seen it published. Arnold B can vouch for him too.

 

He's legit and he knows his schit.

 

One of Bob's usual tactics.

 

Ah. That explains the equally immature "gifflefink" nickname.