Obadiah Oldbuck vs. Superman

[Shield]

If DC decided to do an issue of Batman using live action pictures of people in super-hero costumes, would it be a comic book or not?

 

You could make a comic book using actual pictures instead of artwork.

 

Did you just recently find the underline function? Perhaps you're adding to your carbon footprint with the extra u's. Should'nt you be out doing google searches on "Global warming" so you can copy and paste more boring articles into the most boring thread ever on the CGC boards?

 

Now that being said, do you think OO is a comic book Fuelman? Please explain why or why not.

[Shield]

Go stuff yourself silly!

 

And with that, out of respect for the GA forum, I have said what I feel needed to be said!

 

 

Go stuff myself silly? I'm sure that's a devistating comeback for you in the breakroom at Circuit City. Now go answer my question above.

[Forbush-Man]

If DC decided to do an issue of Batman using live action pictures of people in super-hero costumes, would it be a comic book or not?

 

You could make a comic book using actual pictures instead of artwork.

 

Not according to FFB.

 

"In my sole opinion, what makes a comic book is the fact that the thing (whatever it is) is in booklet form (whatever size and however bound), and involves visual storytelling in sequential form using "comic-style" drawings. "

 

Well, I disagree with him that drawings are needed. We've all seen examples where pictures of actual people are used for the action (and word ballons, though not the only acceptable means to show language).

 

He's a lawyer, not God.

[ShoNuff-migration]

If DC decided to do an issue of Batman using live action pictures of people in super-hero costumes, would it be a comic book or not?

 

You could make a comic book using actual pictures instead of artwork.

 

Not according to FFB.

 

"In my sole opinion, what makes a comic book is the fact that the thing (whatever it is) is in booklet form (whatever size and however bound), and involves visual storytelling in sequential form using "comic-style" drawings. "

 

Well, I disagree with him that drawings are needed. We've all seen examples where pictures of actual people are used for the action (and word ballons, though not the only acceptable means to show language).

 

He's a lawyer, not God.

Ok...so drawing aren't needed to make a comic book. And, since it's already been shown that storytelling in sequential form is not a requirement for a comic book either...it looks like FFB's definition needs to be amended to read as such:

 

"In my sole opinion, what makes a comic book is the fact that the thing (whatever it is) is in booklet form (whatever size and however bound)."

 

There you have it folks. A comic book is simply anything in booklet form. And, since there were many American books printed prior to Obadiah Oldbuck...then it can't be the first American comic book.

[Aman619]

Fumetti is a storytelling technique independent of the manner in which it is published. It that can be published in HC book, magazine or the current $2.99 comicbook form. But, lets face it, its very difficult to make a definitive list of elements that comprise the perfect definition, as we have seen in previous restoration threads.

 

Once again, sadly for arguments here, we know it when we see it but cant define it to everyones satisfaction.

[Forbush-Man]

[ShoNuff-migration]

Fumetti is a storytelling technique independent of the manner in which it is published. It that can be published in HC book, magazine or the current $2.99 comicbook form.

Which is exactly what I was trying to get them to admit. And of course they were purposefully dodging my point (as only lawyers can) because it would have weakened their argument.

[Forbush-Man]

Okay..................................Is OO the first comic book? I don't know. What I do know is that all things either stay the same (and usually become extinct) or evolve. There are very few original ideas. Most new ideas come from previous ideas. Is there a set standard for wht is/is not a comic book?

 

My collecting interests start with the modern comic book, 1933. Does that mean there's not a comic book before that? NO!

 

What we have here is failure to appreciate what is the evolution of an artform we all know and love as a four color comic book.

[Aman619]

Right now, in 2006, we are still in the pamphlet stage. But in 30 years should the pamphlet give way to trades, or some other form, I guess we will be MORE inclined to include OO and other Platinum formats as we will be looking back over a 200 year rolling evolution of the physical format of comics, while leaving the actual storytelling devices pretty much the same. At least to my way of thinking because I see the present format as a "comicbook."

 

You know, if you are agreeing with this right now, youre half way into Bob's head an this whole thing.

 

Heres a question: will Marvel and DC comics still be 'comics' should they abandon all paper and publish electronically on the web (or whatever?) It would be absurd to call those stories 'comicbooks'... but Im sure we'd still refer to each story the same way we do now, like, "What did you think of the new Spidey comic, or issue?"

[ShoNuff-migration]

Okay..................................Is OO the first comic book?

 

 

No.

 

 

[Shield]

Okay..................................Is OO the first comic book?

 

 

No.

 

 

Of course it isn't.

[Theagenes]

OO is the same format as a Famous Funnies:

 

1) wrap-around floppy pamphlet 40 pages long, saddle stitched using string because staples had not yet been invented. Both Ciorac and Theagenes have ordered the facsimile reprint, in the mail, you should have in your hands shortly. Read and then judge from a better perspective.

 

It does not matter which "age" has been pegged.

 

A comic book is a comic book is a comic book.

 

Under that comes:

 

comic magazine

comic paperback

comic graphic novel

comic trade

comic tabloid

comic treasury

comic oblong

comic codex

comic scroll

 

and anything else one wishes to throw into the mix

 

(snip)

 

Personally, I have no problem with this nomenclature; i.e. using "comic book" as a more general umbrella term for all of these various formats and "comic magazine" for what most people consider modern comic books from 1933 and up. That is after all technically more accurate. I will start doing so in this discussion, if for no other reason than for the sake of clarity. But the problem is that for several generations we've been referring to comic magazines as "comic books." That is so engrained that it will be difficult to change. If I talk about comic magazines in this thread or the Platinum thread you know exactly what I mean, but if I were to go to the General Forum and start talking about comic magazines without clarifying what I meant, people would think I was talking about SSOC.

 

Aman makes an excellent obsevation when he says this may be changing as the comic magazine format dies out. Sadly, to me it seems like it almost has already. The future will no doubt be manga and e-comics. Just the other day I wanted to get a Batman comic boo... uh... magazine for my two-year old (he loves the animated series), so I went by the magazine rack when I was in the grocery store. Much to my chagrin they only had three titles - a Spiderman, an X-Men and an Archie - no DC at all! I ended up having to go to my LCS to find a Batman comic! I suppose this is no surprise to those of you who read and collect moderns, but shocked me. The comic magazine format that we all know and love is, I'm afraid, going the way of the dodo after a magnificent 70+ year run.

 

But I digress. Getting back to OO, let's say for the sake of argument that OO is a comic strip, or at least a rudimentary comic strip. If so then all the printings of OO as stand alone books would be comic books in the broadest sense. But what you're also saying is that the 1842 printing in particular is not just a comic book, but a comic magazine as well, or least pretty damn close. That does make it something special. Are there other examples of Victorian comic books that use this magazine/chapbook-like format? Or is the 1842 OO unique in this respect? If it is unique, then it does make it a historical curiosity, but not necessarily significant in terms of the evolution of the comic magazine (which, biased or not, is the POV from which most of us view OO). I don't doubt that Topffer's work influenced Outcault, Opper and others, but this would be in the area of artwork, content, perhaps layout, but not necessarily in printing format. Likewise, Wildenberg, Gaines, Norman Marsh at Humor (?), et al. might have been aware of Topffer's work through reprints, but it is highly unlikely that they would seen that one particular printing from 1842 and said, "Hey that's like a comic dime novel! Great idea! Maybe if I fold this newspaper in half...." In other words, the fact that the 1842 OO format is very similar to modern comic magazines is an interesting coincidence, but doesn't really have any direct link to the appearance of modern comic magazines a century later. The content of Topffer's work, on the other hand, was certainly a major element in the developent of comics in general.

 

It is obvious to me that most of you reading this thread, and many of the respondents, have not seen and read what i have seen and read.

 

That's certainly true. I've started working on a bibliography by culling the many sources you've cited in your previous posts. I've got a lot of reading and catching up to do.

[comicdonna]

OO is the same format as a Famous Funnies:

 

1) wrap-around floppy pamphlet 40 pages long, saddle stitched using string because staples had not yet been invented. Both Ciorac and Theagenes have ordered the facsimile reprint, in the mail, you should have in your hands shortly. Read and then judge from a better perspective.

 

It does not matter which "age" has been pegged.

 

A comic book is a comic book is a comic book.

 

Under that comes:

 

comic magazine

comic paperback

comic graphic novel

comic trade

comic tabloid

comic treasury

comic oblong

comic codex

comic scroll

 

and anything else one wishes to throw into the mix

 

(snip)

 

Personally, I have no problem with this nomenclature; i.e. using "comic book" as a more general umbrella term for all of these various formats and "comic magazine" for what most people consider modern comic books from 1933 and up. That is after all technically more accurate. I will start doing so in this discussion, if for no other reason than for the sake of clarity. But the problem is that for several generations we've been referring to comic magazines as "comic books." That is so engrained that it will be difficult to change. If I talk about comic magazines in this thread or the Platinum thread you know exactly what I mean, but if I were to go to the General Forum and start talking about comic magazines without clarifying what I meant, people would think I was talking about SSOC.

 

Aman makes an excellent obsevation when he says this may be changing as the comic magazine format dies out. Sadly, to me it seems like it almost has already. The future will no doubt be manga and e-comics. Just the other day I wanted to get a Batman comic boo... uh... magazine for my two-year old (he loves the animated series), so I went by the magazine rack when I was in the grocery store. Much to my chagrin they only had three titles - a Spiderman, an X-Men and an Archie - no DC at all! I ended up having to go to my LCS to find a Batman comic! I suppose this is no surprise to those of you who read and collect moderns, but shocked me. The comic magazine format that we all know and love is, I'm afraid, going the way of the dodo after a magnificent 70+ year run.

 

But I digress. Getting back to OO, let's say for the sake of argument that OO is a comic strip, or at least a rudimentary comic strip. If so then all the printings of OO as stand alone books would be comic books in the broadest sense. But what you're also saying is that the 1842 printing in particular is not just a comic book, but a comic magazine as well, or least pretty damn close. That does make it something special. Are there other examples of Victorian comic books that use this magazine/chapbook-like format? Or is the 1842 OO unique in this respect? If it is unique, then it does make it a historical curiosity, but not necessarily significant in terms of the evolution of the comic magazine (which, biased or not, is the POV from which most of us view OO). I don't doubt that Topffer's work influenced Outcault, Opper and others, but this would be in the area of artwork, content, perhaps layout, but not necessarily in printing format. Likewise, Wildenberg, Gaines, Norman Marsh at Humor (?), et al. might have been aware of Topffer's work through reprints, but it is highly unlikely that they would seen that one particular printing from 1842 and said, "Hey that's like a comic dime novel! Great idea! Maybe if I fold this newspaper in half...." In other words, the fact that the 1842 OO format is very similar to modern comic magazines is an interesting coincidence, but doesn't really have any direct link to the appearance of modern comic magazines a century later. The content of Topffer's work, on the other hand, was certainly a major element in the developent of comics in general.

 

It is obvious to me that most of you reading this thread, and many of the respondents, have not seen and read what i have seen and read.

 

That's certainly true. I've started working on a bibliography by culling the many sources you've cited in your previous posts. I've got a lot of reading and catching up to do.

So, is it your opinion, that OO is Not the first Comic Book?

[Theagenes]

So, is it your opinion, that OO is Not the first Comic Book?

 

Depends on what you mean by "comic book." Nomenclature is something we've been hashing out for several pages now. If you mean "comic book" in the broadest sense, the way Bob uses it, which would include things like graphic novels, trade paperbacks, etc. then yeah, maybe. It also comes down to your definition of a comic strip. Does it have to have word balloons? Text integrated into the art? Are captions at the bottom of the panel enough? Is the combination of text and images truly a narrative or just vignettes with descriptive captions? What is it that makes a comic as opposed to cartoon? These are things that I'm still hashing out for myself. Everyone will no doubt draw the line someplace different. After I get the reprint and can read the whole thing in context I'll have a better sense of whether or not I personally believe it is a comic strip. If the answer to that is yes, then I would say that it is a comic book (in the general sense).

 

If by "comic book" you mean is it a modern-style comic magazine, then the answer for the 1842 version (and only that version) is, again, maybe (if you can accept OO as a comic strip in the first place). Certainly it is very much like a modern comic magazine. But my point in the previous post is that even if it is, then it's just an interesting coincidence of format and likely didn't have any direct influence on the development of the 20th century comic magazine format that we are all familiar with.

 

As far as the influence of OO and Topffer's other works in terms of art and content on later comic creators in the late 19th and early 20th century, I don't think that is in question.

 

Confused? Join the club! Welcome to the OO vs. Superman thread!

[ciorac]

Someone call Frank Miller and tell him he needs to return all of the comic book industry awards he won for Batman: the Dark Knight Returns because it didn't have staples. Despite having read and collected comic books for roughly 30 years, this is the first I've ever heard of staples as an essential requirement for a comic book. Your (or was it ciorac's?) horse-drawn carriage analogy is flawed because an internal combustion engine is the sine qua non of an automobile, whereas staples are absolutely not the essence of what makes something a comic book. And a cave isn't a "book," so I fail to see how your other hyperbolic example is intended to prove any real point.

 

In my sole opinion, what makes a comic book is the fact that the thing (whatever it is) is in booklet form (whatever size and however bound), and involves visual storytelling in sequential form using "comic-style" drawings. I don't have a problem accepting a string-bound book as a comic book if it meets the criteria of being in booklet form and using visual, sequential storytelling.

 

The fact that Bob made money off of OO doesn't make it any less a comic book and your focus on that instead of the substance of what he is saying weakens any merit your argument has.

 

I made no mention of staples. But now that you mention it, I do believe most comics have staples, but not all. Many perfect bound comics did and do not. So they are not essential.

 

My horse drawn carriage analogy is not flawed for the purpose that it was used. To illustrate that while OO may indeed be the earliest example of a precursor to the modern comic book, it is simpy that, a precursor, not a comic book. Much the way a horse drawn carriage was a precursor to automobiles. Hence the term horsepower.

 

Not according to Wikipedia.

 

Personally, I think there needs to be an accepted definition of what is a "comic book" before anyone can determine whether OO fits the definition. It appears to fit my definition, and does not fit yours. Whose is correct though?

 

The same steam engines used on horeseless carriages....so actually my usage was again...correct.

 

But, I am forced to agree with you that there needs to be a definition of what is truly a comic book.

 

I can't help but think that you would certainly agree that Bob's definition is far too broad. He includes everything that has any comic images in it for crying out loud! Do you think that Archive Editions, Marvel Masterworks, Savage Sword of Conan, Hard bound books reprinting comics, Graphic Novels, etc, are the same animal as Batman #11 or Spiderman #33 for example?

 

If that is the casethis debate is pointless, but if everything on earth that has comic material in it is a comic book, then of course OO would be one too.

 

My opnion is that comic books, in the classic sense, started in the 20th century. I'm not sure what was the actual first. Detective Dan, in photos, looks like a comic book to me, so perhaps he is the one. I'm not sure.

 

I am sure that Cupples and Leon books, many of which I have held in my hands are most assuredly not comic books. Bob is sending me a reprint of the OO book. Once I have it in my hands, perhaps then I can speak from experience and not my opinion.

[ciorac]

Okay..................................Is OO the first comic book? I don't know. What I do know is that all things either stay the same (and usually become extinct) or evolve. There are very few original ideas. Most new ideas come from previous ideas. Is there a set standard for wht is/is not a comic book?

 

My collecting interests start with the modern comic book, 1933. Does that mean there's not a comic book before that? NO!

 

What we have here is failure to appreciate what is the evolution of an artform we all know and love as a four color comic book.

 

Incorrect. I appreciate the living heck out of OO and all the Victorian age books, and their place in comics evolution. I am simply not going to extend that appreciation so far as to say it is the first american comic book.

[esquirecomics]

But, I am forced to agree with you that there needs to be a definition of what is truly a comic book.

 

Does there really "need" to be?

 

Besides the impact it may have on Showcase from an investment standpoint as to owning the first American "comic book", I am not clear on what impact the definition has other than from an academic historical aspect, which I enjoy discussing and reading about very much.

[Aman619]

 

hold on cowboy! Comics arent dead yet. I say theres a solid chance they may disappear and be replaced by a paperless or new physical format, But I dont see evidence of that in the dearth of selection at grocery store magazine racks. Im sure that store sells cigars too, but for a "cigar smoker" the selection would be similarly wanting, wouldnt it? And there must be many other examples of items a store may "carry" without attempting to maintain a broad selection of choices. And, in my limited knowledge of Supermarket economics, I believe that EVERYTHING they carry is on a negotiated basis as to location, and quantity, etc., or as a result of deals and contracts. Marvel and Archie and Disney currently find some value in placing their books here. DC apparenty does not... right now, in THAT chain/store or retail location.

 

anyway, comics today have migrated to specialty stores. Whether thats a sign of weakness and endangerment, or a show of strength to no longer have to rely of coffee shops and newsstands, is debatable. We'll find out in 30 years.

[Aman619]

But, I am forced to agree with you that there needs to be a definition of what is truly a comic book.

 

Does there really "need" to be?

 

Besides the impact it may have on Showcase from an investment standpoint as to owning the first American "comic book", I am not clear on what impact the definition has other than from an academic historical aspect, which I enjoy discussing and reading about very much.

 

thats reason enough, dont you think?

 

...and clearly, the financial aspect follows directly as a result of the findings of that academic research.

[Theagenes]

hold on cowboy! Comics arent dead yet. I say theres a solid chance they may disappear and be replaced by a paperless or new physical format, But I dont see evidence of that in the dearth of selection at grocery store magazine racks. Im sure that store sells cigars too, but for a "cigar smoker" the selection would be similarly wanting, wouldnt it? And there must be many other examples of items a store may "carry" without attempting to maintain a broad selection of choices. And, in my limited knowledge of Supermarket economics, I believe that EVERYTHING they carry is on a negotiated basis as to location, and quantity, etc., or as a result of deals and contracts. Marvel and Archie and Disney currently find some value in placing their books here. DC apparenty does not... right now, in THAT chain/store or retail location.

 

anyway, comics today have migrated to specialty stores. Whether thats a sign of weakness and endangerment, or a show of strength to no longer have to rely of coffee shops and newsstands, is debatable. We'll find out in 30 years.

 

Those are good points and I hope you're right, but circulation numbers are certainly down from where they were in the 70s and 80s aren't they? Younger kids just don't seem to be as interested in traditional comics. Video games and TV are tough to compete with.

 

On a side note, the first thing my son did with his Batman comic is rip the cover off!!