Pothole invented the First Comic ?

[Eta Beta]

Olivier, Don

>In my (short) research on comic strips a couple of  years ago, I had found a
>reference to Töpffer's as the first comic. As the name suggests, it was a
>European "comic", entitled "Histoires en Estampes", published in Switzerland
>in 1846-7.
>The next comic work was Wilhelm Busch's "Max und Moritz" (1860-70), in
>Germany.

Well, I understand there are different "schools of thought" on the
matter, differing where they try to define what a "real" comic is...

The general agreement about the Yellow Kid being the first "real"
comic is based on the fact that it was the first to introduce spoken
words within the boundaries of the panel, first with the messages
on his gown or posters, and later with "proper" word balloons, rather
than confining the narration in captions, often rhyming, as it was
with Obadiah or Max und Moritz and other early european stuff.

The first comic according to the "Toeppfer Theory" would instead be
the one which first featured more images than text, and "invented"
the panels sequence as format, and that could certainly have been
Toeppfer...

But this "style" was itself just the evolution of the classic
illustrated tale, where you usually had a full page of illustration
every dozen of text or so, and we could go as far back as to the
Altamira caves this way... :-)

So I personally stick with the Yellow Kid, me, although I find
all this research work on the origins of comics highly interesting
(and I have the Obadiah book, rather a large magazine format, btw)


However, back to the original topic, I think this whole "first
comic" idea could really be a perfect "excuse" for a Pothole
story, although I'm not sure Toeppfer or Busch ever visited the
States... but he *might* have read Obadiah, and perhaps come up
with the very idea of word balloons, for instance, but nobody
takes him seriously... and I don't think it would have to be
the actual comic book *format* the matter, but the general concept
of comics...

So I second the motion for a new Pothole story about comics... :-)


Ah and, Don... I'm afraid the italian translators goofed the "Big
Money" gag as well... they used "guadagnar bene" (lit. earn well),
when it could have easily been "fate dei GRAN soldi" (lit. make
BIG money), which, I'm afraid, means they must have missed the
gag altogether...


Cheers!

Eta Beta