First Comic

[Eta Beta]

Timo (and Steven)

>>proper word balloons in cartoons
>
>This is little bit off topic, but well.... The whole idea is a bit stupid: 
>that in order to be a proper comic it should have speech balloons. That 
>drops off Hogart's Tarzan, Foster's Prince Val and others.

Mind you, I don't disagree with the general concept. In fact, the one
(and only, so far) japanese comic I dearly love is "GON", the completely
wordless story of a strange (and extremely strong) little dinosaur, and
there's really no need for words in there (there are no humans, of course,
so who would do the speaking, anyway ? :-)

I was talking about historical perspective, what I really think is that
it is virtually impossible to precisely nail down a "first comic" in
history without first setting up arbitrary rules that aim to define it,
rules that are obviously arguable with... we might consider the speech
balloons as the demarcation line, or the panels sequence layout or, as
Don seems to favour, the medium itself, i.e. a "book" purposedly
created to carry only comics rather than a "common" newspaper with a
strips section or a children's illustrated book and, again, arguing each
point we'd find ourselves in a cave somewhere studying graffitis... :-)


Olivier

You might perhaps find it easier to locate the Obadiah book in Italy,
since it's where it's been originally published, as sort of a "supplement"
to the Napoli Comic Convention last March. I'm sorry I cannot suggest
a direct source for that, though...

Another (relatively) recent book I found very interesting was "The
Yellow Kid", published by Kitchen Sink in 1995 with an "introduction"
(some 150 pages) by Bill Blackbeard.


Cheers!

Eta Beta