The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay

by Thierry Smolderen, Bart Beaty (Translator), Nick Nguyen (Translator)

In The Origins of From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay, Thierry Smolderen presents a cultural landscape whose narrative differs in many ways from those presented by other historians of the comic strip. Rather than beginning his inquiry with the popularly accepted "sequential art" definition of the comic strip, Smolderen instead wishes to engage with the historical dimensions that inform that definition. His goal is to understand the processes that led to the twentieth-century comic strip, the highly recognizable species of picture stories that he sees crystallizing around 1900 in the United States.

Featuring close readings of the picture stories, caricatures, and humoristic illustrations of William Hogarth, Rodolphe Töpffer, Gustave Doré, and their many contemporaries, Smolderen establishes how these artists were immersed in a very old visual culture in which images―satirical images in particular―were deciphered in a way that was often described as hieroglyphical. Across eight chapters, he acutely points out how the effect of the printing press and the mass advent of audiovisual technologies (photography, audio recording, and cinema) at the end of the nineteenth century led to a new twentieth-century visual culture. In tracing this evolution, Smolderen distinguishes himself from other comics historians by following a methodology that explains the present state of the form of comics on the basis of its history, rather than presenting the history of the form on the basis of its present state. This study remaps the history of this influential art form.

Genres: Comics, History, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels, Art, Comic Strips

168 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Thierry Smolderen (born 25 November 1954) is an essay writer, as well as a script writer of Belgian comic strips.

Smolderen is a teacher at École des Beaux-Arts of Angoulême, France. As a comic books historian, he wrote Naissances de la bande dessinée (2009), about the "platinum age" of comics. This book has been published in English by the University Press of Mississippi in 2014, under the title The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay (Eisner Award nominee of 2015 in the Best Scholarly/Academic Work category).

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

⇝ 4.5 stars

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent history of the form also offers thoughtful theoretical approaches to the form. Concepts like polygraphic art, readable images and arabesque are useful additions to the critical vocabulary of comics scholarship.

[ilovecomics · Rating 1 out of 5]

Come raramente mi capita, ho abbandonato questo saggio poco dopo metà dell’opera. Pensavo fosse un’opera divulgativa, ma l’impressione finale è che il libro sia scritto da uno studioso più per altri studiosi che non per un pubblico di semplici appassionati. Il linguaggio dell’autore, che flirta con la semiologia, non aiuta. Non all’altezza di un testo complesso anche la traduzione italiana, a volte ho avuto l’impressione che i traduttori stessi non abbiano compreso il testo da tradurre. Un esempio?

Nel diciannovesimo secolo, così come nel diciottesimo, l’umorismo illustrato era, prima di tutto, un esercizio di flessibilità per il poliglotta visuale e moderno. Per vocazione, l’umorismo poligrafico è, in linea generale, un generatore prolifico di forme ibride, e quel generatore fu tenuto molto occupato dal successo del romanzo romantico illustrato … e dall’ecologia forsennata della stampa illustrata in generale.

Peccato, perché l’edizione in copertina rigida è molto bella, magnificamente illustrata e in grande formato.

[Lulu]

Hogarth moral tales:
Harlot's Progress 1731-32
A Rake's Progress 1733-35
Marriage A-la-Mode 1743-45
Other:
Industry and Idleness 1747
The Four Stages of Cruelty 1751
The Humours of an Election 1755



“Our Funny Page.” Marvel 4 Jun. 1898: 15.

“Come on Tabitha.” Untitled comic. Illustrated Chips 18 Feb. 1899: 5.

[Mark]

PN 6710 .S613 2014 COCC Had for a couple months but returned. Hope to get to someday.