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Comic Book History of Animation #1-5
The Comic Book History of Animation: True Toon Tales of the Most Iconic Characters, Artists and Styles!
From the team behind The Comic Book History of Comics comes the perfect companion piece telling the story of the triumphs and tragedies of the filmmakers and beloved characters of the past century and a half -- essential for hardcore fans of the medium and noobies alike! It's all here, from Aardman to Zoetrope, Disney to Miyazaki, Hanna-Barbera to Pixar, and everything in-between!
Begin in the early 1900s with J. Stuart Blackton and the first American cartoon, Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur, and Felix the Cat! Find out about Margaret Winkler, the most powerful person in early animation, and Walt Disney, who revolutionizes cartoons with sound and color! Discover how Fleischer Studios teaches us to sing Boop-boop-a-doop and eat our spinach, and how Warner Bros' Looney Toons rivaled Disney's Silly Symphonies! Plus, icons of animation including Hanna-Barbera, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, and Ruby-Spears; the Plastic Age of toy-based TV shows including G.I. Joe, Transformers, and He-Man; and the new Golden Age of TV animation launched by The Simpsons!
And go abroad to France with Emile Cohl's dynamic doodles in Fantasmagorie; to Japan, where Momotaro debuts the first full-length anime, Divine Sea Warriors, and Osauma Tezuka conquers TV as he conquered manga; and to Argentina, which beat out Snow White for the first feature length animated movie by two decades!
And finally, Jurassic Park and the computer animation revolution! Post-Little Mermaid Disney, Pixar, and Studio Ghibli conquer the world!
Begin in the early 1900s with J. Stuart Blackton and the first American cartoon, Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur, and Felix the Cat! Find out about Margaret Winkler, the most powerful person in early animation, and Walt Disney, who revolutionizes cartoons with sound and color! Discover how Fleischer Studios teaches us to sing Boop-boop-a-doop and eat our spinach, and how Warner Bros' Looney Toons rivaled Disney's Silly Symphonies! Plus, icons of animation including Hanna-Barbera, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, and Ruby-Spears; the Plastic Age of toy-based TV shows including G.I. Joe, Transformers, and He-Man; and the new Golden Age of TV animation launched by The Simpsons!
And go abroad to France with Emile Cohl's dynamic doodles in Fantasmagorie; to Japan, where Momotaro debuts the first full-length anime, Divine Sea Warriors, and Osauma Tezuka conquers TV as he conquered manga; and to Argentina, which beat out Snow White for the first feature length animated movie by two decades!
And finally, Jurassic Park and the computer animation revolution! Post-Little Mermaid Disney, Pixar, and Studio Ghibli conquer the world!
124 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2021
About the author
Fred Van Lente
1,402 books329 followersFred Van Lente is the New York Times-bestselling author of comics as varied as Archer & Armstrong (Harvey Award nominee, Best Series), Taskmaster, MODOK's 11, Amazing Spider-Man, Conan the Avenger, Weird Detective, and Cowboys & Aliens (upon which the 2011 movie was based), as well as the novels Ten Dead Comedians and The Con Artist.
Van Lente also specializes in entertaining readers with offbeat histories with the help of his incredibly talented artists. He has written the multiple-award winning Action Philosophers!, The Comic Book History of Comics, Action Presidents! (all drawn by Ryan Dunlavey), and The Comic Book Story of Basketball with Joe Cooper (Ten Speed September 2020).
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Crystal Skillman, and some mostly ungrateful cats.
Van Lente also specializes in entertaining readers with offbeat histories with the help of his incredibly talented artists. He has written the multiple-award winning Action Philosophers!, The Comic Book History of Comics, Action Presidents! (all drawn by Ryan Dunlavey), and The Comic Book Story of Basketball with Joe Cooper (Ten Speed September 2020).
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Crystal Skillman, and some mostly ungrateful cats.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 6, 2021
Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, the creative team behind similarly edumacational comics Action Philosophers and The Comic Book History of Comics, are back with a new chin stroker: The Comic Book History of Animation - and it’s a cracking read!
The book starts in the late 19th century and takes readers through the 20th century with the rise of animation thanks to the likes of the Fleischer brothers, Walt Disney, Osamu Tezuka, Hayao Miyazaki and John Lasseter, ending on 3D animation and the widespread popularity of anime.
The early days of animation were the most compelling for me. I’d heard of Winsor McCay before, the creator of Little Nemo, but didn’t realise that, in addition to his influential comics, he was also an animator and that, when he animated his creation, he literally hand drew each animation frame from scratch each time - no photocopies or assistants to help him! It’s amazing how he achieved such consistent fluidity of motion too - here’s the 96 second Little Nemo short that’s the end result of his efforts. It still looks fantastic to this day.
Then seeing Max Fleischer and his brothers improve on the technique was still more impressive. Dave Fleischer was a Coney Island clown and the brothers decided to film Dave in costume doing his act, then trace the individual frames to produce a smoother look. It took them 9 hours a day for a year (that’s in addition to working full time jobs!) but The Clown’s Pup remains an outstanding work.
The Fleischers were a remarkable bunch. Among many notable achievements, Charles went on to invent the arcade claw machine and it was their suggestion that Popeye got his strength from eating spinach.
Van Lente highlights many other figures from animation history too. Besides the most famous like Disney, we also learn about Ub (pronounced “oob”) Iwerks, who helped Disney set up his company but got treated horrendously by Walt (Van Lente thoroughly shows why Walt Disney was a colossal prick, and not just through his treatment of Ub), to Mary Blair, the designer of the Baby Mine sequence from Dumbo, who used her very real life pain of numerous miscarriages to lend the scene the power it has as Dumbo’s mother caresses Dumbo through the bars of her cage.
It’s also a very informative read, explaining the myriad animation processes. From “chalk-talking” (lightning sketches transforming images with lines from one thing to another in front of a live audience), to the tediously slow early days of animating, to the invention of xerox transforming the process (which directly led to 101 Dalmations), and eventually to where we are today with 3D animation.
There’s a helluva lot more besides - the story behind the triumph that was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (and the disaster that was Disney’s follow-up, Fantasia), where the name Pixar comes from and why the lamp is the mascot, the origin stories behind the various Looney Tunes characters, among others - but suffice it to say that anything most readers with a casual interest in the subject will want to know about animation is all here.
I liked how Dunlavey coloured the early pages in black and white, to reflect the animations at the time, and then slowly introduced colour as time went on when colour started appearing in the cartoons themselves. And I thought it was a clever idea to depict the various figures as famous cartoon characters (Mickey, Yosemite Sam, Woody, etc.) to add some playful variety to the visuals.
It’s a very text-heavy comic so it’s not the most relaxing read and I didn’t find the studio bickering back and forths with the animators all that interesting - it felt a bit repetitive as it kept happening through the years. Overall though, The Comic Book History of Animation is a great book full of compelling facts and stories on this remarkable medium told well with wit and enthusiasm by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey.
The book starts in the late 19th century and takes readers through the 20th century with the rise of animation thanks to the likes of the Fleischer brothers, Walt Disney, Osamu Tezuka, Hayao Miyazaki and John Lasseter, ending on 3D animation and the widespread popularity of anime.
The early days of animation were the most compelling for me. I’d heard of Winsor McCay before, the creator of Little Nemo, but didn’t realise that, in addition to his influential comics, he was also an animator and that, when he animated his creation, he literally hand drew each animation frame from scratch each time - no photocopies or assistants to help him! It’s amazing how he achieved such consistent fluidity of motion too - here’s the 96 second Little Nemo short that’s the end result of his efforts. It still looks fantastic to this day.
Then seeing Max Fleischer and his brothers improve on the technique was still more impressive. Dave Fleischer was a Coney Island clown and the brothers decided to film Dave in costume doing his act, then trace the individual frames to produce a smoother look. It took them 9 hours a day for a year (that’s in addition to working full time jobs!) but The Clown’s Pup remains an outstanding work.
The Fleischers were a remarkable bunch. Among many notable achievements, Charles went on to invent the arcade claw machine and it was their suggestion that Popeye got his strength from eating spinach.
Van Lente highlights many other figures from animation history too. Besides the most famous like Disney, we also learn about Ub (pronounced “oob”) Iwerks, who helped Disney set up his company but got treated horrendously by Walt (Van Lente thoroughly shows why Walt Disney was a colossal prick, and not just through his treatment of Ub), to Mary Blair, the designer of the Baby Mine sequence from Dumbo, who used her very real life pain of numerous miscarriages to lend the scene the power it has as Dumbo’s mother caresses Dumbo through the bars of her cage.
It’s also a very informative read, explaining the myriad animation processes. From “chalk-talking” (lightning sketches transforming images with lines from one thing to another in front of a live audience), to the tediously slow early days of animating, to the invention of xerox transforming the process (which directly led to 101 Dalmations), and eventually to where we are today with 3D animation.
There’s a helluva lot more besides - the story behind the triumph that was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (and the disaster that was Disney’s follow-up, Fantasia), where the name Pixar comes from and why the lamp is the mascot, the origin stories behind the various Looney Tunes characters, among others - but suffice it to say that anything most readers with a casual interest in the subject will want to know about animation is all here.
I liked how Dunlavey coloured the early pages in black and white, to reflect the animations at the time, and then slowly introduced colour as time went on when colour started appearing in the cartoons themselves. And I thought it was a clever idea to depict the various figures as famous cartoon characters (Mickey, Yosemite Sam, Woody, etc.) to add some playful variety to the visuals.
It’s a very text-heavy comic so it’s not the most relaxing read and I didn’t find the studio bickering back and forths with the animators all that interesting - it felt a bit repetitive as it kept happening through the years. Overall though, The Comic Book History of Animation is a great book full of compelling facts and stories on this remarkable medium told well with wit and enthusiasm by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey.
December 7, 2021
A fun overview of the history of mainstream animation. Walt Disney and his company suck up most of the pages of course, Hayao Miyazaki is pushed forward to represent pretty much the entirety of Japanese animation, and apparently nothing much happened anywhere else in the world. So sure, it has some shortcomings trying to reduce 120 years of animation development and progress into the same number of comic book pages, but I still enjoyed the new tidbits I learned and made a game of spotting all the animated characters used to represent real industry figures and tucked in around the edges (a lot go unnamed in the book, but I think I worked out most of them).
Anyhow, with a focus on the 1940s to 1990s, it's a nice nostalgia wallow for anyone like me who grew up watching cartoons on Saturday mornings during the '70's and '80s. Younger folks might be disappointed to see the last twenty years reduced to a cameo of Garnet and She-Ra walking arm in arm (which, yes, crossover please!).
Anyhow, with a focus on the 1940s to 1990s, it's a nice nostalgia wallow for anyone like me who grew up watching cartoons on Saturday mornings during the '70's and '80s. Younger folks might be disappointed to see the last twenty years reduced to a cameo of Garnet and She-Ra walking arm in arm (which, yes, crossover please!).
July 25, 2021
Somehow I'd never heard of this graphic novel until I saw it in the store. It was amazing! I loved how famous animators were merged with their characters (Disney with Mickey, McKay with Gertie, Fleischer with Bimbo, Miyazaki with Totoro, and my favorite, Jones with Wile E. Coyote) - it made the book much more pleasant to read than it would have to just see a bunch of guys with mustaches. The information on Golden Age American animation is almost entirely accurate, and I also learned a TON about silent animation, TV animation, and Japanese anime as well. It's also important to note that any speech bubbles with quotation marks are direct quotes from the speakers themselves.
Animation and printed comics have always gone hand in hand. Popeye and Superman started as comic characters before transitioning to animation, and animated characters like Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny eventually got their own comic books. It's a no-brainer to see the history of animation depicted in a graphic novel format, and this one was entertaining, informative, and gorgeous.
Animation and printed comics have always gone hand in hand. Popeye and Superman started as comic characters before transitioning to animation, and animated characters like Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny eventually got their own comic books. It's a no-brainer to see the history of animation depicted in a graphic novel format, and this one was entertaining, informative, and gorgeous.
July 22, 2023
As a fan of both mediums, I really enjoyed this. I wouldn’t recommend this though to anyone who wasn’t already a massive fan of animation and the history of animation. Tons of dialogue in this one made it feel like I was reading an essay, but the illustrations humored me and broke up the monotony mostly.
April 1, 2025
I have to read this again to get all the details again—this is packed with information.
October 7, 2021
This is an excellent overview of the history of animated film. The parts I already knew were done accurately, so I am confident that this is well researched and accurate throughout. Perhaps the biggest takeaway for those not well versed in animation history is how big a jerk Walt Disney was. He overworked his employees and took credit for much that others did, as well as being rabidly anti-union. The book is not meant to be comprehensive but does a great job of looking at the highlights of the development of tv and Japanese animation. It doesn't spend much time at all on stop-motion animation, but devotes a chapter to computer-generated animation.
July 15, 2021
This graphic novel sets itself the formidable task of focusing on a brief history drawn and computer animation. (Sadly due to space, stop-motion animation does not get explored.) It starts from Tomas Edison in 1896 and goes up to the present day. Creators and directors are drawn in the form of their creations, such as Walt Disney as Mickey Mouse and Chuck Jones as Wile E. Coyote. It goes through studio creation, sound and colour, the rise of TV and the advent of computer animation. The book manages to cover all of these and some of the behind the scenes pressures and changes in the industry in a bright and witty style. A wonderful starting point for anyone interested in and fascinated by the medium of animation.
April 23, 2021
Definitely an entertaining overview of animation with a fantastic notes section in the back. While I am left with several questions such as "what about Happy Harmonies" and why didn't they mention "such and such person" I am reminded that this is not meant to be definitive. And so, I think it is really well done. I wish I could give it an extra half star.
January 4, 2024
The art is nice and cleverly captures the different eras of animation. Unfortunately, the history provided is largely superficial with the occasional anecdote and a narrative that focuses more on the business and industry of animation than the art of it. That is a choice one can make, but it makes it a slog to trudge through a hundred pages of what is basically a list of business decisions and transactions.
Granted, the history of an art-form that's been around for a century is bound to be abbreviated in the form of a 123-page comic book. Even so, I would have liked a little more discussion of why people love making and watching animation. It is so tedious to create, yet it has such capacities for beauty, but that is hardly touched on. Instead, it almost feels like animation is just a stand-in for any random industry in the 20th century.
Granted, the history of an art-form that's been around for a century is bound to be abbreviated in the form of a 123-page comic book. Even so, I would have liked a little more discussion of why people love making and watching animation. It is so tedious to create, yet it has such capacities for beauty, but that is hardly touched on. Instead, it almost feels like animation is just a stand-in for any random industry in the 20th century.
November 25, 2023
This was a fun, informative read. The artist’s decision to render famous figures as “off model” versions of the cartoon characters they created took some time to get used to, and I’m still not sure I love the choice. The book puts an emphasis on the shared histories and overlaps of comics and animation, which helps justify the delivery method of the history. It makes more sense than a sense textbook, but I would have liked a few more photographs or reproductions of the actual works instead of the Ryan Dunlavey’s stylized versions. I know that copyright laws probably made that difficult or impossible, but the preference remains.
February 27, 2026
ok wow. one the most well-researched graphic nonfics i've ever read, on a topic i didn't realize covered so much.
from 1800s trickfilms to 2000s CGI in roughly 100 pages, it's easy to get info overload, but the caricatures of key characters help! i also like how the author draws parallels, acknowledges biases, and emphasizes people's flaws, never deifying a person simply for their contributions to the field.
found myself googling names and titles every other panel, not knowing there was an intensive "notes on sources" & linked watchlist at the very end. very cool read, highly recommend if you're even slightly fascinated by animation & new media. 💖
from 1800s trickfilms to 2000s CGI in roughly 100 pages, it's easy to get info overload, but the caricatures of key characters help! i also like how the author draws parallels, acknowledges biases, and emphasizes people's flaws, never deifying a person simply for their contributions to the field.
found myself googling names and titles every other panel, not knowing there was an intensive "notes on sources" & linked watchlist at the very end. very cool read, highly recommend if you're even slightly fascinated by animation & new media. 💖
March 29, 2022
Fascinating history of virtually the entire history of animation as we know it, starting with sideshow proto-animation called "chalk-talking" and leading all the way up to Pixar. It's mostly about animation in America, though a decent amount of space is given to anime as well. I came away feeling like I learned a lot.
February 5, 2022
Very informative and entertaining.
May 31, 2023
Good book overall, but the author is clearly not being objective. His personal opinions do show through.
December 10, 2024
A fun look at the history of Animation from the dawn of the medium to the early 21st century. I read it digitally and I think I'd better get a hard copy so I can consult the endnotes more.
September 6, 2024
I nice walk through of animation. Limited depth but that is going to happen in a cartoon history. Nicely executed. Fun.
July 22, 2021
Meh ... Suffers from Wokeism. Joel Chandler Harris is accused of "cultural appropriation" about 100 years before anyone heard the term. Doesn't he deserve some credit for burying to preserve the stories of Native Americans and former slaves? And the author described Ayn Rand as a conservative - she's spinning in her grave.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews