A few years ago I had the privilege and luck to visit the legendary comic creator Jack Kirby.
I travelled over the ocean no less than twice to speak with this great man in his house in California. Jack and I spoke for many hours about his creations and those of others. He spoke warmly about his early years in the business and the trauma of later when he locked horns with just about everybody for the return of his original artwork and the ownership of his copyrights. Until that day I’d always presumed that comics were something we, the Brits, had given to the Yanks. Jack mentioned innocently that comics were “an American artform. Not art,” he said, “but an art form”.
(Jack Kirby shakes hand with Glenn; I’d post a cheeky comment here, but frankly I’m too consumed with jealousy to think of a caption!)
On my return I did some research and found that Mr Kirby was not entirely correct. Yes, the initial creation of the ‘American comic strip’ lay at the feet of no less a figure than Joseph Pulitzer (he of the very prestigious prize fame) and newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. Their fight is well documented elsewhere but it seems that way, way back in the mid 1860s The Little Bears was published, the first strip with recurring characters. Mutt and Jeff was the first successful American daily comic strip, first appearing at the turn of the 20th century. But ‘strips’ had occurred long before these: you can argue that proto-comic strips exist from the time of ancient Egypt, several millennia ago (or even draw connections to cave paintings or Aboriginal rock art even further back in human history – Joe).
More recently, the Bayeux Tapestry (which is a visual narrative of the Battle of Hastings and beyond, embroidered on a seventy-meter cloth strip with annotations in Latin) was created following the invasion of the Normans into England in 1066. William Hogarth‘s English cartoons from the 18th century, which include both “single panel” work and also narrative sequences such as The Rake’s Progress appeared before Hearst and Pulitzer began their tiff. Around the mid 1860s a German strip appeared and so this era seems to have brought forth many a creative mind that lent itself to a sequential ‘artform’. Indeed, the German strip Max and Moritz had an undeniable influence on the American strip – and Jack Kirby was still half a century away from being born.
Like most memories and claims it’s never the whole story. Even Da Vinci is recognised as a creator of the ‘cartoon’. Kirby was right though: comics are an American artform. As they are a British artform… A French artform… A German artform… And so on. And I’ve not even mentioned the Japanese yet…
Crikey! issue 6 is on sale now and available from your local, friendly, neighbourhood FPI store and via the official Crikey! site. Glenn is currently planning an archaeological expedition to a chalk pit near Piltdown where he hopes to unearth proof Neolithic Britons invented the comic
Sat, Jul 19, 2008
Comics and cartoons, Crikey! It's Saturday!