Overview

In The Origins of Comics: 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.

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9781617031496

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"The wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approach to comics that Smolderen presents sets a new standard for the field, and the imaginative connections he draws should inspire other scholars to think as creatively. This is an important translation of a book that will continue to inspire scholars for years to come.--Susan Ohmer ""Cinema Journal"""

Author Information

Thierry Smolderen, Angoulême, France, is a comics writer and scholar who teaches at the École européenne supérieure de l'image.|Bart Beaty, Calgary, Alberta, is associate professor of communication and culture at the University of Calgary. Together, Nick Nguyen and he have translated The System of Comics by Thierry Groensteen and Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of the American Comic Book by Jean-Paul Gabilliet, both published by University Press of Mississippi.|Nick Nguyen, Brussels, Belgium, is an independent historian and researcher. Together, Bart Beaty and he have translated The System of Comics by Thierry Groensteen and Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of the American Comic Book by Jean-Paul Gabilliet, both published by University Press of Mississippi.

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