Father of the Comic Strip

Rodolphe Töpffer

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism
Cover of the book Father of the Comic Strip by David Kunzle, University Press of Mississippi
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: David Kunzle ISBN: 9781604739985
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi Publication: March 19, 2007
Imprint: University Press of Mississippi Language: English
Author: David Kunzle
ISBN: 9781604739985
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Publication: March 19, 2007
Imprint: University Press of Mississippi
Language: English

Sixty years before the comics entered the American newspaper press, Rodolphe Töpffer of Geneva (1799-1846), schoolmaster, university professor, polemical journalist, art critic, landscape draftsman, and writer of fiction, travel tales, and social criticism, invented a new art form: the comic strip, or "picture story," that is now the graphic novel. At first he resisted publishing what he called his "little follies." When he did, they became instantly popular, plagiarized, and imitated throughout Europe and the United States.

Töpffer developed a graphic style suited to his poor eyesight: the doodle, which he systematized and also theorized. The drawings, with their "modernist" spontaneous, flickering, broken lines, forming figures in mad hyperactivity, run above deft, ironic captions and propel narratives of surreal absurdity. The artist's maniacal protagonists mix social satire with myth. By the mid-nineteenth century, Messrs. Jabot, Festus, Cryptogame, and other members of the crazy family, comprising eight picture stories in all, were instant folk heroes. In a biographical framework, Kunzle situates the comic strips in the Genevan and European culture of the time as well as in relation to Töpffer's other work, notably his hilarious travel tales, and recounts their curious genesis (with an initial imprimatur from Goethe, no less) and their controversial success.

Kunzle's study, the first in English on the writer-artist, accompanies Rodolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips, a facsimile edition of the strips themselves, with the first-ever translation of these into English.

David Kunzle is a professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of many books on popular culture and graphic arts, including History of the Comic Strip: The Nineteenth Century.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Sixty years before the comics entered the American newspaper press, Rodolphe Töpffer of Geneva (1799-1846), schoolmaster, university professor, polemical journalist, art critic, landscape draftsman, and writer of fiction, travel tales, and social criticism, invented a new art form: the comic strip, or "picture story," that is now the graphic novel. At first he resisted publishing what he called his "little follies." When he did, they became instantly popular, plagiarized, and imitated throughout Europe and the United States.

Töpffer developed a graphic style suited to his poor eyesight: the doodle, which he systematized and also theorized. The drawings, with their "modernist" spontaneous, flickering, broken lines, forming figures in mad hyperactivity, run above deft, ironic captions and propel narratives of surreal absurdity. The artist's maniacal protagonists mix social satire with myth. By the mid-nineteenth century, Messrs. Jabot, Festus, Cryptogame, and other members of the crazy family, comprising eight picture stories in all, were instant folk heroes. In a biographical framework, Kunzle situates the comic strips in the Genevan and European culture of the time as well as in relation to Töpffer's other work, notably his hilarious travel tales, and recounts their curious genesis (with an initial imprimatur from Goethe, no less) and their controversial success.

Kunzle's study, the first in English on the writer-artist, accompanies Rodolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips, a facsimile edition of the strips themselves, with the first-ever translation of these into English.

David Kunzle is a professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of many books on popular culture and graphic arts, including History of the Comic Strip: The Nineteenth Century.

More books from University Press of Mississippi

Cover of the book Embroidered Stories by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Forty Acres and a Goat by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Asian Comics by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Botánicas by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Hearths of Darkness by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Archeology of Mississippi by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Chris Ware by David Kunzle
Cover of the book German Boy by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Drawn and Dangerous by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Reading in the Dark by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Talking New Orleans Music by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Behold the Proverbs of a People by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Making Haste Slowly by David Kunzle
Cover of the book Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction by David Kunzle
Cover of the book The Souls of White Folk by David Kunzle
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy