Inspiration: C. Cyl -> Jacobsson

In my contribution to the upcoming conference volume Contemporay Nordic Comics I analyse the inspiration that a Flemish comics artist, Marc Sleen, got from Adamson by Jacobsson. I guessed that Jacobsson himself had also been inspired by other artists. In an earlier blog I already wrote about the similarities with a gag by E. Sorel.  

Here is another example "Pêche à la ligne" by C. Cyl from "Album Noël" of 1900 (the example is from Andy's Early Comics Archive). We see a fisherman who wrongly fears that he has found a dead body in the water. 

 With Jacobsson (Söndags-Nisse 16 Dec 1923) there is no fisherman, but his character Adamson tries to save someone from the water, but he also has to realize that it is only a fashion doll. In both cases, only a piece of the fake "body" is visible, but the artificial piece is submerged at first, only to be revealed in the very last panel. So the basic idea is the same, only a different gag is constructed around it.

Varying the Angles on a Scene by Johann Bahr

Usually the comics of the 19th century offered a quite static viewpoint on scene: the viewer gets a scene from a certain distance, somewhat comparable to the position of a sitter in a theatre. The same distant, static viewpoint the early cinematographers would adopt as well. 

But some comics artists used already a 'moving' viewpoint by using a variation of angles. For instance Töpffer used a kind parallel tracking for a running character. So the displacement of the viewpoint was motivated by the displacement of the character in regards to the background. The different background and the suggestion of a running character informs the viewer to understand that the character is in front of a somewhat different location.
But what if the location stays the same and the characters remain in their place? Also then, there were artists like Johann Bahr (1859-1930) who used a moving viewpoint. My sample comes from a Flemish magazine, De Nieuwe Belgische Illustratie (1891), but originally it was published most likely in a German illustrated magazine.

The comic starts outdoors, we see people looking at a poster, promoting a sensational act “The living speaking human head”. The second panel shows a different location and other characters from the first one. We are at the back of a tent, which seemingly open at the other end. At the forefront of the scene a man with a black heat tries to shoo some kids, in the back of the scene another adult, on a platform, is speaking to a small crowd. In the third panel, the viewpoint has changed a little bit, so that we no longer see what’s in front of the tent, but the attention is directed on the kids, that clearly have returned to the back of the tent, and they are trying to peep into the tent. 

The whole next tier is located inside the tent, we have moved from the exterior to the interior.

 

The first panel of the second tier shows us at the left the boys peeping through, at the right the public, and in the middle the spectacle: the man who was speaking to the public from the second panel is now standing upright on a platform and is still directed towards the public. Next to him we see a small table, covered with a sheet, on top a human head. The viewer can see what’s hidden from the astonished public: below the small table, there a larger platform, from which, at the back, two naked feet are peeping through. In contrast to the public in front of the spectacle, only the kids, at the back, can see the feet. They are tickling his feet with a twig.
In the fifth panel we still are looking at the act, but from a different viewpoint, namely that of the public. It’s in fact a jump over the 180° degree line, but due to the clear context the viewer is not deranged: the situation remains comprehensible.
No need to repeat the tickling of the feet, we know already what’s going on behind the act. The text explains that the head is making grimaces, most likely the consequence of the tickling. In the sixth panel, the viewpoint is still from the public side, but a little more frontal towards the spectacle.
The last tier offers the twist and the conclusion. 

The viewpoint has shifted a little bit to the right, somewhere between the angle of panel 5 and 6. The man, who was kneeling, can’t hold it any longer and jumps up. The secret of the act is thus revealed publicly. Due to a detail (the path) of his trousers, we recognize the figure from the second panel. The viewpoint of this panel is not easy to locate, because the tent is broken down by the furious public.
The very last panel shows a new location: the two cheats of the act are walking away from the city, on their wheelbarrow the remains of the tent. To make it worse for them, it’s raining. They do not seem happy.
So, though the panels keep the same dimensions and format, there’s a lot of shifting angles in this short gag of 9 panels. There are various changing angles and three different locations: one in the beginning and one at the end. The bulk of the panels present the space of the spectacle, presenting first the exterior before moving to the interior. Inside the tent Bahr cleverly shifts his angles to make the situation visibly clear to the viewer. He does not need the text to explain that the boys are secretly tickling the feet or how the fraud is being committed. He can do it by solely showing!

Pascal Lefèvre

Early Comics Swipe: A. Sorel -> Jacobsson

An early French comic (1888) might have served as an inspiration for a later Adamson gag. The illustration is from a publication in a Flemish illustrated weekly (De Vlaamsche Patriot, 6 September 1891), but as Antoine Sausverd has found out, it was earlier published in a French magazine (La Caricature, in 1888). In that French publication A. Sorel was given as author. It remains a mystery why the Flemish weekly presents us with  a different name. Anyhow, this silent comic might have inspired the Swedish artist Oscar Jacobsson for the Adamson gag, originally published in a Swedish weekly, Söndags-Nisse, 4 February 1923.

Both artists succeed in telling the joke by pure visual means, but Sorel's choice to work with silhouettes for his characters is actually not very efficient in showing the impact of splashing afterwards, contrary to Jacobsson: notwithstanding his dirty face, Adamson's facial expression is clearly visible and funny.

Early Japanese comics

Kyoto International Manga Museum (photo P. Lefèvre)

The Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center invited me to participate in their conference Comics Worlds and the World of Comics: Scholarship on a Global Scale (December 18-20) of which next year will be published a bilingual anthology (Japanese/English). It was on the whole an interesting dialogue between Japanese scholars (amongst others Fusanosuke Natsume) and their colleagues from abroad (amongst others Thierry Groensteen and Thomas Lamarre). I presented a paper about the necessities of international collaborations for comparative research. The event took place in Japan's first general manga museum Kyoto International Manga Museum, which features not only interesting exhibitions but has also an impressive library and a research center. The museum is run by the Kyoto Seika University, which was moreover the first Japanese university to set up a proper faculty dedicated to manga. Already on a quantative level it seems to be a huge succes with 852 undergraduate students.
Today in the research center of the museum I had a chanche to browse through some early magazines from between 1900 and 1914 (as Nipponchi and Tokyo Puck). From the few copies of Japanese periodicals I could consult I saw quite a variety in publication formats (though always with soft cover), but all sequential works were drawn in a more or less charicatural style with clear contour lines, mostly with one or more additional color(s). All the characters and locations looked Japanese. On the one hand one can see an important role of politics (as the war with Russia), but on the other hand there is also a lot of purely funny material (as mischief gag comics). I didn't see any translations or reprints of European or American comics - though various magazines clearly refer through their title to 'Punch' or 'Puck'.

New publications

Two new publications about my continuing research on early comics were recently released.

One is in English and focuses on panel arrangements and page layouts of early comics published in Belgium in the five decades before the start of Tintin in 1929. It investigates the degree of standardisation in this pivotal period, in which the old system of graphic narratives with captions evolved to comics with balloons. The years between 1880 and 1929 boasted a variety of publication formats (broadsheets, illustrated magazines for adults and for children, comic strips, artists’ books), within which one can see both similar and different conventions at work.

- Lefèvre, Pascal, 'The Conquest of Space. Evolution of panel arrangements and page lay outs in early comics’ in European Comic Art, in European Comic Art, Vol. 2, N°2, 2009, p.227-252 .

The other article is in Dutch and gives an overview of the publication formats of sequential graphics in Belgium before the 1930s.

- Lefèvre, Pascal, 'Panorama van het vroege beeldverhaal in België (1870-1929)' in Sint-Lukas Galerie Brussel, p. 12-17.

Close up on Busch

The Félicien Rops museum in Namur (Belgium) held this summer an interesting exhibition on Wilhelm Busch in collaboration with the Wilhelm Busch Museum of Hannover. Busch (1832-1908) is widely known as one of the crucial comics artists of the nineteenth century, but as the exhibition showed he painted also extensively (about 1,000 paintings). The artist is of course more known for his humoristic stories such as Max und Moritz. The exhibition showed some original drawings, which Busch executed on a very small format. Nevertheless this small format, every scene is rendered in striking sketchy, loose lines but they do the trick: the pencil drawings are far more curvy and dynamic than the woodcut versions of the broadsheets. The printed version respects largely the original composition, but alters the drawing by using unbroken contour lines, by leaving some elements out (such as the thick hatching on the left) and adding various elements (eg the hatching on the belly of the man). The flat coloring helps in defining various parts or elements that Busch left undefined in his original pencil strokes (for instance the border between the shirt and the trousers of the man).

on the left original pencil drawing by Wilhelm Busch (1870)
on the right printed (wood cut) version of Münchener Bilderbogen (1870)

In the exhibition and the catalogue (only available in French Wilhelm Busch, de la caricature à la DB) the fact is stressed that Wilhelm Busch was influenced by the new photographic medium and that he - unlike most of his colleagues - did not solely use long shots, but that he included also close ups in his picture stories. Examples can be found in Die Fliege (1861), Der Schnuller (1863), Max und Moritz (1865). Every time he uses the close up for a clear narrative purpose, namely to make some small but important elements bigger: for instance the crushing of an irritating fly under a foot.
So, Busch used close ups long before cinema (Grandma's Reading Glass of 1900 is often acclaimed to have used for the first time a close up in a short film narrative). Nevertheless it would still take a long time before the insertion of such close ups became a regular practice in various comics.

Die Fliege (1861)

Der Schnuller (1863)

More information and visuals on a website about Wilhelm Busch
Hans Joachim Neyer (ed.), Wilhelm Busch, de la caricature à la DB, Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2009.

Wanted !

A majority of the comics that were published in Belgium before the birth of Tintin in 1929 came from abroad: often the names of the characters are changed and no references to the artists name or the original publication can be found. Therefore I call out to other specialists if they might recognize some of the following characters I found in the Flemish children magazine De Kindervriend early 20th century (unfortunately not dated).

The two characters called in the Dutch text 'Job & Bob' I've already recognized, it are the English Weary Willie and Tired Tim by Tom Brown, but does somebody know where and when this gag was first published ?

Tom Brown's Weary Willie and Tired Tim called Job & Bob
in the Flemish children's magazine De Kindervriend (N° 220)

The next panel features some mischievous children, quite resembling to the Katzenjammer Kids. Steve Holland mailed me and suggested that it are: "The Bunsey Boys which appeared in The Wonder in 1901 and continued in The Jester and Wonder when Wonder changed title (but continued its numbering) in 1902. Apparently, the strip was drawn by Leonard Shields when it appeared in the latter, although it is likely he was not the original artist."

from De Kindervriend (N° 221)

Here's another yet unidentified comic character, probably from the British press.

from De Kindervriend (N° 222)

And who's the author and the original of this elephant called 'Jimmy' in the translation by De Kindervriend.

An elephant called 'Jimmy' in De Kindervriend (N° 214)

So any help with the identification of these comics would be greatly appreciated.