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Skip to content Menu expanded Close collapsed * About * PRINT Masthead * Partners * Advertise * Job Board * Submit a project * Contact * Instagram * YouTube * Twitter * Facebook PRINT Magazine * The Daily Heller * Design Matters * What Matters * Job Board * Book Club * PRINT Awards * Typography * Illustration * Branding * More expanded More collapsed Browse expanded Browse collapsed Close collapsed Menu Categories * 3D Visualization * Advertising * Architecture * Book Covers * Branding & Identity * Color & Design * Comics & Animation * Culturally-Related Design * Design Inspiration * Fine Art * Graffiti & Street Art * Graphic Design Categories * Illustration * Information Design * Packaging * Photography * Political Design * Poster Design * Print Design * Publication Design * Socially Responsible Design * Typography * Web & Interactive * Creative Voices * What Matters Featured * Features * News * Sponsored * Podcasts * Interviews PRINT Exclusives * The Daily Heller * Design Matters * PRINT Awards * New Visual Artists Search Advertisement RODOLPHE TÖPFFER AND THE FIRST SEQUENTIAL VISUAL NARRATIVE Posted inThe Daily Heller By Steven HellerPosted July 2, 2018 ∙ 2 min. read * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) * Copy this page's address to your clipboard Link copied to clipboard On this July 4 (I know its only July 3 but it is the correct week) its only fitting that we celebrate the birth of our national treasure, the American comic strip, actually invented by the Lafayette of the sequential picture/narrative revolution, Paris-educated, Swiss-born Rodolphe Töpffer (1799–1846), a author, painter, cartoonist, and caricaturist, known for his ittérature en estampes, “graphic literature”), which the earliest sequential narrative. He is known as the father of comic strips (or what we now generally call graphic novels. This is a translation of his most famous and brilliantly constructed (see the way he uses panels and the long handwritten tracts of text – no speech balloons, though). He was also a schoolteacher and ran a boarding school, where he amused his students with caricatures. This, for me, is Töpffer’s layered ittérature en estampes, “The True Story of Monsieur Crépin,” first published in 1837, featuring the adventures of a father who employs a series of tutors for his children and falls prey to their eccentricities. Read it in its entirety below. He wrote six more “novels,” popular selling satires of 19th century society. Another story Histoire de M. Vieux Bois was brought to a United States audience as The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck and published in 1842 as a supplement in the New York City newspaper Brother Jonathan , essentially the first American comic book and launch of the graphic novel. You might say, a declaration of independence from the word-only book. And here is a PDF of another story Histoire Albert. The eminent comics historian David Kunzle wrote in Father of the Comic Strip Rodolphe Töpffer: “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.” Advertisement * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) * Copy this page's address to your clipboard Link copied to clipboard Posted inComics & Animation Design ∙ Illustration Design ∙ The Daily Heller STEVEN HELLER Steven Heller has written for PRINT since the 1980s. He is co-chair of SVA MFA Designer as Entrepreneur. The author, co-author and editor of over 200 books on design and popular culture, Heller is also the recipient of the Smithsonian Institution National Design Award for "Design Mind," the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement and other honors. He was a senior art director at The New York Times for 33 years and a writer of obituaries and book review columnist for the newspaper, as well. His memoir, Growing Up Underground (Princeton Architectural Press) was published in 2022. Some of his recent essays are collected in For the Love of Design (Allworth Press). Advertisement MORE LIKE THIS Browse all Comics & Animation Design THE SEQUENTIAL ART, COMICS & CARTOONS OF FAMOUS ARTISTS Recently the page shown below from one of Vincent Van Gogh’s sketchbooks, dated 1883, made the rounds on Facebook. The reason for the interest was how much it resembled a comic page. Whether that was his intent we will never know. Certainly the form began decades earlier in Europe, created… Posted inComics & Animation Design ART SPIEGELMAN, PART 1 By: Hillary Chute | June 20, 2008 Day 1: FROM TÖPFFER TO PULITZER TO A “BUDDING CARTOONIST” Tell me about your interest in print. The history of comics is the history of printing. The medium developed as printing technologies developed. The idea of comics as a narrative series of pictures… Posted inDesign Inspiration SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS Buy this issue FEATURES Village Voices Local Projects is turning museums into places where people interact with information—and each other. Its latest commission will have the whole country joining the conversation. BY ANGELA STARITA Moving Pictures Getty Images revolutionized the stock photo business. Now that the industry is shifting again,… Posted inDesign Resources TWO NEW CARTOON HISTORIES ON 100 OLD COMICS INNOVATORS Art Spiegelman and other comics artists have illustrated biographies of cartoonists, but always as short one-shot strips. Now, not one but two entire books of this kind have just been released. Together they offer 100 visual takes on significant, and even revolutionary, pioneers in the field. One is an anthology… Posted inComics & Animation Design GET EVERYTHING THAT’S FIT TO PRINT Keep up with all things PRINT by subscribing to our weekly email newsletter. Subscribe Our partners * WordPress PRINT is a member of the Bookshop.org affiliate program. If you purchase something through one of our links, it may earn us a small commission. * About * Partners * Advertise * Job Board * Submit a project * Contact * Privacy * Instagram * YouTube * Twitter * Facebook Proudly powered by WordPress. Hosted by Pressable. 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