1001 COMICS MINI-SITE

Even with 960 pages, I couldn't squeeze all the material I had into my book 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die. This mini-site is designed to supplement that book with updates, additional information and links... but obviously you'll still need a copy of the book!

Introduction | Reviewers | Have Your Say
Titles | Creators | Years | Countries | Genres | Updates

The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck

Original publisher: Self-published (Switzerland)
First published: 1837
Reviewed by: Huib van Opstal
Genre: Drama, Humour

Lost In Translation
The Rise Of The Graphic Novel In Europe

Rodolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips
edited by David Kunzle
University Press of Mississippi
2007
This volume is the first English-language version of the Töpffer comics oeuvre and includes (unlike previous French and German editions) all of his eight full-length stories, plus previously unpublished fragments of stories started and abandoned and manuscript segments omitted in the printed versions. Comics scholar Kunzle translates the captions from the French, gives essential biography and chronology, and appends socio-political contexts for all the stories with explanation of references obscure today. Kunzle deals with questions of dating and the differences among manuscript, printed version, and the various editions. He also lists the plagiaries, translations, and adaptations in other media.

Father Of The Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer
by David Kunzle
University Press of Mississippi
2007
An excellent biography of the Swiss comic artist. Both 2007 books by Kunzle were chosen as among my Best of the Year in 2007, when I wrote:

At last, the early 19th century Swiss ‘inventor’ and first theoretician of comics gets the treatment in English he deserves. British-born Kunzle, one of comics’ most perceptive historians, offers us a thorough analysis of Töpffer’s role in comics and the translation of the entirety of his seminal graphic novels. My only misgiving is the latter book’s format, as putting the wide landscape pages into an upright portrait hardback makes for some awkward reading. Here you will find irrefutable evidence that decades before the flap-eared, gap-toothed Yellow Kid romped through New York’s Hogan’s Alley, the Irish urchin’s European forebears, Töpffer’s eccentric leading players, dreamers and romantics, were already embroiled in elaborate, substantial comedies of manners and lunatic love stories, and employing so many of the techniques of comics (and film), long, long before they were ‘invented’ elsewhere.

Töpffer: L’Invention de la bande dessinée
by Thierry Groensteen & Benoît Peeters
Hermann
1994
Also essential, but in French, out of print, and not yet translated.

Donate!

If you are finding this website helpful, please support it by making a donation:

My Books