aka The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck

December 9, 2007 2:09 PM

Histoire de M. Vieux Bois is considered the first modern comic book. Also available in GIF.
posted by sushiwiththejury (6 comments total)

Very nice links, but it might be more accurate to consider Töpffer's work "among the first". A Rake's Progress, released 95 years earlier, is also considered a hallmark of sequential art - and that doesn't include pamphlets from the 1600s which borrowed from the graphic layouts of illuminated texts.
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:52 PM on December 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Sorry, but sequential art expressing a narrative is as old as human history itself.

http://www.comic-art.com/history/history0.htm
posted by GavinR at 3:52 PM on December 9, 2007

This is great. I love how the rival fences left handed.
posted by niccolo at 4:38 PM on December 9, 2007

The first comic book?
posted by grumblebee at 5:49 PM on December 9, 2007

The OP said "the first modern comic book". So the other examples given in the comments don't necessarily contradict this.
posted by litlnemo at 6:15 PM on December 9, 2007

And there is a point to considering Töpffer's work more of a "modern comic book" than Hogarth's -- the format is certainly more comic-like.
posted by litlnemo at 6:20 PM on December 9, 2007