Eddie told a funny story about being persuaded by well-meaning documentary producers to say on camera that Will Eisner was the first graphic novelist, an idea he disputes. It’s Eddie’s story to tell, and I won’t repeat it here, but it did set my brain going like Buzzy the Hummingbird: If not Eisner, who? I’d soon be teaching a class to a roomful of students that would come in with the same idea the documentarians had.
We took Eddie to dinner later and I got to ask him who he favored as the earliest proponent of the form. “Doyle’s your man,” he said, and described the work and characters Richard Doyle created for the magazine Punch, which he later brought to a prolonged comic narrative called “The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson,” published in 1867.
Also, from Spielman’s “The History of Punch,” here’s an early cover Doyle did for the magazine. (You can find said History at Project Gutenberg.)
I prefer “Dick Doyle’s Journal”, which is just exactly what that sounds like: an ongoing cartoon commentary on the events of the day. He records stage shows he saw, gossip about a scandalous duel, an outing to the Tower of London and even a trip to the zoo.
Sometimes my favorite pages are the ones that are closer to strict reportage. And sometimes I like his goofier interpretations of events. Doyle makes the shooter above into a squat little puffball. He’s not doing that from some kind of antiquated Currier-and-Ives perspective, but because he’s relating something he’s heard at second hand, and he’s spinning it to emphasize the pomposity and self-importance you might expect from people who’d settle matters with a duel. (Hunt around online for the reason for Lord Cardigan to be in this duel and you’ll wonder if the sillier version isn’t wide of the mark.)
Yes, it’s common big-head-bitty-body cartooning, but I like to think of it as a precursor to those asides in manga when a character suddenly becomes superdeformed as a way to express its emotional extremes.
I dig the diary form in comics, and I’ll have a lot to say about it as this blog progresses, so much about it in fact, that you’ll threaten to stab your own eyeballs out of your head if I bring it up again.
Thanks for the tip, Eddie, and thanks to you, for making your way through this! Please check out the examples of Doyle’s work on these pages, and don’t forget to take a look at “The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard” as well.
