It was prefigured more than half a century prior in “Master Charlie: Painter, Poet, Novelist and Teacher, With Numerous Examples of His Work” by C. Harrison and S.H. Hamer (the former responsible for these “picktures,” as Charlie calls them; the latter wrote “akummpennying teckst.”) This collection, published in 1899, was culled from its appearances in a magazine called “Little Folks.”
You’d swear that 20th Century Jacky found a time machine: he and his predecessor share the same heavy, chiseled line. What really gives “Charlie” and his game away is the self-confident ability to see depth, and to create rooms and streets you can walk around in. It’s a precocious kid who sees the picture plane as anything but flat or horizontal.
Mature hands are at work in both strips. But they both bring to mind those first uninhibited steps in drawing: looseleaf, Bic ballpoints, and military campaigns drawn to the accompaniment of self-made sound effects.
