The First Comics Page?

“Comics” is a truncation of “comic strips,” a term that now names a whole medium but once named only a work that’s in both the humor genre and the “strips” form. A “comic strip” was just one kind of “strip.”

When Jerry Siegel wrote to Buck Rodgers artist Russell Keaton in 1934, he enclosed his proposed script for “the cartoon strip, SUPERMAN.” “Cartoon” sometimes references a work of humor genre drawn in a simplified and exaggerated drawing style, but since Superman was not humorous and Keaton’s style was not cartoonish, Siegel’s use of “cartoon” indicates something other than genre or style. But his use of “strip” is clear.

When Wonder Woman appeared on the cover of Sensation Comics #1 in 1941, the accompanying text identified her as a new “adventure-strip character.” In 1974, when Stan Lee described co-creating the Fantastic Four in 1961, he called the genre “the superhero strip” and Fantastic Four #1 “the opening strip.”

While always used loosely, “strips” and “comics” were synonyms for decades. It’s too bad that the clearer term, “strips” (which even resembles the French “drawn bands”), died out.

The meaning of “comics” has shifted in other ways. When Coulton Waugh published The Comics in 1947, his book title referenced only newspaper comic strips, AKA “the funnies” or “the funny pages.” The Oxford English Dictionary dates that meaning of “comics” to 1912: “the section of a newspaper containing” comic strips. But the 1892 meaning references not a section of a publication but any publication that contains comic strips. Moving further back, the 1860 meaning instead references a publication that contains “amusing and satirical articles and illustrations.”

The difference between a comic strip and an amusing illustration is debatable, especially since a “cartoon” can mean a single image and so not a strip despite being considered a kind of comic that appears on a comics page. The OED’s definition of “comic strip” also includes a “sequence of illustrations,” as first used in 1912, which means the comic strips that appeared in “comics” in 1892 and the two decades following were not called “comic strips.”

Is Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper a comic?

It began publishing in 1855, well before any of the OED’s first recorded usages. It does contain some “amusing and satirical articles and illustrations” (which suits the 1860 definition), and it does contain “sequences of illustrations” (which suits the 1892 definition), but I was most surprised that it also has a section containing comic strips (which suits the 1912 definition).

The above header, “Comic Department,” is from the May 31, 1856 issue. Here’s the full page:

At minimum the page should replace the OED‘s 1860 example of first usage, since the page includes “amusing and satirical articles and illustrations.” Specifically, the columns of text include unrelated jokes and vignettes, and five of the nine captioned images are single-image scenes meant to be funny. The other four, however, are a comic strip.

Though not laid out contiguously, their sequence tells a four-part story about Mr. Von Swagle buying a top hat for the opera, taking the top hat to the opera, using it as a serving tray for a woman’s drink, and then accidentally popping the hat, causing the drink to spill:

The first three images are arguably “illustrations” — images that merely illustrate the text by reproducing its content visually — but the last does more. In Scott McCloud’s terms, it produces an interdependent word-picture relationship, where the meaning of the phrase “direful consequences” requires the image to reveal it because the tall glass and its spilling are not described in the caption.

Though Mr. Von Swagle’s story suits the definition of a comic strip, the word “Comic” in “Comic Department” could only reference it as being comical. Arguably though, this is the moment when “comic” began its etymological journey toward “comic strip” before doubling back to “comics” in the contemporary sense. Since the “Comic Department” is only one section of the issue, the use of “comic” predates the 1912 meaning by over a half-century.

Leslie’s dropped the “Comic Department” header, but the July 12, 1856 issue follows a similar format:

The key difference is that all of the ten images on the page are part of the same sequence, titled “Mr. Winkey Fum’s Fourth of July.” Like the Mr. Von Swagle sequence, the images are divided by unrelated text, but combine into a single story:

As with Mr. Von Swagle, the word-picture relationships are sometimes interdependent, and so the sequence is not merely “illustrations.” The Mr. Winkey Fum comic strip does lack contiguous juxtaposition between its ten subsections, but that seems like a weak rationale for avoiding the term “comic” or “comic strip.”

Either way, I think the Mr. Von Swagle comic strip may be the first comic strip labeled a “comic” by its inclusion in Leslie’s 1956 “Comic Department” page. Should I alert the Oxford English Dictionary?