{"id":2751,"date":"2020-03-03T16:31:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-04T00:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=2751"},"modified":"2024-01-09T16:34:55","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T00:34:55","slug":"maggies-world-079-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/maggies-world-079-beginnings\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie\u2019s World 079: Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maggie\u2019s World 079: Beginnings<\/h1>\n\n\n
Maggie Thompson<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Wow. You thought\u00a0Batman<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0might be too dark? The Baroness:\u00a0Baroness brave and high, Prepare thyself to die. The Lady: Ladies gay and fair, To you I do repair. The Judge\u2019s Wife: Madam or Justice\u2019s wife, I am come to end thy life. The Lawyer\u2019s Wife: Beware thy husband\u2019s gain, Reward thee not with pain. Yikes.\u00a0<\/em>And \u2026\u00a0No state, no might, young nor old: To resist Death dare be bold. Death by his might doth convince: Empress, Queen, Duchess, and Prince.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In a 2015 Heritage auction, I bought an Anglican prayer book for $56. The description was that it had \u201cmodern leather binding\u201d and \u201call edges gilt.\u201d I haven\u2019t been able to learn much about it beyond that. The title page: The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments<\/em> \u2026 Well, the title goes on for another 39 words. It says the edition is from London, R. and A. Suttaby, Amen Corner, 1863. And I haven\u2019t been able to figure out much more about it\u2014except to note that its letter \u201cs\u201d is the so-called \u201clong s\u201d that looks like an \u201cf\u201d and that the volume is an apparent attempt to duplicate an Elizabethan prayer book of three centuries earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among its many intriguing aspects, however, is the reason for its mention here: Whereas some pages are decorated with ornate designs, many are ornamented with what amount to comic strips of the life of Christ. Other panels provide reminders of the inevitability of death. Given the scarcity of information on the Internet, I\u2019m guessing that such prayer books were (despite the title) an uncommon example of the presence of comics in past centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Randolph Caldecott\u2019s illustrated nursery rhymes were neat comic strips for young (and old!) readers, offering one panel per page. In 1947, Dell Editor Oskar Lebeck introduced kids to classic comic art from an earlier generation. \u00a9 2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Then \u2026<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

A couple of months ago at a collectibles mall, I bought a book simply because it fascinated me and was only $3. It continued to fascinate me, once I\u2019d brought it home. There\u2019s no date on the Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd. volume The Hey Diddle Diddle Picture Book <\/em>\u201cby R. Caldecott,\u201d but a look at online listings tend to guess at 1890 or 1910.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886) was a British artist especially known for this sort of output. His work is so highly regarded that, in 1938, the American Library Association named its award for the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children the Randolph Caldecott Medal. (In 1922, the ALA had introduced The John Newbery Medal, named for a British bookseller, for \u201cthe most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.\u201d) My purchase contained Caldecott\u2019s versions of the traditional rhymes \u201cThe Milkmaid,\u201d \u201cHey Diddle Diddle,\u201d \u201cBaby Bunting,\u201d \u201cA Frog He Would a-Wooing Go,\u201d and \u201cThe Fox Jumps over the Parson\u2019s Gate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I\u2019d taken a college course in children\u2019s literature in the early 1960s, I\u2019d been familiar with his work. Nevertheless, it wasn\u2019t until I found and looked through this book that I realized that he\u2019d basically been telling comic book stories: combining text, pictures, and panels to be read in sequence to tell more with the combination of words and pictures than were told by text or picture alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not the time to do a deep dive into the differences (if any) between picture books and comic books. The point here is that I\u2019d never made that connection with regard to Caldecott before: He was a comic book creator before there were comic books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Then<\/em> \u2026<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Many have heard of Caldecott, thanks to the medal, but fewer have heard of Heinrich Hoffman (1809-1894), though he was born before and lived after Caldecott. His Der Struwwelpeter<\/em> was published in 1845, and I found out about it when I was 5, thanks to Dell Editor Oskar Lebeck, who had been born in Germany. Lebeck probably provided the translations of Hoffman\u2019s work (with illustrations adapted by Dan Noonan) that appeared in Dell\u2019s Raggedy Ann + Andy <\/em>#19 (December 1947). Lebeck edited it and even provided the issue\u2019s young readers (including me) an introduction concerning the poems that followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, comics have existed in a variety of traditions via many different offerings. For example, the early 1900s, hardcover reprints of comic strips brought formerly discarded comic strips into homes in a durable format, thanks to such publishers as Saalfield and Cupples & Leon. A variety of magazine and other single-panel cartoons found their ways to homes, as well. Even libraries stocked volumes of cartoon from such magazines as Punch <\/em>and The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the decade that followed that 1947 Dell comic book, Jules Feiffer brought a hardcover treasury of comic book reprints to readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beginnings Need Not Be Actual Firsts<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, that Book of Common Prayer<\/em>, even if it had been a copy from the 1600s, wasn\u2019t the first pop-culture comic art. David Kunzle\u2019s The Early Comic Strip <\/em>(University of California Press, 1973) was a hefty reference volume on antiquities of which some even preceded that prayer book. (It was subtitled Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, there\u2019s an ongoing continuation of turning points over the years. A look, for example, at The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide <\/em>offers nice perspectives on comics starting in \u201cThe Pioneer Age\u201d (defined as the 1500s to 1828) overlapping with \u201cThe Victorian Age\u201d (defined as [pre-Victorian] 1646 to 1900). And so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are still new comics traditions being introduced today.\u00a0Bats: Learning to Fly\u00a0<\/em>is a First Second \u201cScience Comics\u201d release. \u00a9 2020 Falynn Koch.\u00a0New Kid\u00a0<\/em>is the first graphic novel to win a Newbery Medal. \u00a9 2020 Jerry Craft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Looking back at our field can combine unlimited information with entertainment. And, by the way, education. Heck, using comic art as an educational medium had its own beginnings, too. Gilberton kicked off its Classic Comics <\/em>in 1941 with its comic book version of The Three Musketeers<\/em>. A decade later, Will Eisner began production of the how-to comic P.S. Magazine: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly <\/em>for the Department of the Army. Eventually, it became almost routine to release educational material that used the clarifying art form of comic books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So \u2026<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Two \u201cbeginnings\u201d sparked this essay. The first was the discovery of that Caldecott collection at a collectibles mall. The second was the announcement January 27 this year that Jerry Craft\u2019s New Kid <\/em>had become the first graphic novel to win a Newbery Medal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider: One of the earliest attacks on the very idea of comic books as appropriate reading matter for children came from Sterling North. His May 8, 1940, call to action claimed that comic books were \u201ca national disgrace\u201d and \u201ca poisonous mushroom growth of the last two years.\u201d His own novel Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era<\/em> was one of the two Newbery Honor Books named by the ALA for 1964. But Rascal<\/em> was an \u201cHonor Book,\u201d not the Medal-winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eight decades after North\u2019s attack, a comic book received the Newbery Medal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s another beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maggie’s World by Maggie Thompson appears the first Tuesday of every month here on<\/em> Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Maggie Thompson<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n