Rodolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips
The recent legitimization of the comic strip has brought plenty of vintage-strip reprintings and analyses of the medium. David Kunzle offers volumes of both devoted to the nineteenth-century Swiss who may have invented the comic strip. Rodolphe Topffer (1799-1846), whose work remains interesting also for the insight into its era that it affords, used many devices associated with comics, as the massiveComplete Comic Stripsshows. Narratives consist of sequential arrays of cartoonish, simplified illustrations separated by panel borders. Topffer didn't use word balloons, but each drawing is captioned. Pictures or words alone wouldn't suffice to tell the story--and that constitutes one very recognizable definition of comics. The eight stories in the book combine wild slapstick and droll social commentary as they relate the humorous exploits of such eccentrics as Mr. Jabot, who wreaks havoc at a society ball; Mr. Crepin, who oversees the education of his brood of unruly children; and Dr. Festus, who travels the world, leaving disaster in his wake.Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved