page_title: History of American comics
section_title: Victorian Age (1842–1897)
hierarchical_section_title: History of American comics / Victorian Age (1842–1897)
context_page_description: The history of American comics began in the 19th century in mass print media, in the era of yellow journalism, where newspaper comics served as a boon to mass readership. In the 20th century, comics became an autonomous art medium and an integral part of American culture.
context_section_description: Comics in the United States originated in the early European works. In fact, in 1842, the work Les amours de Mr. Vieux Bois by Rodolphe Töpffer was published under the title The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck in the U.S. This edition (a newspaper supplement titled Brother Jonathan Extra No. IX, September 14, 1842) is an unlicensed copy of the original work as it was done without Töpffer's authorization. This first publication was followed by other works of this author, always under types of unlicensed editions. Töpffer comics were reprinted regularly until the late 1870s, which gave American artists the idea to produce similar works. In 1849, Journey to the Gold Diggins by Jeremiah Saddlebags by James A. and Donald F. Read was the first American comic.
  Domestic production remained limited until the emergence of satirical magazines that, on the model of British Punch, published drawings and humorous short stories, but also stories in pictures and silent comics. The three main titles were Puck, Judge and Life. Authors such as Arthur Burdett Frost created stories as innovative as those produced in the same period by Europeans. However, these magazines only reach an audience educated and rich enough to afford them. Just the arrival of technological progress allowed easy and cheap reproduction of images for the American comic to take off. Some media moguls like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer engaged in a fierce competition to attract readers and decided to publish cartoons in their newspapers.
caption: A tale of Arthur Burdett Frost dated 1881.
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