I would have to say more or less perhaps so, Roger! Laurie, you're an English major. Would you know?
Penny Dreadfuls were spectacular, usually scandelous yellow covered paperback novels with or without illustrations and most certainly without the "speech balloons" so recognizable in comics and comic books.
" In 1842, "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck" became the first comic book published in the United States. "Obadiah Oldbuck" was a forty page book. Each page had several picture panels with accompanying text underneath. In 1859, German poet and artist, Wilhelm Bush published caricatures in the newspaper
Fliegende Blätter. In 1865, he published a famous comic called "Max und Moritz.
The 1895 "Yellow Kid" created by Richard Outcault has often been cited as being the first comic strip. The reason being is that Outcault was the first artist to use the balloon, an outlined space on the page where what the characters spoke was written. However, comic strips and comic books were published before "Yellow Kid" debuted in the New York City newspaper
The World."
http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinve...comics.htm
I KNOW it's from <ahem!> "Ask.com" but.....it's still interesting - I did know that
The Yellow Kid was amongst the first....
Here's another link:
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/old/Platinum.html
See You in the Funny Papers!!
A new Lincoln Graphic Novel
