01-03-95 Reading Suggestions on Cartooning

THE CENTENNIAL OF THE FUNNIES:  EASILY ACCESSIBLE RESOURCES

     The Yellow Kid will be 100 in 1995.  The big-eared urchin
first appeared in the New York World on Feb. 17, 1895.  This
character by Richard Felton Outcault then developed into the star
of "Hogan's Alley," the first newspaper comic strip.  A national
celebration of the Yellow Kid's birthday is planned, and
journalism and mass communications faculty and librarians can
expect many questions about the funnies.

     Hundreds of books and articles have been published about the
newspaper comic strip.  An easy place to begin learning about the
newspaper comic strip is an encyclopedia.  Both Encyclopedia
Americana (1993 edition) and The New Encylopaedia Britannica
(1992 edition) have general introductory articles.

     The first history of the newspaper comic strip was published
in 1947.  It was recently reprinted and is still a good source of
information about the early years of the genre:  The Comics by
Coulton Waugh (Jackson, Miss.:  University Press of Mississippi,
1991).  Two other books detail more recent developments:  The
Great American Comic Strip:  One Hundred Years of Cartoon Art by
Judith O'Sullivan (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990) and Comics as
Culture by M. Thomas Inge (Jackson, Miss.:  University Press of
Mississippi, 1990).  O'Sullivan's book also includes biographical
information on selected cartoonists.  Robert C. Harvey takes a
different approach in The Art of the Funnies:  An Aesthetic
History (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1994).

     For Children, Funny Papers:  Behind the Scenes of the
Comics" by Elaine Scott (New York: Morrow Junior Books, 1993)
provides a history of comic strips, examines different kinds, and
discusses how they are created and marketed.

     Several titles examine how newspaper comic strips
communicate and why they are an exciting and important mass
medium.  Among the best are Mort Walker's Lexicon of Comicana
(Port Chester, N.Y.: Museum of Cartoon Art, 1980); Will Eisner's
Comics & Sequential Art (Tamarac, Fla.: Poorhouse Press, 1990);
and Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics:  The Invisible Art (New
York: Harper-Perennial, 1994).

     For additional information about the history of the
newspaper comic strip, contact Lucy Caswell, associate professor
in University Libraries and journalism and curator of The Ohio
State University Cartoon, Graphic, and Photographic Arts Research
Library, at (614) 292-0538.
                                
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[Submitted by: REIDV  (reidv@ccgate.ucomm.ohio-state.edu)
               
Wed, 04 Jan 1995 08:18:59 -0500 (EST)]
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