“David Kunzle Page” on Töpfferiana Website for Early Comics

 Michel Kempeneers 

Fig. 1. Screenshot of the “David Kunzle Page” on the Töpfferiana website. 

 

Introduction 

In order to pay tribute to comics history pioneer, David Kunzle (1936-2024), the “Töpfferiana” website takes a unique initiative and shares most of Kunzle’s writings on early comics on a dedicated “Kunzle Page,” thus making them available to scholars and researchers.

Though, in 2025, comics are widely spread and the subject of significant academic interest, “early comics” remain a field apart, and a highly specialized one.

Since Kunzle started his academic career in the 1960s, he has always remained an important voice in this field, maybe even the only one reaching a broader, not necessarily, academic audience. More importantly, Kunzle probably was the only high-profile author trying to get books on the subject published.

This has never been easy, though, not even for a researcher of Kunzle’s reputation. In his early years, because Kunzle demanded his “Early Comics” volumes be published in a huge format, (to do justice to the reproductions of broadsides), even though most of them still required a reduced format to fit them on the “early comics” pages. But even in the new millennium, Kunzle complained, among insiders, of a lack of interest by his publisher, who kept postponing the publication of, for example:  his Cham book, without ever providing a satisfactory explanation for yet another delay. Surprisingly, Kunzle was always worried that his publisher would no longer be interested in his next book, which also shows how keen he was on sharing his findings with an interested audience, even long after he had officially retired as an academic.  

David Kunzle (Tribute) Page 

The organizers of the yearly, “Platinum Meeting,” which is organized in the margin of the Angoulême “Festival de la BD,” end of January, found it appropriate to start their gathering of Platinum Age[i] scholars with a tribute to Kunzle. Participants shared testimonies and anecdotes, and one researcher wondered if anyone in the audience was aware of the status of Kunzle’s two landmark books on early comics. “Kunzle 1” (1973) and “Kunzle 2” (1990), as these are commonly tagged, had been out-of-print for ages, and nothing seemed to indicate that the University of California Press was ever going to reprint them. The answer was negative, and the meeting’s organizers promised to reach out to Mrs. Marjorie Kunzle and inquire.

They quickly found out that Mrs. Kunzle holds the rights to all of David’s articles, and, it later turned out, that the same goes for both “early comics” volumes. Mrs. Kunzle was completely in agreement with the suggestion that both volumes be spread as pdf files among the early comics community, though she would not actively participate in any concrete project to make that happen.

During these exchanges, the idea grew to grab the occasion and to really pay tribute to Kunzle’s legacy of half a century of research on early comics. And, why limit the effort to Kunzle’s first two major works, when it seemed possible to stretch it to all of Kunzle’s writings on the subject and share these on one platform? This way, scholars would have a single point of access, and, thus, be able to more easily advance with their own research projects.

As we were convinced that Kunzle himself would have loved that idea, and with Mrs. Kunzle backing it, the “David Kunzle(tribute) Page” (DKP) was born. “Töpfferiana.fr” seemed the logical place to host it, for the site shares a focus on early comics, and since, for a couple of years, it also organizes the Angoulême “Platinum Meeting.”

So, we set out to compile Kunzle’s comics bibliography. It seemed easiest to kick off with articles and book chapters, as we were already sure that there would not be any rights issues with these. Moreover, we discovered that, in February 2024, independent scholar, Hillel Schwartz, published a draft of Kunzle’s complete bibliography, all subjects included,[ii] i.e., not only comics, but also posters, arts, and even corsets(!). Schwartz imposed only one important limitation on this cv; it would not include the many reviews written by Kunzle.[iii]

From Schwartz’s overview, we retrieved all comics-related articles and book chapters, and ordered chronologically in an Excel table. Such an underlying table will allow researchers to also easily search the set for specific data, or extend their own copy with extras for personal use. That may sound trivial for a corpus consisting solely of early comics articles, as it will probably consist of little more than some 40 entries. But, if ever the list is extended to other areas in which Kunzle’s expertise led to publications, that may quickly change, so it seemed better to foresee such potential extensions in the specifics of the current table. Besides, it is not impossible that, at some point in the future, the current project scope is extended to include reviews, both by and of Kunzle.

All in all, it took less than a week to gather about 15 articles, which presumably already contained most of the essential ones. At the DKP Go Live on March 2, the counter stood at 26 articles/chapters out of 38 pieces identified, and early June (deadline for this article), these figures are 37 out of 45, i.e., almost 82 percent, with a couple more files to come. But, the real gems are the pdf versions of “Kunzle 1” and “Kunzle 2,”[iv] which were added on April 6 and, as such, can be regarded as a first highlight of the DKP.  

Structure 

All shared articles are in pdf format. We harmonized their presentation, as well as the way the corresponding files are named. Moreover, we made it a point to only share searchable files, for this characteristic is one of the prime reasons for researchers to be keen on e-versions of reference materials. We also made sure to document all such specifics in the detailed Excel table. That file is only aimed at visitors needing more details; the overview on the DKP of all articles and book chapters identified (and their download links) will be more than sufficient for most people.

On top of that, we explicitly marked every article which we have not been able to locate; this way, scholars and researchers who consult the DKP, or its Excel table, and discover that they have a pdf copy available of one of the Kunzle writings still missing in our offer, can reach out and share, so that we can add it to the DKP at the next update. In fact, this already happened almost immediately after we publicized the initiative on the Platinum discussion list. 

Fig. 2. Excerpt of the article bibliography on Töpfferiana’s “David Kunzle Page.” 

It is also worth pointing out that the overview makes no distinction between languages (English, French, Spanish, ...), and does not try either to establish a logic between articles with the same subject. Indeed, as is the case for most academics, no subjects were ever really “completed” for Kunzle. He kept reworking them, leaving out parts, updating others, and adding new finds and insights, possibly reacting to fellow researchers. Kunzle made no distinction between languages while doing so:  any journal wanting to publish his--then current--insights, was entitled to a state-of-the-art article, regardless of language. (Kunzle was fluent in four or five languages.) 

Future

 An inherent danger of any tribute initiative is that it outgrows its purpose; tribute has been paid, check. People have no obvious reason to return; they have visited the site, secured all the extras they wanted, or found the information they were looking for. Full stop.

Töpfferiana is very much aware of this pitfall and wants to avoid it by approaching the DKP as work-in-progress. In practice, the DKP team will try to add novelties on a regular basis, and will notify its core community of any such updates. In a sense, this boils down to giving the DKP some of the characteristics of a periodical. The aim is to share something bound to interest the early comics community every three months or so.

So far, the DKP has not only shared Kunzle articles; it celebrated its first update by also adding some Kunzle tributes spontaneously offered to the DKP by researchers who had known Kunzle for a long time. More tributes will be added in due time.

Furthermore, Philippe Kaenel of Lausanne University (Switzerland), a long-time friend and colleague of Kunzle, recently suggested to Töpfferiana to open up the DKP to other historic research on Töpffer, other reference articles on Töpffer which have become very difficult to find unless one has easy access to a good research library.

Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846) was already on the radar of Kunzle’s mentor, Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001), the influential art and culture historian, and he is probably the artist whom Kunzle studied for the longest time. And, logically, Töpfferiana itself would find it difficult to hide or deny its sympathy for this Swiss comics pioneer. Kaenel shared several of his own articles on Töpffer with the DKP team, who probably have added them already. On the other hand, chances are that the DKP will be able to share the articles of the Töpffer coffee table book, published in 1996 by (then) Swiss publisher, Skira. That book accompanied the celebrations for the 150^th anniversary of Töpffer’s death, and has been out-of-print for decades.[v]

Obviously, it would be beneficial if the missing Kunzle articles were to be added. As they are not readily available on the academic e-platforms, that may turn out to be complicated, but we are confident that researchers will contribute, because Kunzle has left a strong impression with generations of them, especially the ones who were lucky to meet him. We also hope that we will be able to add Kunzle publications in less obvious languages, e.g., German, as we have also identified some of these. That would be helpful, especially because Kunzle always had a keen interest in seeing his writings spread as widely as possible. For him, that wasn’t a matter of ego, but he was very much aware how little has been written about early comics, and how important it is to make Töpffer & Co. available to audiences who don’t know French.

The DKP team decided to also add an atypical, unusual contribution of the “early” Kunzle, which we believe tells a lot about his drive then, and, which is definitely worth pointing out.

In 1972, before “Kunzle 1,” Kunzle translated an article by the French author, Francis Lacassin (1931-2008), for the Fall issue of Film Quarterly.[vi] In this article, Lacassin argued that the “language” of the comic strip shows many similarities, and even some historical priorities, over the language of film. Curiously, it turns out that there is no genuine source article by Lacassin:  in fact, Kunzle combined a recent article and a huge chapter from a new book, both by Lacassin, directly into an English summary. In the process,  he added a couple of small footnotes, and, more importantly, extended his Lacassin summary with four more pages of comments, even adding illustrations, as he wanted to update some of Lacassin’s findings by his own, not yet published, ones. Obviously, he did so with the consent of the journal, which even publicized this unusual translation in the article’s introduction.

If similar unexpected finds pop up, we will make sure to add them to the DKP, as they definitely have historical importance. 

Opportunity 

It may not be obvious at first, but the DKP also offers a test case for “collaborative improvement” or “enrichment” of these source materials. Indeed, it seems that this specific format for a tribute page, with shared materials, has never been deployed before. The DKP offers opportunities to probe how such a project might evolve, when it appeals to its reader community, not only for them to fill holes in the current offer, but also to investigate which added value a community can offer to factually improve key works, such as “Kunzle 1” or “Kunzle 2,” and how their findings can best be shared with the early comics community. A first attempt to do so is on the DKP already, for interested researchers to discover.[vii] Similarly, it can help to offer added value to users by providing bookmarks, e.g., of the publication’s structure, or to add pagination when missing, so that these users do not have to re-invent the wheel. The point here is to see if the community feels like participating to the effort, and if it does so spontaneously, or, on the contrary, it must be stimulated and encouraged to do so.

 The DKP can be consulted here:

http://www.topfferiana.fr/2025/03/david-kunzles-bibliography.

The “Platinum Age Comics” discussion group is hosted by Google Groups:

https://groups.google.com/g/platinum-age-comics.

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[i] Roughly anything pre-World War II, but, especially, because European comics focus is mostly on 19^th Century production.

[ii] See, https://www.academia.edu/114691723/David_Kunzle_A_Bibliography (accessed Jan. 15, 2025).

[iii] One notable exception is Kunzle’s review of Thierry Groensteen’s “M. Töpffer invente la bande dessinée” (Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2014) for European Comic Art, 7-2 (Autumn 2014). This review also contains a personal biographical account of the origins of his own interest in Töpffer. Hence, it seemed worth adding to the list.

Similarly, Kunzle’s “Review Essays” for the International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA) have been withheld. For, indeed, as the name indicates, this particular IJOCA format is more than merely a review, and is like a lengthy article triggered by a new publication, as reviews get considerably less space in the IJOCA.

[iv] Contrary to popular belief, Kunzle’s final book, Rebirth of the English Comic Strip:  A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870 (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), is not the last volume of his History of the Comic Strip series, which had been announced as a trilogy. Rebirth... does not contain any such reference, and the description of the would-be content of this volume in Ian Gordon’s Kunzle tribute on the IJOCA blog makes clear that this third volume, unfortunately, never materialized (see, https://ijoca.blogspot.com/2024/01/ian-gordon-remembers-david-kunzle.html, accessed on March 16, 2025).

[v] Even though, in 1996, Kunzle had already been an established international Töpffer authority for several years, he did not contribute to the Skira book. For administrative reasons, it was not possible to include an article by him.

[vi] “The Comic Strip and Film Language,” Film Quarterly. 26 (1, Fall 1972): 11-23. As hinted by Michael Connerty on the Platinum discussion list March 5, 2025.

[vii] For example, in his “Kunzle 2” (Note 19, p.109), Kunzle (notoriously) states that he did not find a copy of Gustave Doré’s Holy Russia at the French National Library (BnF), which, he found surprising. In the Internet era, it is easy to establish that Kunzle was wrong, but not really so, as it turns out that the BnF does have a copy, be it not in book format, but as loose sheets (prints). Hence, the BnF’s Holy Russia set is kept in the Prints Department.

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Michel Kempeneers is an independent Belgian comics scholar. After several decades of comics journalism in the national press, he has turned his focus to proto-comics and 19^th-Century illustrated press, the latter especially through e-versions shared online by major reference libraries. A version of this article will appear in IJOCA 27-1.

Ian Gordon remembers David Kunzle

David Kunzle  (April 17, 1936 – January 1, 2024) 

by Ian Gordon

 

Vale David Kunzle. I received the news from Roger Sabin when I was in London in early January. As it happened I was at Cambridge, his undergraduate university, the day before I heard and on my return to London walked pass his doctoral home at the Courtauld Institute of Art. 

 

David was a formative influence on my work. Like many comics fans at the time I first encountered David through his 1974 introduction to and translation of Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart’s How to Read Donald Duck. The red-hot prose of that work is best understood as a visceral reaction to the vicious Pinochet regime and the comics analyzed had been altered by the Chilean publishers who were not sympathetic to the Allende socialist government. But my engagement with David’s work only came later. In 1989 I decided to do my doctoral dissertation on comic strips. In that same year the University of California Press announced the forthcoming publication of the second volume of his The History of the Comic Strip and I sought a venue to review it since at $110 it was beyond my graduate student budget. Michael Kazin at Tikkun, who I had met at the Smithsonian, said no, but suggested the American Quarterly. At first Charles Bassett, then the book review editor, said no but after he received a volume from the University Press of Mississippi, Joseph (Rusty) Witek’s Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar, he said yes provided I did a combined review. Somewhat miffed that this fellow Witek had used a version of the title I wanted for my dissertation I said yes. In preparation while waiting for Volume 2, which only came out in mid 1990, I studied Volume 1 closely after previously only having given it a cursory read. I remember this well because I was traveling home to Australia and borrowed a copy from the University of Sydney library and read about a third, lugging it between Sydney and Melbourne and back again. Returning to the USA I spent a week or so in Los Angeles at my grad school friend Charles Shindo’s family home and he borrowed a copy from his alma mater, USC, and I may have even read some of it on the beach. Finally, back in Washington, DC I finished Volume 1 at the Library of Congress and moved to Volume 2 that I had by then received. The review duly appeared in American Quarterly.[1] After completing the review essay I begun the research for my dissertation. In many ways my approach to studying comics was shaped through this review essay. I wanted to use Kunzle’s methods to study American comics and was too sharp with Rusty’s work for not doing quite what I wanted it to do. Stressing the merits of Kunzle I neglected the merits of Witek, something that I later addressed.[2] 

 

Of Kunzle’s work I had this to say in the American Quarterly: 

 

Kunzle's first volume History of the Comic Strip: Vol. 1, The Early Comic Strip, published in 1973, contained an account of the crucial transformation in graphic narrative in late eighteenth century England; "the stylistic revolution in popular graphic art known as caricature" (Kunzie, Berkeley, 1973, 1). Kunzie demonstrated that before Hogarth introduced a comic element in graphic narrative during the eighteenth century, it was primarily concerned with religious, moral, and political themes of a didactic or propagandistic nature. The narrative in Hogarth's panels was also easier to follow than in earlier, more static, graphic narrative. But Hogarth was no caricaturist. Nor did he use speech balloons, contrary to the view held by many comic art historians.' Caricature, a method of capturing a person's essential character by the exaggeration of features in a loose line drawing, entered the public realm of European art late in the eighteenth century. It lent itself to political commentary and to a new style of narrative fiction: the comic strip. Rodolphe Topffer (1799-1846) undertook the first sustained work in the new medium of the comic strip, and History of the Comic Strip: Vol. 2, The Nineteenth Century opens with a discussion of his work.  

 

Kunzie argues that Topffer and those who followed him, most notably Cham (Charles-Henri-Amedee de Noe), Leonce Petit, Adolphe Willette, and Wilhelm Busch, effected a profound change in graphic narrative. They produced comic strips that aimed to entertain. The works presented not the facile comic strip offerings one so often encounters in the late twentieth century, but extended tales, gathered in albums, that addressed the emerging bourgeois order of Europe. For instance, between 1830 and 1846, Topffer lampooned the pretensions of the petite bourgeoisie on the make, parodied scientific research, and in his final work, derided would-be revolutionists. To tell these stories, Topffer and the others developed new graphic narrative techniques. These included dried pen etching and stunning montage sequences in which the images cut back and forth between protagonists, or ranged over movement through time and space. Kunzle's detailed account of the European development of the comic strip is relevant to an American Studies audience because despite the unique and "specifically American humorous tradition" displayed in early American comic strips (5), their form, and indeed their content, owed much to the earlier European work.  (242-243).  

 

And, “David Kunzle's History sets a standard for discussion and analysis of the comic art form. He not only recounts the technical and stylistic development of the form but sets it within the cultural matrix of nineteenth century Europe." (246)

 

For good measure I should note that I saw Rusty’s work positing something that indeed happened and he was ahead of the curve in seeing that possibility and explaining the way it took shape, “Witek's book raises the possibility that comic books may transcend their formulaic nature and produce a new literary medium." (246)

 

Having finished his second volume David seemed to balk at doing the third volume that he had originally intended. In May 1992 he wrote to the art historian Rebecca Zurier had received a Swann Foundation fellowship for her work on the Ashcan School. He proposed a collaboration on a third volume that would run from 1896 to Krazy Kat stopping short of the adventure strips of the 1930s. Given her path to tenure as an art historian had been mapped out for her in discussions with her Department Zurier could not take up Kunzle’s offer, and she directed him to me. In 1992 just as I was wrapping up my dissertation, I received a letter from Kunzle (see below). Busy with meeting the demand from the graduate Dean of my university that all 200 figures appear in portrait form with full captions, rather than a mix of portrait and landscape, and then with defending the dissertation I did not reply until October. To say I was flattered was an understatement. I was flabbergasted that Kunzle had contacted me and proposed such a collaboration. I of course said yes. So where is that third volume? I said yes conditionally since I wanted to get some publications out before turning to that collaboration. I also hoped to stay in America and was able to do so through some employment at the Smithsonian allowed as gaining work experience under my F1 visa. David replied and we agreed to meet in Los Angeles in 1993 to discuss the volume. I sent him my dissertation.  

 

In 1993 he graciously collected me at the LA train station and we and his wife Marjoyre had dinner at their UCLA house. I remember the dinner because at one point David excused himself and returned with a rapier and told me about his performance with an Elizabethan troupe. I was unsure if I should engage him with the fork I was using to eat pasta. I am not sure if it was that evening, or perhaps in a letter that I no longer have, that David responded to my dissertation with the comment “was it as bad as that” meaning the mass commodification of comic art in the American comic strip. I now wonder if perhaps he was also asking me to think a little more about comic art that had not been so drastically commodified and perhaps expand my vision from the very real role comics played in shaping consumer culture.  

 

By this stage though I had decided to return to Australia since long term work was not presenting itself in America. I am not sure exactly what David and I decided on the proposed collaboration or indeed if we decided anything. Perhaps it disappeared as other priorities and the passage of time took us further away from the project. From a letter from Martin Barker sometime in mid to late 1993 I do know that David had been speaking with him to about the project. But as Martin suggested I think David was not as engaged with Volume 3 as he had other work he wanted to do.

In the last ten years or so other scholars have filled some of the gaps left by the absence of a third volume. Beyond my own initial attempts to place comics in a broader development of twentieth century American culture Christina Meyer’s Producing Mass Entertainment, Lara Saguisag’s Incorrigibles and Innocents, and Alex Beringer’s Lost Literacies are all invaluable works that should be read in the absence of that volume. One can hope for many more works like these to plug the gaps. 

 

Many non-academic readers with an interest in understanding the history of comics have appreciated Kunzle’s work. But that was not always the case. For instance, when I visited Bill Blackbeard in 1991 he dismissed David’s work as simply reproducing every early image he could find and not worth attention. His influence on others was perhaps pernicious since Bob Beerbohm, now very much a fan of the work, told me he had been put off by Blackbeard’s comments. I can only surmise that Blackbeard’s view was colored by a desire to claim comic strips as a uniquely American form and David’s work demonstrating long antecedents of commercial graphic work (and not fanciful connections like hieroglyphics) upset that apple cart. On the scholarly front David was aware of Donald Ault and I do wonder if they discussed Disney. 

 

David Kunzle encouraged my work especially in the early years when I was trying to make a career. Other scholars like the Australian historian Richard Scully and the British historian Patrick Hagopian, to whom David sent photo documentation of his anti-Vietnam war posters, have mentioned David’s kindness. I was very happy to meet David again in 2017 at a conference in the UK. By then he had returned to the study of comics at a time when more and more scholars had turned their attention to both comics and David’s work. The following year at the International Graphic Novels and Comics conference in Bournemouth I was able to thank him publicly during my keynote address for his help, encouragement, and exemplary scholarship. His gracious nod in thanks was as wonderful as the first letter I received from him. We have lost a scholar of enormous importance.  

 

 

David Kunzle has received obituaries at the following sites: 

 

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2024/01/09/david-kunzle-rip/ 

 

https://www.tcj.com/david-kunzle-1936-2024/ 

 

https://www.politicalgraphics.org/post/david-kunzle-presente-poster-of-the-week 

 

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/in-memoriam-david-kunzle-art-and-comics-scholar 

 

And a fine memory from Charles Hatfield: https://www.tcj.com/remembering-david-kunzle/ 

 

Letters from Gordon's files

David Kunzle to Rebecca Zurier, May 8, 1992: 

Rebecca Zurier to David Kunzle, June 13, 1992:

Gordon to Kunzle, October 1, 1992:

 

Kunzle to Gordon, July 1, 1992:

Kunzle to Gordon, November 11, 1992: 

Martin Barker to Gordon, 1993:

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[1] Ian Gordon, ""But Seriously, Folks ...": - Comic Art and History," American Quarterly, 43 (June 1991): 122-126. 

[2] Ian Gordon, “In Praise of Comic Books as History: Joseph Witek and Comics Scholarship,” in Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and the Graphic Novel, Michael Chaney ed., (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011): 244-246.

"Kunzle and the Comic Strip" reprinted from IJOCA 5:1 (Spring 2003)

 

 

 

 

Review Essay: Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870 by David Kunzle

David Kunzle. Rebirth of the English Comic Strip:  A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870, Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 2021. Hardcover:  ISBN:  978-1-4968-3399-0, 472 pp., 309 b&w & 12 color illustrations. US $90. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/R/Rebirth-of-the-English-Comic-Strip

 A Review Essay

 by

Richard Scully

Reviewing another book for another journal, Michael Connerty (2021) observed that “This is a good time to be alive for anybody interested in the development of cartooning and comic strip art during the nineteenth century.” Among the reasons why, he mentioned the hugely-significant recent study of Marie Duval by Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite (2020), and my own Eminent Victorian Cartoonists (2018). To that list we should also add Ian Haywood’s The Rise of Victorian Caricature (2020), and Brian Maidment’s Robert Seymour and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture (2021), but of the original three works Connerty mentioned, the one that probably represents an epoch in the field is the latest--and possibly final--offering by the “foundational scholar” of early comics history:  David Kunzle.

With The Rebirth of the English Comic Strip, Kunzle returns to explore the British contexts first touched upon more than a generation ago in The Early Comic Strip (1973) and then in The History of the Comic Strip, Vol. II:  The Nineteenth Century (1990). At the time, it was the German and Francophone comic artists whose work was given pride of place in the grand narrative of c. 1450-1825 and beyond, to the 1890s. Only two of the chapters of The Nineteenth Century related to “England”--just 36-odd pages out of the total of 300--and in Rebirth, Kunzle expresses regret that “space restriction inhibited closer look at the English contribution,” especially given “the riches of Britain’s contribution to the comic strip” (x).

This richness is now given its due, with nearly all the main subjects first explored in 1990--and additional topics discovered in the intervening decades--examined with customary thoroughness and incisiveness; and all in the unmistakable prose style that has led so many of us to follow Kunzle into the serious study of comics. David Kunzle has always written inclusively. Second-person pronouns abound, as “we” are taken along for a remarkable peek into the archives. The story told in Rebirth is not merely his hobby horse, but “our exploration” (398). The language is not preserved in the amber-like fixity of the formal “academese” past tense--it is living and present. It is often funny. It is emotive. From the very beginning to the charming and beautiful postscript at the very end (437). Kunzle is also a master of dropping in and out of different modes, such as a divergence into Victorian theatricality in the Prologue (xv-xvi), the “Once upon a time” (xi), or the excurses that appear in several chapters (50-52; 97; 112-113; 200; 410-412). This is to say nothing of the way Kunzle--and the publishers--allows the comic art to speak for itself for page after page (a fortunate byproduct of intellectual property law, and the presence of such work in the public domain, rather than in corporate hands).

Divided into chapters focused on particular artists (e.g. Chapter 1 on George Cruikshank) or publications (e.g. Chapter 2 on The Man in the Moon, 1847-1849), the approach is chronological, and covers what W. L. Burn called The Age of Equipoise (1964). This was the period of relative calm that characterized “the Mid-Victorian generation” between the ending of the “hungry ‘40s” amidst the upheavals of Chartism and the Continent-wide revolutions of 1848, and the Gladstonian ascendancy, Beaconsfieldism, and the “New Imperialism” of the 1880s and 1890s. While Burn concentrated on 1852 to 1867, Kunzle’s span of time is a little longer:  between the “sudden erupt[ion] of “comic strip fireworks” in 1847 (ix), and the “bizarre new stylistic era” beginning around 1870. Context is king from the outset of the book, and the cultural status of the Victorian magazine (arbitrated by Carlyle and Dickens), and the “sociopolitical history” of a period not well-known for its comic strips, is presented in fine form. The contrast between Britain (or England, as Kunzle has it) and France; the working lives of comic artists; the sources for comic comment; and--in a deliberate glance back to 1990 and The Nineteenth Century--the crucial importance of a society shaped by the railways and by the theatre, all make for an ideal Prologue.

The prehistory of the English comic strip is the focus for the Introduction, with Hogarth the logical starting point. Kunzle sees the narrative, though, as a disconnected one. From Hogarth to the “Great Age of Caricature” there is continuity, but huge changes in the “printing and publishing industries, cultural attitudes (such as the ‘Victorian’ rejection of Regency libertinism), and caricature itself” separated Kunzle’s period of Rebirth from what had gone before. This is actually rather an older way of viewing the periodization, and the evolution of British comic art; something challenged by Brian Maidment and others (including myself). But here is nonetheless an engaging narrative encompassing Rodolphe Töpffer--whose reputation Kunzle has done much to reinforce in two key volumes (2007a and 2007b)--and a potential, crucial transnational transfer from his Swiss homeland to England via John Ruskin and George Eliot (3-4). Rounding out the chapter is a somewhat disconnected study of Robert Seymour, who--Kunzle argues--“deserves to be remembered for more than his illustrations to Pickwick, his pre-Punch satirical Figaro in London (1831-1838), or his tragic suicide at the age of thirty-eight” (8). It’s a little surprising that Kunzle shows some ignorance of Brian Maidment’s (2013a) early work on Seymour, which went a long way towards remedying such a myopia, and has culminated with the first full-length study just this year (2021).

Where Kunzle is on firmer ground is in his shedding new light on the otherwise well-known and high-profile artists of the Victorian Age. In the first of the substantive chapters, Kunzle focuses on George Cruikshank (of the famous dynasty of caricaturists), and explores his work in the temperance and teetotal social movement in depth. Following Robert Patten’s immense, two-volume biography of Cruikshank (1992; 1996)--itself almost a conscious imitation of the classic Victorian form of the genre--it’s hard to imagine how anything new could be said about this Janus-faced figure. But Kunzle draws-in likely influences from Töpffer and re-interprets much of Cruikshank’s work; and The Toothache is dealt with in ways not hitherto appreciated as well.

Albert Smith’s brief, but significant, Man in the Moon (1847-1849) takes up Chapter 2, and Kunzle successfully rescues that publication from more than a century of condescension by Punch scholars. Since his departure from Punch, the judgement of his one-time peers, Douglas Jerrold and Mark Lemon, has been that Smith was “vulgar and bumptious” (43) and that his own paper was little more than a foil to the senior paper. Kunzle sees much more merit in its pages than the admittedly quite deliberate swipes at Punch. For starters, there was Cham’s (Amédée de Noé) contribution (45-47), and the work of Henry Hine and the character Mr. Crindle. Nevertheless, Man in the Moon did deflate (just as assuredly as did Smith’s own hot-air balloon in 1847), and Kunzle does a good job of accounting for that (as well as providing a nice summation of Europe’s revolutionary atmosphere around the time of its demise).

Beginning with Chapter 3, Kunzle embarks on a truly fascinating series of studies of Punch that truly breaks new ground. So, while the existing literature on Punch is vast (and is still growing), it is surprising that neither Richard D. Altick (1997), nor Frankie Morris (2005), Patrick Leary (2010) or Brian Maidment (2013b), have picked-up on this crucial role as not merely an inspiration for comic strip magazines, but also the very practice. This is the London Charivari as a comic, and its chief cartoonists--Richard Doyle, John Leech, John Tenniel, Charles Keene, and George Du Maurier--as comic strip artists.

Interspersed with the Punch exploration are additional chapters on the fascinating political Francophobia/cultural Francophilia of two short comics regarding King Louis Philippe; and on Thomas Onwhyn’s shilling booklet Mr. and Mrs. John Brown’s Visit to London to See the Grand Exposition (1851). The impression given is precisely what Kunzle intends for these middle chapters:  to restore the mid-Victorian period as one of the key historical phases of comic strip art, in which multiple, regular, comic publications appeared to cater for various tastes. The status of the comic strip was enhanced by its association with Punch, at the moment it became a fixture of the establishment. So too it was adapted for other periodicals, such as Town Talk (the subject of Chapter 12) and the Illustrated London News (Chapter 13), as well as other journals, before disappearing after 1870.

But before the Epilogue deals with the sudden fading of the Victorian comic strip (compromised by a new perception that it was “vulgar”), the final substantive chapter (14), picks up on themes that have been of particular interest to the most recent Victorian-age comics scholarship:  the hitherto-neglected career of Marie Duval at Judy, and perspectives from the sesquicentenary of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). For the former, the aforementioned work of Grennan, Sabin, and Waite may be of unsurpassed quality, but it was built on the foundation established by Kunzle himself, who basically discovered Duval back in the 1980s. For the latter, Kunzle was name-checked by a number of scholars attending the May 2021 conference Chroniquer la guerre La Guerre de 1870-1871 dans la presse européenne et atlantique (held online because of COVID, via the École Polytechnique, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Musée de l’Armée). And like the rest of Rebirth, this chapter is not an exercise in resting on one’s laurels, but a further advancement in the interpretation of both comic touchstones. In part, this is due to the acid Kunzle wit:  Bismarck’s Ems telegram is likened to Trumpian “fake news” (403), and the link between the correspondents of 1870 with those in Baghdad or Kabul in more recent years. There does seem to be one slip-up (probably editorial, post-proofing) in misidentifying Judy’s “big cut” artist as William Brunton, not William Boucher (404); but that does not prevent Kunzle from joining a recent push to highlight Boucher’s remarkable body of work (Scully, 2013; Scully, 2018; Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, 2020; Gangnes, 2020).

It is rather striking that the book can be so original despite relying almost entirely on published primary sources. The Punch archives held by the British Library were not consulted for the light they shed on matters such as income, editorial decision-making, and the like, meaning there is still work to be done in this area. Although the expenses of geography and time can account for this omission, the absence of the editors’ copy of Fun, held at the Huntington Library, close to Kunzle’s base of operations, is a little less forgivable. Still, one can really only quibble about the details, as they are not crucial to the overall argument. For instance, from the 1860s, major Punch artists were not paid “£10-20 per major drawing” (xiii), but rather received a salary--Tenniel’s was £853.5s per year in 1875 (Scully, 2018b: 147). True, at Fun, John Gordon Thomson was paid by the drawing, but this was only ever in the realm of £4-6 for a “large cut” cartoon in the 1870s and 1880s (Scully, 2018b: 146). One of Kunzle’s key case-studies--George Du Maurier--spent an inordinate amount of time worrying over the relative incomes of his senior colleagues as early as 1861:  John Leech reportedly earning £1000 a year, and Tenniel £500 (Scully, 2018a: 107).

There are also a few notable omissions from the secondary sources, too. I, for one, would have enjoyed seeing Kunzle weigh-in to the obvious debate with Belgian historian Thierry Smolderen on The Origins of Comics (2014; published in the same Mississippi series). Although complementary, their interpretations differ, but there seems to be very little historiographical engagement with this, more broadly. James Chapman’s complete history of British Comics (2011) also doesn’t merit a mention--but then, Chapman didn’t seem terribly aware of Kunzle’s volumes, either, and just one of his articles on Ally Sloper (261, n14). Indeed, the literature review does not seem itself to be a favored means of contextualizing much comics scholarship. Absent from Kunzle’s Bibliography are also works by Brian Maidment (see above) and Henry Miller (2009a & b), as well as Richard D. Altick’s 1997 study of the early Punch, and (it has to be said) some of my own recent stuff on cartoonists; all of which would provide important context, if not being of direct relevance to the comic strip itself. That the scholarly literature is still somewhat disjointed and disconnected is underscored by Kunzle’s own observation (444, n6) that his work on Marie Duval--amounting to three articles (1985; 1986a; 1986b) and copious references in The Nineteenth Century (1990)--was largely ignored by the late Denis Gifford in writing an entry on the “Ally Sloper group” for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). This is something that Kunzle--perhaps in partnership with Grennan, Sabin, and Waite--should address.

One does also wonder why Kunzle did not revisit aspects of his earlier work that would have benefited from a second opinion, modified by the passage of time. Looking back to 1990, and The Nineteenth Century, one is struck by the absence in Rebirth of a chapter updating Kunzle’s work on James Sullivan, Fun, and “The British Working Man” (spanning pages 324-329 of the earlier volume). The Huntington Library copy of Fun would provide some very interesting new material for such a study; as would the only substantial work to have been based on that primary source:  E. S. Lauterbach’s doctoral thesis (completed at Urbana, Illinois in 1961). But, as Kunzle notes himself, one can only do so much, and there is not always much point in revisiting the past when trying to drive forward.

Speaking of the past, though; for someone like me, I’m most cheered by the fact that Kunzle has always--unashamedly--written history (as opposed to critique, commentary, or other, jargonistic or theory-heavy analytical forms from the literary or cultural studies world). Without the scholarly weight of his works to point to, I’d probably have been laughed-out of one too many seminars--and possibly a job--long ago. As an art historian, however, Kunzle is permitted to be more critical when it comes to the aesthetic merits of his subject-matter than the “straight” historian. And this is evident as he closes his volume with a riposte to the Punch tradition of comic art:

 

Punch’s reputation had declined [by the 1890s], having become tired and repetitive… [It] persisted through to the end of the century and beyond, in the endless, dreary perambulation of academically drawn illustrated jokes, with captions featuring the witty and the witless, the fatuous infelicity and the verbal faux pas [433].

 

Reputations are difficult things to track, historically. And Kunzle doesn’t offer any evidence for this perceived decline, which is important, given this was a time when the circulation figures were exceeding 80-90,000 per week (Scully, 2018, I: 18), and its status had been cemented by The History of “Punch” (1895) from M. H. Spielmann (a great arbiter of taste). Certainly, its fin de siècle content is unattractive to the radical sensibility, and Kunzle joins Sir David Low in criticizing it for staidness (Scully, 2018, I: 15). But Punch was hugely popular in its time and of its class; and any diminution of its quality is a subjective, anachronistic one, from the perspective of the 21^st Century and the focus on the comic strip.

But Kunzle’s opinion of Punch in part a lament, rather than outright criticism, for in eschewing the comic strip, the London Charivari left that medium to its lower-class rivals--although Kunzle dismisses the notion of any true rivalry (434). Between 1870 and the Edwardian period, Will o’ the Wisp, Judy, Fun, Pick-Me-Up, Funny Folks, Scraps, Illustrated Bits, and Comic Cuts witnessed the “vulgarization” of the comic periodical, and in cheapening the fare to be had by British readers, “it would take generations before the comic strip and comic books could rise from the reputational miasma of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century” (435). A harsh assessment indeed, especially given Judy probably entered a definite, post-Sloperian “Golden Age” in the 1890s (Scully, 2018, II: 83-84). Fun did decline in the later 1890s, and expired in 1901; Funny Folks folded in 1894. But Pick-Me-Up was a glossy and glorious product of the “Naughty Nineties,” despite its obvious piracy from Continental counterparts; hardly of a kind with the cheap-and-nasty Scraps, Illustrated Bits, and Comic Cuts (something evident from their very names). If one steps-back and applies a less aesthetic set of judgments, then what Kunzle identifies here is precisely what he spotted occurring in the 1830s (1983):  the material change of medium that accompanies a seismic shift in the history of the cartoon and comic. The “graphic bric-a-brac”--in his own, memorable phrasing (Kunzle, 1990: 20)--of the late Regency/early Victorian period finds its counterpart in these comics, which were experimental publishing forms, deserving of less judgmental assessment, and appreciation for what they were, not the later standards they failed to attain.

There is thus an opportunity here to challenge Kunzle’s assessment of the late-Victorian/Edwardian comic paper, just as Brian Maidment (2018: 54) and others have done for his assessment of the beginning of that period. Aspiring scholars should probably get their skates on, though. As Kunzle points out, the very cheapness of the Harmsworth/Northcliffe Comic Cuts presents a major problem for the historian of a century later:

 

in consulting Comic Cuts of this period… I found the danger not so much the bleeding through of the ink onto the reverse side (as shown on p. 369), not so much the occasional indecipherability, but the acidic disintegration of whole pages, as I turned them into a shower of confetti (435).

 

A timely reminder in our digital age of the need to preserve the archive, but also to consult the material culture, not merely its facsimile.

In an earlier age, in 1973 and 1990, comics studies was of fringe interest; edgy; even subversive. And Kunzle’s radical credentials were reinforced by his choice of subject-matter. For years we have been weaning ourselves off the need to bemoan the “neglectedness” of our field, because today, it is no longer the poor cousin in the Literature and Media/Cultural Studies departments, nor even a minor area of study. It is probably the fastest-growing field in the Humanities, if not quite yet a nascent discipline of its own.¹ Rebirth is not a standalone curiosity, but a handsomely-produced, well-edited, contribution to Mississippi’s Comics Studies series--some 162 volumes to date--which is itself just one of a number of series devoted to the field (including those of Palgrave, Routledge, Bloomsbury, Ohio State, Nebraska, and more). Kunzle’s work across six decades is one of the key reasons for the all-conquering strength of the field and, appropriately, Rebirth brings us not only full circle, but opens up new vistas for the future.

 

 

 

References

 

Altick, Richard D. 1997. Punch:  the Lively Youth of a British Institution, 1841-1851. Columbus:  Ohio State University Press.

Burn, W. L. 1964. The Age of Equipoise:  A Study of the Mid-Victorian Generation. London:  George Allen & Unwin.

Chapman, James. 2011. British Comics:  A Cultural History. London:  Reaktion.

Connerty, Michael. 2021. “Book Review:  Marie Duval:  Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, by Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite, Manchester University Press, 2020, 272 pp.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Published online May 11, 2021.

Connerty, Michael. 2021. The Comic Strip Art of Jack B. Yeats. Cham (Switzerland):  Palgrave.

Gangnes, Madeline B. 2020. “Material Romance:  Kidnapped In and Out of Young Folks Paper.” Victorian Periodicals Review 53 (2): 183-213.

Gifford, Denis. 2004. “Ally Sloper Group (act. 1867-1923).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/66301>. Accessed Nov. 15, 2021.

Grennan, Simon, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite. 2020. Marie Duval:  Maverick Victorian Cartoonist. Manchester:  Manchester University Press.

Haywood, Ian. 2020. The Rise of Victorian Caricature. Cham:  Palgrave Macmillan.

Kunzle, David. 1973. The Early Comic Strip:  Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825. Berkeley and London:  University of California Press.

Kunzle, David. 1983. “Between Broadsheet Caricature and Punch:  Cheap Newspaper Cuts for the Lower Classes in the 1830s.” Art Journal 4 (43): 339-346.

Kunzle, David. 1985. “The First Ally Sloper:  The Earliest Popular Cartoon Character as a Satire on the Victorian Work Ethic.” Oxford Art Journal 8 (1): 40–48.

Kunzle, David. 1986a. “Marie Duval and Ally Sloper.” History Workshop Journal 21 (1): 133-140.

Kunzle, David. 1986b. “Marie Duval--Caricaturist Rediscovered.” Woman’s Art Journal 7 (1): 26-31.

Kunzle, David. 1990. The History of the Comic Strip, Vol. II:  The Nineteenth Century. Berkeley and Los Angeles:  University of California Press.

Kunzle, David. 2007a. ed. Rodolphe Töpffer:  The Complete Comic Strips. Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi.

Kunzle, David. 2007b. Father of the Comic Strip:  Rodolphe Töpffer. Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi.

Leary, Patrick, The Punch Brotherhood:  Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London. London:  The British Library.

Maidment, Brian. 2013a. “The Presence of Punch in the Nineteenth Century.” In Asian Punches:  A Transcultural Affair, edited by Hans Harder and Barbara Mittler, pp.15-44. New York & Heidelberg.

Maidment, Brian. 2013b. Comedy, Caricature and the Social Order, 1820-50. Manchester:  Manchester University Press.

Maidment, Brian. 2018. “Caricature and the Comic Image in the 1830s.” The Yearbook of English Studies 48:  Writing in the Age of William IV, pp. 54-81.

Maidment, Brian. 2021. Robert Seymour and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture--Sketches by Seymour and Comic Illustration. London: Routledge.

Miller, Henry J. 2009a. “John Leech and the Shaping of the Victorian Cartoon:  The Context of Respectability.” Victorian Periodicals Review 42 (3): 267-291.

Miller, Henry. 2009b. “The Problem with Punch.” Historical Research 82 (216): 285-302.

Morris, Frankie. 2005. Artist of Wonderland:  The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel. Charlottesville:  University of Virginia Press.

Patten, Robert L. 1992. George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art--Volume 1:  1792-1835. Cambridge:  Lutterworth.

Patten, Robert L. 1996. George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art--Volume 2:  1835-1878.  Cambridge:  Lutterworth.

Scully, Richard. 2013. “William Henry Boucher (1837-1906):  Illustrator and Judy Cartoonist.” Victorian Periodicals Review 46 (4): 441-474.

Scully, Richard. 2018. Eminent Victorian Cartoonists. 3 volumes. London:  The Political Cartoon Society.

Smolderen, Thierry. 2014. The Origins of Comics:  From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen (trans.). Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi.

Spielmann, M. H. 1895. The History of “Punch.” London:  Cassell & Co.

 

 

 

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¹ My appraisal of the evolution of the field is paraphrased (if not plagiarised, unashamedly!) from Roger Sabin’s joyful editors’ preface to Palgrave’s “Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels” series.