As we've noted in the two previous editions of Scoop, The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck is recognized as the earliest American comic book, dating to 1842. With this third installment, we're pleased to present an excerpt of comics historian and dealer Robert Beerbohm's story of researching and discovering artist Rodolphe Töpffer's incredible work.

Those interested in purchasing a copy may contact him at the following address:

Robert Beerbohm Comic Art
P.O. Box 507
Fremont, NE 68026
Telephone (402) 727-4071

The Search For Töpffer In America
©2003 Robert Beerbohm

One day in the mid-1990s, 1995 or early 1996, after coming to conclusions that much of our history was actually nationalistically false, I set out to explore, to find the earliest comics in America - little knowing I would actually be setting my sights onto Europe instead - and not America. This was initially disturbing to me. After all, Lucca comics festival in Italy even had its Yellow Kid award.

In mid 1996 while exploring world-famous Moe's Book Store on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley, California with my good friend Catherine Yronwode, I chanced upon David Kunzle's ground-breaking second volume The History Of The Comic Strip - Volume Two subtitled "The Nineteenth Century." (University of California Press, 1990) in their more expensive out-of-print section. It was marked $120.00. This was a fantastic find. It had a huge section on Töpffer among many other creators I knew little of. It also covered only European comics material. He promised a third volume, but the rumors in the grape vine is it may never happen.

I remember asking on the long-running international comics newsgroup COMIX (located at comix@indra.com) about Töpffer and his "picture stories."

Long-time friend and editor at The New York Daily News, Jay Maeder, suggested I hunt down an article by Gershon Legman located in a journal known as American Notes And Queries.

I succeeded in locating a set at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and discovered this amazing essay in its January, 1946 issue called "The First Comic Books In America: Revisions And Reflections."

I transcribed and posted this 1946 Gershon Legman essay onto the Internet via various e-lists I am on.

Within this bold letter of almost sixty years ago, I offer some of its tantalizing insights into a far-earlier comics history than I had ever had register in my comics radar even after pouring through many comics history books over the years:


"The usual statement on the early history of the comics in America runs about like this:

"The first comics didn't appear in the United States until the latter half of the 19th century. Richard F. Outcault, a former draftsman for Electrical World, created a little roughneck character from the slums and called him The Yellow Kid." --Martin Sheridan, Comics And Their Creators, Boston, 1942, revised 1944, pp. 16-17.

"Nevertheless, the comic strip is not originally an American art-form, and Outcault's comic-stories in the New York World in 1894 ("The Yellow Kid" was not his first) were half a century later than the first comics appearing in the United States, and an unknown number of centuries later than the first that appeared at all."

"The history of the comic strip has not yet been traced."

"According to the New York Times (Sept 3, 1904), the first American reprint of Töpffer was issued as a supplement to Brother Jonathan (New York, Sept. 14, 1842)."

"Clifford K. Shipman has drawn attention (AN&Q 5:71) to several early American comic books, Ferdinand Flipper, Ichabod Academicus and others. The earliest of these, The Adventures Of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck, is not an American original but a piracy of a Swiss album of 1837, a fact already noted by William Murrell in 1933."

"I do not know what the first comic strip, sheet or book by an American-born artist may have been. The original Swiss editions are very limited and it seems likely that Dick & Fitzgerald used the 1846-47 collected edition, which would date these reprints four years later than the Brother Jonathan Töpffer of 1842. It is possible that comic books in America took their inspiration from Töpffer, but in only a quick glance at Murrell's History Of American Graphic Humor one comes across a number of American artists who were, in the 1830s and earlier, producing material that may properly designated "comic."

"The groundwork for the comic book in America was laid when the comic almanacs, beginning with Charles Ellms' American Comic Almanac (Boston1831), created a demand for humorous drawings in pamphlets rather than broadsides. The illustrations of jokes and scenes of static humor -- the cartoon as opposed to the caricature -- continued in the tradition of book illustration, while the caricature became strictly a feature of the newspapers and magazines which later took over the cartoon as well."

"The comic -- involving continued action through a series of drawings -- combined the reduplicative frieze-motif, the nursery-tale and horn-book presentation, the comic almanac format, and the emergent European protracted story form (as in Topffer's work) into the comic book."

All these leads had to be traced. My mind boggled by what I had just read. I immediately went up onto Usenet, posting in rec.arts.comics.misc a plea wanting to buy The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck by Rodolphe Töpffer. The post was short and sweet, as i hoped to contain its contents to the "key" words which someone placing a response or a query might use.

A year goes by. In its 1997 edition, I compiled a 15-page overview for The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, our "bible" of comic book knowledge, of what I then thought I knew to be the origins of the comics in America. Nary a mention of Töpffer in its pages. But I traced through Popular Story newspapers, the dime novels, the pulps, Ernie McGee, all the usual other suspects.

Then another year goes by. It is now early 1998.

I eventually get an email from a lady in Oakland, California, who had been searching thru Usenet's "Deja Vu" email archive and discovered my name, asking me if I might be interested in a copy, which had been in her family for six generations.

According to what her grandfather told her before he died, her great-great-great-great grandfather had bought it in Indiana in 1849 and brought out to California during the initial Gold Rush, which brought millions to America to seek their fortune.

It had been in her family all these decades. Indeed, her grandfather had written her a letter which read in part, "Take care of this. It is the first comic book published in America."

Was I interested?

I quickly asked her for her phone number, called it, and worked out a price for this unknown treasure from a murky past I then knew almost nothing about.

I knew beforehand that this first copy I acquired was lacking its outer paper wrap, rendering the cover, the first page and the last two pages of the story missing. It looked like it had been run over by Forty-Niner wagon wheels and possibly pissed on by a horse. But it was mine and I read it and I was astounded by its complexity. I decided this was a comic book.

The first comic book in America. And it was from 1842.

About this time met I also met a fellow comics history traveller, Doug Wheeler, bent on discovering this long lost portion of America's history and this art form's true roots. He had offered the lady a bit less than I ended up paying because he already had a copy sufficient for his research.

Or so he thought.

In late 1998, on my way to set up dealing old comics at a New York City comics festival, I pit stopped at his apartment to show him my copy.

He is stunned and goes gets his off the shelf and shows me something with smaller dimensions.

Both were published by Wilson And Company, New York City.

Only, it appeared obvious my copy was quite possibly earlier. The formats were radically different. Doug's copy was more akin to the British and French editions. It was puzzling.

A few months later, someone walked up to Doug at a local antique paper show and sold him a complete 1842 copy.

My good friend Alfredo Castelli, whom I met through the Internet during his early research on his opus Here We Are Again 1895-1919: The First 25 Years of American Newspaper Comics, invited me over to the Lucca comics festival being in late 1998. Of course, I brought along the Obadiah and various comics scholars took a look at it, trying to re-orient their thoughts to a brand new wrinkle in comics lore. A comic book from America published while Töpffer was still alive. Samples from Obadiah soon found their way into its manuscript as the book's context has grown.

He asked then Lucca comics-maestro, Luca Boschi ,to make me a guest of the festival, in the process covering some of my expenses for making such a trek. I made many new lasting friends at my first European comics festival. Serious questions were finally being posed as to where & why this mysterious Obadiah came about.

Written in late 1998 upon my return from a wonderful time in Lucca, I announced to the world of American comics fandom via The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide #29 (Gemstone, April 1999) about the existence of Töpffer's 1842 original Wilson & Company, New York, first printing (when RT was still alive) of The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. No cover or page sample ran that year.

This important piece of information drew little reaction in America from the comics people I encountered until I began traveling to the comics festivals, showing it to one person at a time. Almost everybody who has ever paged through this has said, "It's a comic book."

Early in 1999 I was fortunate to have long-time New York City friend, Mark Nevins, a co-host of our International Comic Art Forum (ICAF) held thru Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., loan me his newly-acquired book Forging A New Medium, edited by Pascal Lefévre and Charles Dierick (VUB University Press, Brussels). This was a further eye-opener.

Later that year I brought Obadiah to comics shows in New York City, Chicago, San Diego, Minneapolis, Dallas, Detroit, San Francisco Bay Area, then over to the big Rome comics festival and showed it to even more comics scholars.

Due to Forging A New Medium's impact on me, I began an Internet study group (currently located at PlatinumAgeComics@yahoogroups.com).

The PlatinumAgeComcs e-list ranks began to swell. We soon had members from over a dozen countries. Now there are comics scholars from some thirty countries exploring the origins of the comics.

The tide was beginning to turn with regarding the comprehension amongst historians that comics appeared in America back near as close as they began to appear in Europe. Back when Töpffer was still alive. Maybe he even saw this edition, or maybe he at least heard about it' existence. He took a tremendous interest in its presentation in his native land. He lamented the pirates diluting his art's impact.

All one has to do is get past "word balloons" and "recurring characters" to open up a much longer developed, a deeper history of comic strips.

By 2000 the American comics world was slowly turning upside down as were comics historians in France, who also never knew of its existence, as this original was shown to much amazement at a few dozen comics shows those two years. I had become an Obadiah Ambassador, conjuring in my mind a mental image of our legendary Johnny Appleseed planting his seeds.

In January 2000 I came over to France for my first Angouleme comics festival , rooming with Michigan State University comics archivist, Randy Scott. We participated in the first of what has turned into an annual "Plat List" lunch at the Angouleme CNBDI cafe.

My American Obadiah made curator Thierry Groensteen say they will have to re-write the French comics history books.

One of America's foremost advocates for more widespread recognition of Töpffer's accomplishments is Art Ppiegelman. A recent interview with him in XTRA v3 #3 , Spring, 2000 (ProjectX@att.net) sports a sequence from Vieux Bois in French on its cover with Spiegelman discussing Comix 101 and "...stories for sheer amusement. That's Töpffer. Just for the frolic of it. That's really the beginning...."

Artie has also been very instrumental in my furthering my understanding of Töpffer's importance in comics history. We have learned together, spending quite a few late night sessions every time I breezed into New York City on my frequent pre 9-11 comics treks.

In 2000 I brought it thru again to some 25 comic shows in America, where I set up a van-load of old comics material in booths as I have long made my living buying and selling such historical artifacts.

After showing it to hundreds of people across both sides of the Atlantic in dozens upon dozens of comics shows, Thierry Groensteen invited myself and Doug Wheeler to contribute an article titled, "Töpffer in America" which saw print in the museum's 9e ART #6, January, 2001. We began to realize we were re-writing the history books.

Alfredo Castelli has helped a lot by writing fine articles about it in Immagini & Fumetti Cartoomics 2002 edition, Novieme Art, and other places in Europe now. It's cover and sample pages have been pictured in The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide for a few years now.

On our PlatinumAge list, we have had tremendous interactions with comic scholars from many different countries now, such as Bill Blackbeard, Doug Wheeler, Leonardo De Sá, Paul Gravett, Michel Kempeeners, Arnold Wagner, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Neil Gaiman, Eddie Campbell, Thierry Smolderen, Arnold Wagner, and lots of other good friends developing the research to the point now where we can piece together a fairly cohesive time-line of the development of an original American home-grown 1800s comics industry.

One which interacted heavily with Europe, which for almost a century has been largely forgotten by generations of comics readers to the point where its newspaper's first super star, The Yellow Kid, somehow usurped the throne from its rightful heir.

In early January 2003 I finally acquired a complete copy of the 1842 first printing of Obadiah and found a good home to safely archive my ground-breaking, world-traveling first copy. And because I insisted Alfredo have it, and he readily consented to become its present caretaker, most likely the only original copy in Europe, we now have this wonderful facsimile edition. Alfredo, you are one in a million.

I am happy Luca Boschi ordered Alfredo to finish the Herculean effort of retouching up this beaten, tattered, still-proud artifact which began the comics world in many countries, this one being from America more than fifty years before The Yellow Kid. And I feel we have only just scratched the surface of what was published back then.

By mid-2003 Comic Art #3 (www.comicartmagazine.com) will have published an in-depth look at "Töpffer In America" by Doug Wheeler, Leonardo De Sá and myself with numerous supporting visual aid examples.

It is at the printers as you read these words.


Robert Beerbohm Comic Art
PO Box 507 Fremont, Nebraska 68026
beerbohm@teknetwork.com (402)-727-4071