The Comics Bureau

Paul Gravett writes up a brief his­tory of the graphic novel,

To know where we are going to, we need to know where we’ve come from. This is true of our lives as well as our cul­ture. In the case of the com­ics medium, its date of birth used to be hotly con­tested. Twenty years ago, on Octo­ber 30th 1989, it was finally to be decided at a his­toric sum­mit or “Incon­tri” organ­ised by the Lucca Com­ics Fest­ival in Italy. When the inter­na­tional jury con­vened to determ­ine which was the first major char­ac­ter, all but one mem­ber gave in to Amer­ican lob­by­ing and signed an agree­ment select­ing The Yel­low Kid, cre­ated by Richard F. Out­cault and pub­lished in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York Worldnews­pa­per. Below is Por­tuguese expert Vasco Granja’s copy of the agree­ment which is trans­lated along these lines:

“The eleven inter­na­tional spe­cial­ists, gathered in Lucca, estab­lish by abso­lute major­ity that 1896 was the year of birth of the com­ics. This was the year in which, through the char­ac­ter of The Yel­low Kid, the com­ics, assum­ing the express­ive con­tri­bu­tions provided pre­vi­ously by cre­at­ors from vari­ous coun­tries, launched those spe­cial lin­guistic char­ac­ter­ist­ics which would trans­form it into a new medium of communication.”

I don’t know if you noticed, but see how Denis Gif­ford signed his name ‘Ally Sloper 1876′, sig­nalling his dis­sent at the agree­ment that the Yel­low Kid was the birth of com­ics. Check out the Early Com­ics Archive to read more Ally Sloper.