Pernicious Illustration – Pernicious Pictures

    

[1] From F. Opper’s Happy Hooligan, 1911

 PERNICIOUS ILLUSTRATION! 

x xx 

“A worse pabulum for young America could hardly be concocted by Satan himself. The combined influences of the home, the public schools, and all the churches together are hardly sufficient to undo the mischief wrought in the minds of children by this never-ceasing flood of hell-broth.” — Henry Turner Bailey, 1911

xx 

 PERNICIOUS PICTURES! 
x 

HENRY TURNER BAILEY in 1911 started a brief discussion with his 5-page article Pernicious Illustration in a brand new monthly trade magazine, The Graphic Arts (subtitle: ‘for Printers and Users of Printing’). Comments of two other authors followed in a later issue, under the general header “Pernicious Illustration” Again; The Other Side of the Matter. Below are the pages 121-125 and 284-288 with all three articles, taken from The Graphic Arts, Vol. I, January-June 1911, National Arts Publishing Company, Boston, MA. 

Pernicious Illustration by Henry Turner Bailey.

Another Aspect of Newspaper Humor by Brainard Leroy Bates.

A Plea for the Pernicious Pictures by Joseph Swerling. 

[2] Page 121

[3] Page 122

[4] Page 123

[5] Page 124

[6] Page 125

[7] Page 284

[8] Page 285

[9] Page 286

[10] Page 287

[11] Page 288

[12] F. Opper, Happy Hooligan Makes a Hit! But It Wasn’t on the Programme, a full page comic strip in the Sunday Chicago Tribune of February 26, 1911

★

The Respectable Papers of Boston and Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck, 1842

Gloucester Telegraph, Sep 16, 1842

EXTRA, NO. IX. The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck, often labeled “the first American comic book”, first issued to subscribers as a 40-page ‘Extra, No. IX’ issue of Brother Jonathan weekly in New York, and dated September 14, 1842, was a reworked bootleg version in English of Swiss cartoonist Rodolphe Töpffer’s comic strip Les Amours de Mr. Vieux Bois or Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois (1827, Geneva album published 1837). 

If Oldbuck might be called the first American comic book, the following short newspaper quip might be called the first criticism of comic books in America,

Does the “Brother Jonathan” often humbug the public with such trash as the “Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck”? The respectable papers of Boston should not become a party to such impositions by puffing them. — Gloucester [Massachusetts] Telegraph, Sep 16, 1842

Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846), self-portrait

  

8§8