Cartoonists Ring In New Years!!!

 NEW YEARS 

CELEBRATED 

IN THE OLD YEARS!

by Rick Marschall

Cartoonists almost congenitally embrace holidays. Comic artists are inspired by happy events, and in turn inspire their readers. Serious artists and illustrators create commemorations. In general, a job of cartoonists is to celebrate things worthy of celebration.

There is the additional allure of holidays to cartoonists. On those days the artists do not have to scratch their heads quite so much to come up with ideas!

In any (or all) events, here are some New Years themes from Old Years. I have chosen from my collection images that -- by coincidence -- not only raise the glass to the New Year, but appeared in roughly "round number" years ago (unless you are reading this as an archive post...!)

(Above) Winsor McCay, as "Silas," drew this fanciful exception to my rule here. At the end of 1907 he drew this strip of Father Time replacing the old 1907 with a baby 1908. Where did Old Man 1907 reside? In a grandfather's clock, of course! This appeared in the New York Telegram.

We will proceed chronologically. One hundred fifty years ago, the Father of American Editorial Cartooning, Thomas Nast, introduced the New Year in his short-lived magazine Nast's Almanac.

Ten years later in Puck Magazine this greeting appeared. The drawing by Friedrich Graetz, an Austrian cartoonist who worked in the US for three years, is an original in my collection.

The prolific Dwig (Clare Victor Dwiggins) created dozens of strips from the Turn of the Century into the 1950s; and many hundreds of comic postcards in the century's first decade. This was sent in 1910. 

Almost a hundred years ago, in 1920, someone received this charming New Year card drawn by the amazing cartoonist Rose O'Neill (happy-spoiler alert: A major treatment of her life and work is in the works for the imminent arrival of NEMO Magazine!)

Also from my collection (on the wall, as you can see, of the Gibson Room in my house) from one century ago -- Charles Dana Gibson drew Life's cupid (mascot of his magazine, Life) toasting the baby cupid with the sash labeled "1925." This appeared as a cover of Life, and was then inscribed to Gibson's niece. 

The lone New Years cartoon sans smiles is also from the mid-1920s, by John Held Jr. Hoping that your own celebrations do not result in headaches -- nor, in fact, may any other activities in the upcoming Twelvemonth, we wish you a...

HAPPY 

NEW 

YEAR! 

THE ANTECEDENTS, RELATIVES, FOREBEARS, COUSINS, AND GODPARENTS OF THE COMIC STRIP

 

... THAT IS, THE HISTORY OF THE KINETOGRAPH, KINETOSCOPE, AND KINETO-PHONOGRAPH.

Whew. A project on which I have worked for years -- whether it will be a book or several volumes, ultimately; or articles in NEMO Magazine and here in Yesterday's Papers -- will trace representational art and the written/printed word and how their functions originally were conjoined; their separation at Gutenberg's hands; and how myriad experiments, creations, inventions, even toys, reconciled the these modes of expression.

And how those expressions were manifest in the comic strip, the cinema, and the animated cartoon. Interesting to me (and confirming the evolutionary imperative that was at work) is that, at least in the United States, these three disciplines largely came into existence in a period of a half-dozen years... in a few-square-mile space in Manhattan... and except for only one or two people, by people who neither worked together nor knew each other. Remarkable, really.

The story is not of mere synchronous events and coincidences. The results of the very exciting experiments are fascinating -- inheriting the culture's patrimony of what Prof E H Gombrich called the psychology of pictorial representation; varying degrees of sophistication when story and art partnered their wares; and (what I think is an essential component) the role of commerce, business, and profiteering in their development. Commercial factors were inspirations, enablers, and wet-nurses to these art forms that both mirrored and defined Western Civilization of the 20th century. 

Thomas Edison played a part, as he did in many spheres of life, but so did others associated with him. Typically, these people did not always receive credit (hence, the man you will meet, and his sister, in a moment)... or, largely had their contributions copied, denigrated, or outright stolen. The Patent wars often were hilarious; and the slander, or worse, endured by people like Eadweard Muybridge and Nikola Tesla is sad.

The stories of the early contraptions of Edison and his assistants are fascinating. The Wizard of Menlo Park was a gifted inventor, yet his motivations frequently were commercial -- not impulses that are mutually exclusive. But his priorities were displayed in efforts like his (failed) obsessive pursuit of a substitute for butter, and artificial mother-of-pearl. Many of his dreams and experiments were devoted to exploiting his phonograph. The motion picture (in his mind) would somehow expand the appeal, and profitability, of the phonograph. And when motion pictures themselves were developed, Edison resisted theatrical projection, believing that greater profits would be realized by "peep shows" -- coins dropped into single-person devices.

As the industry grew, in the hands of inevitable rivals, his rejection of theater-projection slowed him... but he caught up with a vengeance, and became a major producer of movies and movie stars in the first years of the form. 

The history's cast of characters is as interesting as any primitive cliff-hangers (often filmed in Fort Lee NJ, the "first Hollywood") --  Muybridge; the cartoonist and film pioneer J Stuart Blackton; Albert E Smith; Grey Latham (one of cartoonist Rose O'Neill's husbands) and... world-wide readers take note, I am well aware of parallel developments, particularly in France at this time; I am focusing on the American aspects of this creative revolution. But an assistant of Edison named William K L Dickson was responsible for many innovations claimed by and developed by Edison.

Dickson (1860-1935) was a Scottish-American inventor whose work for Edison was fecund and entreprenurial... perhaps too ambitious for him to want to remain under Edison's wings. But before he left Edison to pursue his own movie concepts and inventions and partnerships, around 1895, Dickson was either grateful enough, or hero-worshiping, or wily, to kiss up to the Wizard of Menlo Park.

In an article in The Century monthly magazine, subsequently printed as a slim book, Dickson -- or rather his sister Antonia, who was a better writer and promoter -- explained to laymen the theory of moving pictures (we learned of it as persistence-of-motion), the technical challenges of photographing action, the challenge of inventing cameras and projectors, the need of malleable film, etc. He praised Thomas Alva Edison to the skies; and Edison wrote a commendation of Dickson, and himself.

I reproduce here the cover of my copy of his book, printed in 1895. For all of its persiflage and self-promotion, it is a remarkable record the challenges, experiments, solutions, and technical variations undertaken by Edison, Dickson, and others in the 1880s and '90s. Shortly after publishing his paeans and promos, Dickson left Edison's employ and worked with varying degrees of success and accomplishment, on the fringes of the emerging industry.

Meanwhile, across town so to speak, other inventive people were doing with drawings what Edison and Company were doing with photographs -- comic strips in newspapers, and animated drawings on film and in flip-books.

Beneath the cover is a link to the Dicksons' entire short book, a PDF with illustrations including the methodical frame-by-frame sequences of humans and animals in motion. 

       

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015002595158&seq=62