A few months ago, I was at a friend's house, and he had a complete set of the 1958 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana. Out of curiosity, I picked up one volume and flipped through the "Comics" entry. And then I took pictures of it so I can share it with all of you!
This is written by Harvey Zorbaugh, who was then the chairman of the Department of Sociology of the School of Education in NYU.
Here are some notable bits.
The first thing that jumps out at me is the first paragraph, in which comics are defined: "As distinguished from the single cartoon, comics consist of a series of pictorial representations telling a story, developing a situation, or at least presenting the same character in varied circumstances." This predates Will Eisner's definition of "sequential art," as given by his book COMICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART, by 27 years, and the more famous definition by Scott McCloud from UNDERSTANDING COMICS — "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the reader" — by 35 years.
Personally, I feel that the definition of comics as having at least two images is a device for convenience — it lets us leave out more things that are clearly not "comics" than include more things that may be considered as such. For example, I would call FAMILY CIRCUS a comic, even though it's only made up of one panel. However, the thing is, if we include single images, then something like the Mona Lisa could be called "a comic, " and it's not. It should be noted though, that Zorbaugh makes a provision for the "Family Circus"–type cartoons in his definition by saying "at least the same character in varied circumstances." It's the serialized nature of the publication that comes into play. (After all, if you placed two FAMILY CIRCUS comics together, you'd pretty much fit McCloud's definition.)
One more reason I think this is good to note is that a lot of comic book armchair scholars tend to treat McCloud as the be-all, end-all of comics debate — something he never intended — without acknowledging that Eisner preceded him (despite McCloud continually mentioning Eisner in his book). Turns out that comics have been defined as having at least two pictures in sequence since at least 1958. (I say at least because I'm sure this was written before 1955 — there's no mention of Fredric Wertham and the Senate hearings in the entry.)
In addition, it does state that comics don't need word balloons or narration boxes or words at all, so whoever is still arguing that point really ought to let that go.
More bits and the full article after the jump.
