What is the World’s First Comic?

What is the World’s First Comic? From the surface, this seems like it would be a simple question to throw into google and tell your friends the answer to. However the history of comics is not so simple, as the world has defined this medium of literature in an obnoxiously large amount of ways due to adding certain criteria beyond it simply being sequential art. While there are many different works you can find that have credit being the world’s first comic, there are three major ones I find particularly important to include when we talk about sequential art history. 

Debuting in 1895 is Richard F. Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid”, a cartoon centered around a young Irish immigrant Mickey Dugan. It was made to educate the wealthier on the hardships the lower class of New York suffers from through enticing visuals and easily digestible narratives. “The Yellow Kid” is credited as the first comic strip by many historians because beyond being in a sequential pattern it also was the first to implement speech bubbles rather than captions to narrate the scene. That being said, the definition of a comic in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is, ‘“a group of cartoons in a narrative sequence,” so does being the first to use speech bubbles really count as being the first comic? Kritios Boy was the first marble sculptor to use the popular technique contrapposto, but as significant as this technique was we would not cite his work as the first marble sculptures because of it. Using a new technique in sequential art such as speech bubbles is respectable and significant in the development of comics, but it does not make “The Yellow Kid” the world’s first comic. 

Stepping back sixty eight years from “The Yellow Kid”, we can perhaps get a better answer to this question while looking at Swiss schoolmaster Rodolphe Töpffer’s “The Loves of Mr. Vieux Bois,” which he wrote in 1827 but didn’t publish until 1835. Töpffer defined these works as “bande dessinée” which roughly translates to “drawn strips” in English. Until the breakthrough of bande dessinée, the closest thing we had to comics were one panel drawings in newspapers popularized by artist William Hogarth. However because they were not sequential, these works would be categorized under editorial cartoons as opposed to true comics. Because Töpffer appears to have published the first group of illustrations in a narrative sequence, he was given the title of The Father of Comics. But then again, all it takes to be a comic strip by Webster’s definition is a group of cartoons in a narrative sequence. A comic doesn’t have to be illustrated on paper or published to be a comic. If I were to make a three panel story on a canvas with oil paint I would technically have a comic. And because of this, I still firmly believe that the world’s first comic goes deeper than the one made by The Father of Comics. 

Stepping back seven hundred and fifty years from “The Loves of Mr. Vieux Bois,” we can perhaps find the true answer to this question when looking at “The Bayeux Tapestry”, created in 1077 to represent the Duke of Normandy’s conquest of England in 1066. According to the Bayeux Museum, this piece of art is actually not a tapestry, but instead an embroidered piece of linen nearly 230 feet long, featuring 626 characters over the span of 58 scenes. Who the true artist of “The Bayeux Tapestry” is remains a mystery that will most likely never be solved. Though it is speculated that it was commissioned by Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux, to decorate the Bayeux Cathedral. While “The Bayeux Tapestry” is not widely considered the world’s first comic, it is technically a group of drawings in a narrative sequence. This fact is undebatable, and by Webster’s definition, would make this embroidered cloth poem identify as a comic strip. 

Humans have been creating comics for centuries, so the fact that a newspaper cartoon made in 1895 receives so much surface credit as being the first tells us a lot about the way sequential art history has been treated throughout society. Rodolphe Töpffer’s earliest biographer, Auguste Blondel, even mentions Töpffer’s late release on his first comic strip was because he feared prejudice against the style might damage his reputation as a schoolmaster. Despite prejudices against the world of sequential art, it’s important to remember that comics are not a genre, but a style of art that can take on many different kinds of genres. Simplistic characters with big goofy speech bubbles above their heads is not what makes a comic a comic. They can tell sophisticated stories combining both art and literature into one beautiful narrative. This is why “The Bayeux Tapestry” deserves to be recognized as the first piece of sequential literature- it is both an epic poem about an old English conquest, as well as a really long, fancy comic strip. 

The HoneyDripper is the Savannah College of Art and Design’s juried comics and illustration blog, dedicated to publishing, promoting, and showcasing the finest in student work.​