a sequence of sequential art

December 26, 2006 11:56 AM

A history of picture stories from 300 AD to 1929 and commentary. The evolution of speech balloons. Photos & drawings of early cartoonists. [via]
posted by nickyskye (11 comments total)

thanks--some excellent stuff here
posted by amberglow at 2:11 PM on December 26, 2006

this Josua scroll is amazing.
posted by amberglow at 2:16 PM on December 26, 2006

Thanks, nickyskye, this is fantastic!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:50 PM on December 26, 2006

Yeah, great stuff, nicky. It was posted here about 4 years ago when it was at bugpowder. Well worth a repost after that long.
posted by mediareport at 9:44 PM on December 26, 2006

hi nicky, this is a lovely post. Thank you. I am actually trying to find out more about Andy Bleck (or Konkykru). He has apparently some excellent drawings too.
posted by carmina at 9:58 PM on December 26, 2006

ah, mediareport, Andy's Early Comics Archive seemed too wonderful not to have been linked to in MetaFilter before. Thanks for being gracious about it.

carmina, hard to find much info about "Andy Konky-Kru". Here's a pic of him and an excellent piece called "Konky" by Pete Ashton, about Andy's website and his work.
posted by nickyskye at 11:02 PM on December 26, 2006

a very western-centric list, no?

altho, to be honest, i can't think of too many non-western examples of picture stories off the top of my head, other than the quite wonderful pictorial ramayana in the royal palace in bangkok.

(cannot google it now - running fast out of internet time here in delhi...)

there've gotta be some good pictorial tales of genji...
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:36 AM on December 27, 2006

there are gorgeous Genji pics but i don't remember seeing captions or sentences on them--just chopmarks and stuff. Maybe some of those hanging scroll paintings with poems on them would count?
posted by amberglow at 7:17 AM on December 27, 2006

Huh, the evolution of speech balloons is fascinating.

I wonder what the next evolution is going to be? I see a lot of webcomics that use different fonts/colours to convey different emotional content...
posted by porpoise at 12:03 PM on December 27, 2006

how delightful!
posted by owhydididoit at 1:00 PM on December 27, 2006

Thanks for the wonderful post nickyskye, and for the follow-up links. I’ve been working my way through some histories of comics recently and I think this is my favorite so far (probably due to the obsessive quality that Ashton notes in the “Konky” link – and like porpoise I loved the speech bands material). I would not have seen it otherwise.
posted by sophieblue at 3:40 PM on December 27, 2006