World Encyclopedia of Cartoons

When I can't find any links to the artists I feature, I consult this book. It was written in 1980 but that's okay because the artist either died before the book was published or didn't do much since then. I've had it since I was a teenager. It's 676 pages. The editor, Maurice Horn, did all kinds of cartoon and comics history books like The World Encyclopedia of Comics, Sex in the Comics, 100 Years of Newspaper Comics, etc. Most of the art in this book is excerpts and stills from animated films, or in my copy, poor reproductions. However, there are lots of complete cartoons worthy of showing. Here are some which I'll be showing off each Saturday.


This first cartoon, from introductory chapter Caricature and Cartoon is by John T. McCutcheon for the Chicago Tribune in 1920.


By Yvan Le Louarn a/k/a Chaval for Paris-Match


This is one of the few cartoons to not have a caption identifying the author or date.


The syndicated daily panel Citizen Smith by Dave Gerard.


Political cartoon from 1906 by Frederick Opper of Happy Hooligan fame.


Richard Doyle in Punch


The man who brought down the Tweed Ring in New York, and who current political cartoonists would like think they have the impact of, Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly


Art Young in the leftist magazine, The Masses.


Black humor by Siné


Still from Au Fou!(which, according to Babelfish, means “With the insane one!” in French), a 1967 animated cartoon from Japan directed by Yōji Kuri


(NSFW)


The Cow That Watched Trains Go By, a cartoon from 1875 by Caran D'Ache



The Duel with the Fashionable Pointed Shoes by Adolf Oberländer, from 1885



Love Story ca. 1885, by Alexandre Steinlen

Cartoon Cavalcade

This book came out in 1943. It's mostly panels from the New Yorker but those are in print elsewhere so I'll skip them. I'll skip the strips that are in other collections. The stills from Disney cartoons can all be seen in other places in color. Even leaving out all that, there's still a lot in this 444-page collection covering the medium up until then. Even though it curtails the use of paper during wartime, it still uses more paper than books produced recently in which such sacrifices are not made.

In the introduction. Author Thomas Craven says, “The first consideration, in selecting the illustrations for this book, as I have pointed out in the text, was that the drawing must be funny. It was a long and complicated business involving both a sense of humor and that curious quality known as artistic temperament. Deceased cartoonists were well satisfied with the illustration in their name; but living cartoonists had their own ideas on which pictures represented them in a volume dealing not only with the course of laughter but the causes of laughter through the passing years. For the solution to the endless difficulties of selection, procurement, and appeasement, I am indebted to Florence and Sydney Weiss[...] I am particularly indebted to William Murrell's A History of American Graphic Humor, the only work of it's kind and a monumental contribution to Americana. Murrell's history, besides being invaluable for reference, has recalled to me the old artists and funny men whose cartoons were a part of my education”


The endpapers have the signatures of most of the (then living) cartoonists in this volume:


C.H. Ebert Scribner's, 1901


Carl Hauser, Fun for the Millions, 1900


Walt Kuhn, Judge 1908


George McManus, New York Evening-Journal 1904


Walt Kuhn, Judge 1907


Thomas Starling Sullivant, Harper's Weekly 1912


L. M. Blackens, Puck 1907


Thomas E. Powers, New York Evening-Journal 1907


Harrison Cady,Life 1906



George Bellows, The Masses 1911


Robert Minor, The Masses 1915


Crawford Young, Judge 1917