The transnational circulation of comic strips before 1945

Abstract

The transnational circulation of comic strips began as soon as comics appeared as an art form. Before 1945, the names of the pioneers were rapidly eclipsed by the success of the medium, making it difficult to establish geographic lines of descent, and more generally a ‘genealogy’ of the medium. This article describes a few of the trends at work in the different mechanisms of transnational circulation during the first century of this medium’s history (1830–1945). It focuses on the work of little-known go-betweens – influential in their time but since forgotten, like popular imagery artists in the 1870s, and Martin Branner in the 1920s – which explains apparent gaps and anachronisms in the transnational circulation of comic strips.