Richard Doyle
Brown, Jones and Robertson - 1850


(sorry about the quality of these scans. Eventually I'll replace them with large colour scans.)















































The last two pages from Punch are the start of a longer narrative, a travelogue comic through Germany and Switzerland. - Very unfortunately for Punch magazine and especially English comics as a whole, the anti-catholic stance (nasty cartoons etc) forced the catholic Doyle to leave the magazine.












He did continue with his narrative, but less experimental, more illustrative, and published the work as a large book in 1854. The sequences here are pure 'comics', but most of the book is not, although it is sequential, and despite Kunzle's reservations, one could regard it as the first graphic novel in English. (Not counting translations of Töpffer).
Long narrative comics sequences in English only really started with Winsor McCay's 'Little Nemo' in 1906, half a century later (L.N. started in 1905, but at first it was just separate episodes). The type of long story that Töpffer and Busch came up with, both funny and thoughful at the same time, still is very rare today, in any language.