ABSTRACT
Until fairly recently, linking the name of Shakespeare with a comic artist would have been nearly impossible-seen, at best, as an insult to the bard. But the technological revolution of the last 30 years, the rise in importance of images,2 and the ease with which images can be created, have led to an outpouring of works that link words and
Jacqueline T. Pham and Andrea A. Lunsford1 stanford University
images and that are-like Shakespeare’s plays-meant to be experienced as performances. Works that link words and images are not entirely new, to be sure: some artists, such as Scott McCloud (1994), traced the origins of comics and graphic novels as far back as the cave paintings of Lescaux, the Bayeux tapestry, or the great satirical works of William Hogarth (“A Harlot’s Progress”) and Thomas Rowlandson (“The Tours of Dr. Syntax”), especially since the latter engravings were designed to be viewed side by side, in narrative sequence, thus fitting McCloud’s definition of comics as “sequential art” (p. 7). Most, however, would agree with Brian Walker (2004), who chronicled the rise of comics in the United States, from the cartoons that began appearing in American newspapers in the 1860s to the Yellow Kid, Richard Outcault’s star of his Hogan’s Alley series, which ran throughout the 1890s. Eventually, most newspapers carried “funnies,” and strips such as Crazy Kat, The Gumps, and Mutt and Jeff enjoyed huge popularity.
