Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

Bingham 23
action into panels (Cohn 45). As circulation increased, however, more artists were given
the opportunity to publish their work too. Their drawing styles sometimes reinforced
expected standards and other times introduced new elements that many other artists came
to adopt as conventional devices. For example, Rudolph Dirk's Katzenjammer Kids was
the first comic in which characters expressed dialogue through the use of speech
balloons; it was released in 1897 (Suddath). Across the Atlantic in France, Louis Forton
began using the technique in his 1908 bande dessinée, or drawn strip, Les Pieds nickelés
(Picone 302). 2
Following these developments, numerous artists began incorporating these
techniques into their own work. The use of speech balloons allowed artists to more
clearly illustrate interplay between characters and thus demonstrated interpersonal
relationships in more detail than captions alone could. In America themes of many
popular works remained centered upon issues of race, ethnicity, and social class. George
McManus' Bringing Up Father humorously illustrates the conflicts faced by a nouveauriche
Irish family; the strip's main character Jiggs is constantly trying to revert to his old
working class lifestyle while his wife, Maggie, and daughter, Nora, are attempting to gain
social status. This series ran from 1913 until 2000, long after McManus had died
(Tabachnick 10). In 1914 Harry Hershfeild released Abie The Agent, a comic strip that
dealt with the difficulties faced by Jewish immigrants adjusting to life in New York city
(ibid). Milt Gross also incorporated his experience as an American of Jewish heritage in
his work. His comic Nize Baby, first published in 1926, poked fun at Yiddish inflected
English in exaggerated and humorous combinations (ibid). It's possible that these
exaggerated portrayals of stereotypes helped to motivate other creators like Jerry Siegel