Cham: The Best Comic Strips and Graphic Novelettes, 1839-1862 #[nn]

Assembled by scholar David Kunzle, this handsome volume collects the wittiest comic strips and graphic novelettes produced by the French caricaturist Cham between 1839 and 1862. The cover itself is a delightful gallery, showcasing nine sample panels — dinner-table scenes, slapstick chases, exaggerated dueling figures, a crowd procession, and a seaside mishap among them — all framed by an ornate Victorian-style title cartouche adorned with bat wings, skulls, and flourishes that perfectly evokes the irreverent spirit of nineteenth-century satirical press. For anyone curious about the deep roots of sequential art, this 2019 University Press of Mississippi edition offers a wonderfully curated window into one of comics' most playful early practitioners.