Cartoon

Filed Under April 2007, columns 

It was the best of times, it was … KAPOW!

Dear Word Detective: Our seven year-old daughter asked me this morning “why cartoons are called ‘cartoons.’” I, of course, could not answer this question. We were wondering if you could solve our dilemma and answer that question for us. — John and Abigale Divozzo.

Oh, please. Rome wasn’t built by people who announced “I, of course, could not answer this question.” You’re her parents — make something up, perhaps a story involving automobiles and music. By the time she begins to suspect that you were, shall we say, being creative, she’ll be old enough to write to me herself, and together we’ll make fun of you. But seriously, ninety percent of my business comes from people misled by their parents, and it’s only fair that you hold up your end of the deal.

I’m actually a bit surprised that cartoons are still called “cartoons.” There are people, I have lately discovered, who personally resent, and are not shy about saying so, the venerable term “comic book.” Apparently once a comic book reaches a certain page count, it is now properly known as a “graphic novel.” I know this because our local Barnes & Noble recently ripped out an entire section of old-style novels (the kind with line after line of boring old type) and replaced them with “graphic novels.” Sic transit Madame Bovary. Presuming these things eventually end up on school reading lists (a fair bet), what do you suppose the Cliff’s Notes for them will look like?

Onward. There are two kinds of “cartoons,” of course: the static drawings found on editorial pages and in comic strips, and the moving kind (now often known, apparently inevitably, as “animated features”) shown on TV and in movie theaters. The moving kind of “cartoons” take their name from the static drawings, but the use of “cartoon” to mean a humorous or topical drawing published in a magazine or newspaper dates only to the mid-19th century.

Prior to that time, a “cartoon” was a preliminary sketch made on heavy paper by a serious artist, the word being derived from the Italian “cartone,” based in turn on the Latin “charta,” meaning “writing paper” (which also gave us our English words “chart,” “card” and “charter,” among others). Thus, in this sense, major artists of the stature of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael (”But the sight best pleased me was the cartoons by Raphael, which are far beyond all the paintings I ever saw,” 1878) produced what are now some very valuable “cartoons.”

 

 

Comments

4 Responses to “Cartoon”

  1. Joseph DeMartino on April 13th, 2007 1:08 pm

    > Prior to that time, a “cartoon” was a preliminary sketch made on heavy paper by a serious artist

  2. words1 on April 13th, 2007 1:55 pm

    I think your comment on that got lost — try again.

  3. RolyMole on May 17th, 2007 8:45 am

    There’s a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch where they’re in an Art Gallery that contains a line something like “see that Leonardo Da Vinci cartoon over?, I can’t see anything funny about it!”.
    I think the same sketch has the observation about how the Rubanesque nudes’ bottoms “follow you round the room”.

  4. kieliszek on May 18th, 2007 3:41 pm

    My long time girlfriend works in the comic book industry and, as such, is very emphatic about what constitutes a ‘graphic novel’ as opposed to a ‘comic book’ or ‘trade paperback’. As I learned when the two of us began dating, it is not a page-length requirement that defines a graphic novel, but rather the method of publication.

    A ‘comic book’ is a periodical. It is published weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or on some other regular schedule. Though some are only designed for a limited number of issues, the majority are designed to run indefinately. Much like other periodicals they are usually riddled with ads.

    A ‘graphic novel’ is one story published all at once that has not previouly been released in comic book form. Graphic novels will generally contain no advertisements.

    A ‘trade paperback’ is a collection of comic books from the same series all published in one book with the advertisements removed. They are sometimes (improperly) lumped in with graphic novels.

    I hope that clears things up. As far as school reading lists go, I would hope that Art Spiegelman’s Maus eventually finds its way onto them. It is a pulitzer-prize-winning graphic novel that tells the story of the author’s father’s experience in a concentration camp.

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