HISTORY OF COMIC & GRAPHIC NOVEL ILLUSTRATION

‘Historically speaking, the roots of comic book art can be traced centuries, even millennia back, all the way to the drawings and paintings of the Lascaux cave in Southern France, estimated to be circa 17,300 years old. Progressively, they started appearing through marking of different civilizations: in Egypt and the hieroglyphs, Rome and the Trajan’s Column, the 11th-century Norman Bayeux Tapestry, the 1370 bois Protat woodcut, the 15th-century Ars moriendi and block books, even Michelangelo's The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel[1]. By the 20th century, the comic book culture began developing on three major soils on a global scale, the United States, Western Europe (France and Belgium) and Japan, first as a lowbrow form and then as a proper art form at the advent of the new millennium.’ – (https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/comic-book-art)

The traditional idea of comics began as early as 1837 when the Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer published his Histoire de M. Vieux Bois, a book of caricatures, however before this, there was short-lived Glasgow Looking Glass in 1825, which is considered to be the earliest example of a comic magazine.