Monday, February 25, 2008

The History of Comic Books & comics versions of classical books

A Tidbit of Comic Book History
In 1754, Benjamin Franklin created the first editorial cartoon published in an American newspaper. Franklin's cartoon was an illustration of a snake with a severed head and had the printed words "Join, or Die." The cartoon was intended to goad the different colonies into joining what was to become the United States.

Richard Outcault's Yellow Kid was the first comic strip to use balloons.

According to many experts, the precursors to modern comics were the satirical works of artists like Rudolph Töpffer, Wilhelm Bush, Christophe, or Angelo Agostini (first Brazilian comic artist).

Rudolph Töpffer - Birth of the Graphic Novel

In 1827, Switzerland's Rudolphe Töpffer created a comic strip and continued on to publish seven graphic novels. In 1837, "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck" was published by Rudolphe Töpffer and it is considered the earliest known comic book. In 1842, "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck" became the first comic book published in the United States. "Obadiah Oldbuck" was a forty page book. Each page had several picture panels with accompanying text underneath.

Wilhelm Bush

In 1859, German poet and artist, Wilhelm Bush published caricatures in the newspaper Fliegende Blätter. In 1865, he published a famous comic called "Max und Moritz".

Yellow Kid

The 1895 "Yellow Kid" created by Richard Outcault has often been cited as being the first comic strip. The reason being is that Richard Outcault was the first artist to use the balloon, an outlined space on the page where what the characters spoke was written. However, comic strips and comic books were published before "Yellow Kid" debuted in the New York City newspaper "The World".

Are Comic Books Funny?

Around 1900, the terms "comics" and "comic strip" came into common use in the United States. Where did the word come from? The strips of pictures being printed in magazines and newspapers at that time were all funny or comic. At first newspaper comic strips were called "the funnies" and later the term comics became more popular. Early American comic books were often collections of reprints of newspaper comic strips.


Brenda Starr
On June 19, 1940, "Brenda Starr" the first cartoon strip written by a woman was published in Chicago.


The comics versions of these classical books were published as MC Comics. In this series these 36 comics  (Title and Author of the book) were published:


Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Time Machine by H G Wells 
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Sunday, November 25, 2007

#006. The top 100 books of all time

Full list of the 100 best works of fiction, alphabetically by author, as determined from a vote by 100 noted writers from 54 countries as released by the Norwegian Book Clubs. Don Quixote was named as the top book in history but otherwise no ranking was provided.

Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960), The Stranger

Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878-1957), Berlin Alexanderplatz

Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories

Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002), Pippi Longstocking

Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations

Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930), Things Fall Apart

Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy

Denis Diderot, France, (1713-1784), Jacques the Fatalist and His Master

DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930), Sons and Lovers

Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919), The Golden Notebook

Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849), The Complete Tales

Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918-1985), History

Emily Bronte, England, (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights

Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea

Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC), Medea

Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936), Gypsy Ballads

Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888-1935), The Book of Disquiet

Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel

Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924), The Complete Stories; The Trial; The Castle Bohemia

Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881), Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Possessed; The Brothers Karamazov

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Colombia, (b. 1928), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera

Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400), Canterbury Tales

George Eliot, England, (1819-1880), Middlemarch

George Orwell, England, (1903-1950), 1984

Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837), Complete Poems

Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC).

Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375), Decameron

Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927), The Tin Drum

Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880), Madame Bovary; A Sentimental Education

Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998), Independent People

Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories

Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House

Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891), Moby Dick

Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC), The Iliad and The Odyssey

Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850), Old Goriot

Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861-1928), Confessions of Zeno

Jalal ad-din Rumi, Afghanistan, (1207-1273), Mathnawi

James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941), Ulysses

Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice

Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967), The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832), Faust (English) (German)

Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels

Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986), Collected Fictions

Jose Saramago, Portugal, (b. 1922), Blindness

Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924), Nostromo

Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986), Pedro Paramo

Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala (Abhijnanasakuntalam)

Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952), Hunger (English) (Hebrew)

Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910), War and Peace; Anna Karenina; The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894-1961), Journey to the End of the Night

Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936), Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC).

Marcel Proust, France, (1871-1922), Remembrance of Things Past

Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987), Memoirs of Hadrian

Mark Twain, United States, (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533-1592), Essays

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616), Don Quixote

Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911), Children of Gebelawi

Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852), Dead Souls

Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883-1957), Zorba the Greek

Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300).

Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC), Metamorphoses

Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920-1970), Poems

Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994), Invisible Man

Robert Musil, Austria, (1880-1942), The Man Without Qualities

Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947), Midnight's Children

Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906-1989), Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200-1292), The Orchard

Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji Genji

Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC), Oedipus the King

Stendhal, France, (1783-1842), The Red and the Black

Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929), Season of Migration to the North

The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC).

Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955), Buddenbrook; The Magic Mountain

Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500).

Toni Morrison, United States, (b. 1931), Beloved

Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC), Ramayana (online-link)

Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC), The Aeneid

Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941), Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse

Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899-1977), Lolita

Walt Whitman, United States, (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass

William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962), Absalom, Absalom!; The Sound and the Fury

William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello

Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899-1972), The Sound of the Mountain

Source of the information: Guardian Unlimited

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

#004. Some Authors

Here are my some favorite authors.


Agatha Christie (Collection)

Arthur Hailey 
(Collection)

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) 
(Collection)

Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy (1828-1910) 
(Collection)

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) 
(Collection)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) 
(Collection)
 
Well e-snips site  is gone, so who are interested can send request by e-mail.

#003. Premchand and some more Hindi links.

This one for my friend Rakesh. Earlier planned to add it later. My favorite Hindi writer since 1978.


Premchand (1880-1936)

the man...
His real name was Dhanpat Rai but he is famous with his pen name of Premchand or Munshi Premchand. He was born in Pandepur, a village near Banaras (now Varanasi). His father Munshi Ajaib Lal was a clerk in the Postal Department. Premchand was just eight years old when his mother died. His grand-mother took the responsibility of raising him, but she died soon after that. Meanwhile his father married again and Premchand was left without the love of his father too.
He was married when he was 15 and was in the 9th grade. His father also died and after passing the intermediate he had to stop his study. He got a job as a teacher in the Primary School, after a series of promotion he became Deputy Inspectors of Schools. In response to Mahatma Gandhi call of non-cooperation with the British he quit his job. After that he devoted his full attention to writing. His first story appeared in the magazine Zamana published from Kanpur.

his novels...
Before Premchand; Nazeer Ahmad, Sarshar and Mirza Hadi Ruswa have written novels in Urdu. But Premchand has a unique place when it comes to Urdu novels and short stories. He emphasized in presenting the realities of life and he made Indian Villages his center of writing. His novels describe the problems faced by the villagers and poor and what could be the solutions. How the priests, local business folks (mahajan) and the landlords were exploiting the villagers. He also emphasized on the Hindu-Muslim unity. His famous works include Gau-daan, Maidan-e-Amal, Bay-waH, Chaugaan etc.

short stories...
It would not be wrong to say Premchand as the Father of Urdu Short- Stories. Short stories or afsana was started by Premchand. As with his novels, his afsanas, also mirrors the society that he lived in. With a break from the past his characters are not all good or bad but somewhere in between. His characters are based on real life people and as in real life sometime we see a good side or the bad side of the person.
Premchand's style of writing is simple and flowing some of his works shows very good use of satire and humor. His later works used very simple words and he started including Hindi words too to honestly portray his characters. In the later stages of his life He turned his attention to Hindi and now Premchand is claimed by both Urdu and Hindi literature as their own. His famous afsanas are qaatil ki maaN, zewar ka DibbaH, gilli DanDa, eidgaah, namak ka darogHaaH, kafan. His collected stories have been published as prem pachisi, prem battisi, wardaat, zaad-e-raah etc.

[Based on Urdu Adab ki Tareekh by Azeem-ul-haq Junaidi published by Educational Book House, Muslim University Market, Aligarh 200202 INDIA]

Premchand's Short Stories & Novels (Collection)

Esnips is gone...so links are (:

Who are interested, can ask me by e-mail.