A CANDIDATE FOR FIRST COMIC BOOK?


Boston Herald Sunday Jester. No 4. Supplement to the Boston Herald. Boston: April 4, 1897. 12 pp. 4to (295 x 222 mm). Illustrated wrappers integrated, staple bound. Some worming to lower margin.A color-illustrated comic compendium: a collection of jokes, comic panels, poems and stories that presages the American comic book of the 1930s. While illustrated collections of comedy had flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries, this Sunday extra from the Boston Herald features full-page color-illustrated comic panels as well as a six-panel comic strip by Gustave Verbeck titled "Where the Game was Worth the Candle."