WI: comic books in the 19th century.

In OTL comics as we know them didn't show up until the 20s/30s. Is it possible for comic books, or something very similar to appear earlier? If so what would they be like? How would it effect the devolpment of modern pop culture?
 
I would imagine that they would be more political since that would be their immediate chronological origins.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Depends on how you define comics. Disregarding obvious political satires, there are the following:

1893: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Bears
1867: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ally_Sloper
1865: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_and_Moritz
1827: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_de_M._Vieux_Bois
15th Century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblia_pauperum

Note that the last three are indeed actually books, not newspaper strips.

Or, according to Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics, this very possibly fits the definition of comics:

3rd Millenium BC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieroglyphics -- You could even draw a parallel between Cartouches and Word Balloons if you're willing to stretch.

EDIT: If you narrow definition down to superhero comics, then I have a feeling you have to wait until sci-fi develops, and you won't get comic books any earlier than 1900's, maybe 1890's.

There might be some technological problems with mass-production to make them cheap enough to be really popular, but I don't know. Looks like they had color sections in some newspapers in the 1890's. But, they could obviously do black and white going even further back.

Lithography (which makes reproducing illustrations much easier) goes back to around 1800.

If word balloons as an artistic convention are necessary, these can be seen in political cartoons going back into the 18th century. These could easily have been used in things similar to the books in that list above, maybe it was easier to print captions than to draw the words? Maybe the printing methods didn't work for the really fine detail of writing? I don't know.
 
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