Atlas Comicus: On Mapping Production and Seriality

The first half of this paper centers around an undiscussed strip made by Sidney Smith during several months in 1906 at the Philadelphia Inquirer, titled Wishing Jinks. This work, never reprinted since its first publication, presents a rare case of episodic continuity contemporary with the early experiments of Lyonel Feininger (The Kin-der-Kids, 1906) and Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland, 1905). The second half will use statistical data on newspaper circulation, along with an inprogress methodology inspired by Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, using an interactive database and cartographic plugins to visualize our data work on Wishing Jinks’ circulation, as well as that of the concurrent serialized endeavours of 1905-1906. By using this tool I designed, we will observe how Wishing Jinks makes a strong case study for analyzing the distribution of works, their reproduction, and their varying visibility across the United States within the newspaper’s ecosystem. We will then explore different treads of strip circulation through the atlas, and how it can be used to map the influences and references between the works of Smith (based in Philadelphia), Feininger (in Chicago), and McCay (in New York) and see how the mapping of strips circulation can help in teaching comics history and, more generally, help in making its history more alive and accessible. How can geographical distance, technical reproducibility constraints, and accessibility break down the classic comic strip canon? How do these works, which predate the Ubiquity of syndicated press agency distribution in the late 1910s, inform us about the narrative innovations of this period? This ‘Atlas Comicus’ is a tool to visualize research, share it and, eventually, make it intersect with comics circulation on a global scale.