Plate 13 of the book Histoire de Monsieur Cryptogame by Rodolphe Töpffer (1830), Wikipedia Commons
Political caricatures, comics, and graphic novels are important pieces in the broader spectrum of 19th, 20th, and early 21st century popular European print culture. While the UC Berkeley Library has only recently begun to purposefully collect such media in the vernacular, traces of some of the most well-known illustrators/artists such as Hergé (Belgium), Hugo Pratt (Italy), Paco Roco (Spain), Jacques Tardi (France), Rodolphe Töpffer (Switzerland) do appear in OskiCat. Up until very recently, more could be found translated into English than in the original languages thanks to the efforts of the Humanities Librarian and English-language publishers like Dark Horse, Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, First Second Books, and SelfMadeHero.
Locating comics and graphic novels (a term used to describe bound fiction or non-fiction narratives that tell a story through sequential art) and comics in the Library is not straight forward but the subject headings listed under the "Find Comics and Books About" tab do help. The article databases listed under "Find Articles" facilitate more advanced searches for criticism about individual comic artists and their works.
