Well, I'm glad people found these choices interesting.
I guess it's time to offer my thoughts.
Max and MauriceI read this a while back and I was amazed that some people consider this to be the first comic book. No! It's an illustrated story. An influential illustrated story, but still an illustrated story.
The meanness and the grimness of the story surprised me as we rarely get these kinds of stories these days. Bad kids are more likely to be more like the American Dennis the Menace rather than outright malevolent and the death of a child is treated as a tragedy rather than a just punishment. I wonder if it had anything to do with the higher death rates of children back then?
The Yellow Kid 1896I picked this because it has what experts consider to be the first Comic Strip, not the whole series, just one example. I wish I could have found the exact definition of a comic strip, but it went something like "a series of sequential pictures with dialogue in word balloons and the words & pictures must work together for the joke to work", which is interesting since a large number of what people consider to be comic strips aren't. Pantomime strips like The Little King or Henry not officially comic strips because they don't have words. Prince Valiant? Nope, it doesn't have word balloons. American Dennis the Menace or The Far Side? Nope, they're one panel comics. Cathy? Nope, the humor is dependent on the words, not the pictures.
Still, despite that one example it is an interesting comic. I have a hardcover collection of the series (and even at the larger size I needed a magnifying glass to read all the jokes) and I found it interesting. Okay the Irish dialect humor got annoying after a while, but an interesting glimpse of the past.
DaffydilsLooking at the comments on this I noticed I wrote "This is a curious collection. Mostly text jokes, probably old at the time, with very limited comic content. An interesting look at what passed for a "comic strip" back in the early days of the format.
I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone, but if you're interested in early "comic strips" it's worth a look."
Obviously I was wrong about recommending it to just anyone.
It's biggest flaw is the repetition, which is why I didn't think anyone would make it all the way through.
Someone, maybe more than one, commented about not being able to see the artist's ability because of the stick figures, and while you can't see how talented an artist is just from stick figures, I would point out just how easy it is to screw up a stick figure. Their apparent simplicity leaves no room to hide art mistakes. A furry or human figure might not have the body language right & the viewer will accept it, but you screw up the body language on a stick figure and you blow the joke. While not all of TAD's stick figures are perfect, the important ones sell the body language.
I'm glad that everyone found these choices interesting, and some were even entertained. Tomorrow we will probably be getting back to more regular comic book fare.