Singular Sensations

What do The Family Circus, Ziggy, and The Far Side have in common? They are all single-panel comics, a seemingly simple form that cartoonists have used in vastly different ways. Singular Sensationsis the first book-length critical study to examine this important but long-neglected mode of cartoon art. Michelle Ann Abate provides an overview of how the American single-panel comic evolved, starting with Thomas Nast's political cartoons and R.F. Outcault's groundbreaking Yellow Kidseries in the nineteenth century. In subsequent chapters, she explores everything from wryNew Yorkercartoons to zany twenty-first-century comics likeBizarro. Offering an important corrective to the canonical definition of comics as "sequential art," Abate reveals the complexity, artistry, and influence of the single-panel art form. Engaging with a wide range of historical time periods, sociopolitical subjects, and aesthetic styles,Singular Sensationsdemonstrates how comics as we know and love them would not be the same without single-panel titles. Abate's book brings the single-panel comic out of the margins and into the foreground.