Frederick Burr Opper

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Frederick Burr Opper (born January 2, 1857 in Madison , Ohio , † August 28, 1937 , New Rochelle , New York ) was an American comic book artist and illustrator. He became known through the comic strips Happy Hooligan , And her Name was Maud and Alphonse and Gaston .

Life

Born in Madison, Ohio, to Austrian immigrants, Opper left school at the age of 14 and began drawing for his hometown newspaper, The Madison Gazette . At the age of 20 he moved to the American east coast and became a permanent draftsman for Wild Oats magazine . He also worked as a freelancer for Puck and Harper's Bazaar magazines. In 1899 he was recruited by William Randolph Hearst , for whose newspapers he drew the strip Happy Hooligan from March 26, 1900 to August 14, 1932 . Opper drew the first strip by Alphonse and Gaston in 1902, And her Name was Maud drew Opper from 1904. Other, less well-known strips by Opper, who also worked as an illustrator, were Our Antedeluvian Ancestors and Howson Lotts . He died at the age of 80 after failing to draw due to an eye disease during the last five years of his life.

According to Andreas C. Knigge , Opper, who was also the author of various animated films based on his templates, deserves the credit of having " introduced the regular use of speech bubbles ". In addition, according to Knigge, Opper “ set important accents for the comic medium in several ways ”.

Alphonse and Gaston

literature

  • Franco Fossati: The large illustrated Ehapa comic lexicon . Ehapa Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7704-0865-9 , p. 191
  • Andreas C. Knigge: Comic Lexicon . Ullstein Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-548-36554-X , pp. 349-350
  • Andreas C. Knigge: Comics . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , pp. 22, 24-25
  • Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Volume 4. Chernivtsi, 1927, p. 582
  • Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1971, Vol. 12, Col. 1434

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Happy Hooligan at lfb.it (Italian) , accessed on January 31, 2010
  2. ^ Andreas C. Knigge: Comics . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , p. 22
  3. ^ Andreas C. Knigge: Comics . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-16519-8 , p. 25