Jeff Leszczynski, age 9, of Milwaukee, Wis., for his question:
WHO DREW THE FIRST CARTOON?
We don't know the name of the world's first cartoonist. But we are pretty sure that the artist lived in ancient Egyptian days. His artistic efforts can be found on he old tomb walls.
Ancient Greeks were also cartoonists. Their work shows up on many ancient vases.
But it wasn't until the 1800s hat cartooning really gained popularity. At that time many American artist created political cartoons in engravings, prints and woodcuts.
Earlier, Benjamin Franklin is given credit for drawing one of the first cartoons in colonial America. In1754 he drew a cartoon of a snake cut into pieces, with each side labeled with the name of a separate colony. The caption "Joi, or Die" was meant to unite the colonists against the French and Indians.
During the Revolutionary War, Paul Revere engraved a new version of Franklin's cartoon which urged the colonies to unite against England.
The father of modern cartooning was a French artist named Honore Daumier. He worked from the 1830s through the 1870s. His caricatures of French leaders were published n many newspapers and magazines.
Daumier's work was very biting In fact, he was put in prison for six months because of an uncomplimentary cartoon he drew of King Louis Philippe in 1832.
In 1841, cartoons started to appear regularly in the English comic magazine Punch. Weekly magazines started to feature cartoons during the 1850s.
Two of America's earliest influential cartoonists were Thomas Nast of Harper's Weekly and Joseph Kep ler of Puck.
Toward the end of the 1800s, a itorial cartoons became regular features of almost all the daily ewspapers. Newspaper cartoon artists used less detail and fewer charac ers than did the magazine cartoonists.
Newspaper comic strips started as a result of circulation wars between the New York World and the New York Journal. Both papers competed for a comic strip called Hogan's Alley which was drawn by Richard Outcault and first appeared in The World in 1895.
Among other early day comic strips was one drawn by cartoonist Rudolph Dicks called Katzenjammer Kids. It was based on characters created by a German author.
One of the first family comic trips started in newspapers in 1904. It was called The Newlyweds and was drawn by George McManus.
During the 1920s, The New York ?r magazine introduced the gag cartoons. And during the 1930s and 1940s, tie adventure comic strips became popular in newspapers.