Tigwissel Tuesdays #15: Tigwissel Antecedents: Docteur Festus
For this week’s Tigwissel Tuesday, a few images from the 1846, Geneva, Switzerland-published, French-German language edition of Rodolphe Töpffer‘s 1830 graphic novel, Le Docteur Festus.
A scientific social satire, Docteur Festus is amongst the earliest (and probably the first) long-form comic book parody centered on science.
The story involves rival astronomers Lunard, Nebulard, and Guignard arguing — and literally fighting — over whose hypothesis is correct.
The images of their floating telescope (named after astronomer John Herschel)…
…and its ocean landing, presages the Hubble Space Telescope, Apollo program splashdowns, and Jules Vernes’ later 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon.
For a complete English-lanuage translation of Docteur Festus — and Rodolphe Töpffer’s other graphic novels — see author David Kunzle’s, Rodolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips, plus its companion volume, Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer.
Tigwissel Tuesdays will be going on hiatus for a couple months, returning in January with the eighth Tigwissel appearance. I am taking the brief break on this series, in order to gear up for a number of concurrent series in 2012, including a resumption of the Wall Street Frauds series of last year.
— Doug
