Who drew the first comics: a Swiss teacher doodling for his pupils?

Most people think comics began with newspapers or superheroes. There is a strong case for somewhere else: a boarding school in Geneva. Rodolphe Töpffer, a Swiss schoolteacher, worked in the early 19th century, and his illustrated books are possibly the earliest European comics. He is often called the father of the comic strip.

Töpffer did not set out to launch an art form. He taught at a boarding school, where he entertained his students with caricatures, and he kept making picture stories in his spare time to amuse his acquaintances. His first, Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois, was finished by 1827 but not printed until 1837. It ran to 30 pages, each holding one to six captioned panels, which looks very much like a modern comic. The great German writer Goethe saw the stories and in 1831 persuaded Töpffer to publish them.

Töpffer had a practical trick. He used autography, a variation of lithography that let him draw with a pen on specially prepared paper. The line could be loose, and the process was quicker and freer than engraving, so drawing a whole story became realistic for one busy teacher. His seven published stories are satirical views of 19th-century society and were popular at the time. In Monsieur Pencil, an artist losing a sketch to the wind sets off events that almost end in a global war.

The title of first is still argued over. The Glasgow Looking Glass, created in 1825 by William Heath, is regarded as the world's first comics magazine, and Americans traditionally date their comics from The Yellow Kid in the 1890s. But Scott McCloud calls Töpffer in many ways the father of the modern comic, and many Americans now recognise his precedence. A teacher who wanted to make children laugh may have started it all.