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carpenter father preserved the young Hogarth’s early drawings, using them to gain
the 12-year-old admission to the Art Institute of Chicago. Hogarth thrived there and
at the Fine Arts Academy, forming associations with professionals in print media.
After a move to New York, Hogarth gained his early fame as the Ta r z a n Sunday page
cartoonist with United Features from 1937 to 1950. His advancement of the classical
fi gure in an innovative adventure strip formed the style basis for today’s superhero
genre. Having taught drawing from his teens onward, Hogarth formalized his eff orts
by founding what is now known as the New York School of Visual Arts. It served as a
training ground for all types of artists, notably the comic strip and comic book artists
of the Silver Age , and today continues as an important art institution. During his
many years teaching, Hogarth created six volumes of drawing instruction.
Twenty years after his last Tarzan Sunday page, Hogarth again approached the
mythic jungle lord, determined to forge a new visual syntax adapted from Edgar Rice
Burroughs’s original text and his own fertile imagination. Th e result is the prototypical
graphic novel Tarzan of the Apes (1972). A large format, 160 page hard-bound volume
published in 11 languages by a fi ne arts imprint (Watson-Guptil), it marked a depar-
ture from juvenile comic books and the transient escape of strips, moving the sequential
art form toward an enduring, mature pictorial narrative. With this volume, Hogarth
was at last able to visualize Burroughs’s story without editorial interference, interpret-
ing the literature in its basic sense as a Homeric epic. Hogarth transfused the power of
Renaissance and Baroque artists, German Expressionism, and the art of the East into a
new pictorial fi ction.
Hogarth continued the exploration of his new form in Jungle Tales of Tarzan
(1976). Following a text which delved even more deeply into the interior life of the
character, Hogarth made use of an array of visual cryptesthetic devices, including
subliminal covert and negative space images, in addition to overt symbolism. He fur-
thered his cinematic technique, utilizing both pages visible to the reader by means of
visual linking devices across the separate panels, thereby approximating a single, nearly
two-to-one aspect ratio image, a “widescreen” eff ect. Th roughout both volumes, there
appears a considered, unifi ed design aesthetic executed with a singular creativity and
an unmatched skill, a harmonious integration of image and text in service to a tale of
enchantment.
Th ese two pioneering books established not only a new genre wave in publishing
but also the viability of such books for adult readership. Hogarth’s work serves as a
validation and example of the enormous potential of sequential art.
Ky l e Ry a n
HOMELESS CHANNEL, THE. Th e fl agship work of Matt Silady, Th e Homeless Channel
is a 2007 graphic novel about social issues and relationships wrapped in an unlikely
but compelling business model. Th e story concerns the attempts of Darcy Shaw, a
young television producer, to create a cable TV channel devoted to homelessness.
Th e programming is set as planned programs during daylight hours, and sponsored
