She adds, "To be more specific, I'm looking for individual works for students to use in a group activity. They'll be examining the comics work and then "curating" a small exhibition around it using works by other artists and illustrators with the goal of placing the comics work into a wider art historical context."

Are we talking about drawn cartoons aswell here like Hogarth and Gerald Scarf?

Do you mean Burne Hogarth or William Hogarth?

She's mostly interested in sequential frame comics, so Scarfe would be more difficult to fit into her class the way she's teaching it. Burne Hogarth did both sequential and non-sequential art. Some of his stuff would work nicely.

I was referring to William. But thanks for clarifying what sort of thing you're looking for.

Yeah, I think she already taught William Hogarth during a prior unit of the class. He will, however, certainly make an interesting point of comparison.

I would include something by Reg Smythe the creator of Andy Capp. We never read newspapers when I was growing up but my uncle had a huge collection of Andy Capp and Giles books which I used to love reading when we visited him. Giles cartoons are great but non-sequential so probably don't fit the criteria.

Wil Eisner in addition to drawing several strips including the Spirit wrote a book on the subject of sequential art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_and_Sequential_Art
You can Google for more references.

Krazy Kat, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes.

Comics is such a broad term. Like funny comics? Or serious comics? I haven't really read that many, nor do I know much about what is considered "good" drawing.

Animation I could help you a bit more on, but not comics

@Goldfinger,
She's looking at "comic strip" type comics, traditional super-hero type comic books, and more serious indie graphic-novel and sequential art genres.

Frank miller. He's the one.

You'd have to consider Alan Moore one of the more influential writers but, if you're looking at it more from an art perspective I'm not as well versed.

Look at:
Y: The last man
Preacher
The Sandman
100 bullets
The Boys

there's others, but the genre and illustrations in these comics have been incredibly influential in recent years.

Also definitely look at Frank Frazetta.

Judge Dredd. My favourite comic character and setting ever.

Well, it's the obvious answer, but I think Charles Schultz redefined comics with Peanuts. It went from a medium for harmless, amusing jokes to one where we cared deeply about the characters and had our deepest insecurities probed sympathetically (if also somewhat ruthlessly).

I agree Calvin and Hobbes was amazing, but it inhabited a world that didn't exist before Peanuts.

And since it is awesome and has not been mentioned: xkcd

I would say look at Alan Moore. He's been a genius.. but damn that's a broad topic to ask people to choose a single comic or person from. You could look at Stan Lee and/or Jack Kirby as well.

Al Capp

Alex Raymond & Mac Raboy - > Flash Gordon

@Kaner,
Good taste. I've already given her my trades of Preacher, Y, 100 Bullets, and Sandman. I'm also a big fan of David Mack's Kabuki. I haven't got a lot of Jack Kirby, but I have some old Green Arrow collections he worked on.

Jack Kirby helped to create Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, Incredible Hulk and did the penciling for the first X-men series from Marvel alone. He also worked on some for DC but I don't know those ones very well.

Yeah. Jack Kirby seems to be the one name you can't not teach. But she's also discovered some really interesting stuff from as early as the 1890s with artists breaking frame, playing with character awareness of the artist... really innovative stuff.

This one from 1905 is one of her favorites: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Petit_Sammy_%C3%A9ternue.jpg

She'll be teaching lots of them, but she finds that if she asks for "the one artist" she'll get a manageable list of 5 or 6 from each person. Otherwise, she'll have hundreds of artists to sift through.

@CelticFox,
Alan Moore is indeed amazing, but I don't think she'll be teaching him for the same reason she won't be teaching Neil Gaiman. They're both impressive writers, but there's another class at the college that specifically addresses comics as literature. Her class is focusing on comics as a visual art form and their connections to earlier forms of illustration and visual arts.

Yeah it's a hard category. Is she also looking at Japanese comics or sticking to American. There's a few manga that have had an influence on American works as well.

Whomever wrote the Wonder Woman comics gets my vote.

@CF,
I suggested a few Manga titles for her (Well, okay, one: Osamu Tezuka's "Buddha") but she feels like the needs to keep it Western or be overwhelmed.

That's why I asked rather then started putting some out there.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/reinventing-the-pencil-21-artists-who-changed-main,30528/

The really tough thing is that, because she's teaching the entire history of Western illustration, there are only two classes allocated to comics. So she's going to break them up and have them each "curate" an exhibit. She's going to give them each one graphic novel to work with and have them select images from it, displaying them against contemporary and past art works to contextualize them. So far she's going to work with the following:
"Watchmen" - Dave Gibbons
"Genesis" - R. Crumb
"Fables: Legends in Exile" - Lan Medina et. al.
"Batman: The Long Halloween" - Tim Sale et. al.
"Kabuki: Metamorphosis" - David Mack
"Superman: Red Son" - Dave Johnson/Killan Plunkett
"Preacher: Gone to Texas" - Steve Dillon
Some early Green Arrow comics drawn by Jack Kirby... not sure which ones yet.

We're also going to go to the public library this weekend to dig up some Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Windsor McCay, George Harriman, and JH Williams.

@CF,
Wow. Thanks for that avclub article. Very succinct, very clear, very useful.

Serious or sarcasm.. hard to tell without hearing the voice.

Sincere. I +1'd it and everything.

YaY for +1's. I wish I had thought of it last night but hey better late then never.

Oh, there's plenty of time. This unit doesn't start til Monday.

She's also considering showing one illustration-or-comics related movie or documentary at the tail end of the semester. "Crumb" and "American Splendor" are already on the maybe list. Any other suggestions?

Stray toasters by Bill Sienkiewicz; (avant garde)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

Hey guys. Just wanted to pass along my wife's thanks for all the advice and suggestions. Her students did some good work on this, putting together mini-exhibits comparing comic book panels to artists as diverse as Mark Rothko, Sandro Botticelli, Winslow Homer, Piet Mondrian, Egon Schiele, and James Whistler.

On a somewhat related note: another possible attempt at making preacher into a tv show?
http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/11/17/5114678/amc-reportedly-planning-preacher-pilot-with-seth-rogen

Wait, I'd heard they were trying to make Preacher, but Seth Rogen? In which role? He'd be a lousy Jesse, and I'm dubious about how he'd interpret Cassidy.

I think the idea is for him and Evan Goldberg to serve as EPs. I really doubt he could play any of the main characters, even Cassidy. Maybe Arseface or some smaller role?

Oh. Yes, that makes a lot more sense. I could also see him as one of the angels, either Fiore or deBlanc.