Though this elevation of status has come only in the past two decades, there have been many fine examples of comics that qualify as art that have been produced throughout the medium's history. In 1905, Winsor McKay began his weekly comic strip, Little Nemo in Slumberland, a beautifully drawn comic that is still widely considered to be one of the finest examples of the art form. George Herriman's Krazy Kat began in 1913, slowly developing over the years into a rich study of philosophy and the absurd, admired by many artists and writers, including Philip Guston and e. e. cummings. In 1967, the counterculture icon, R.Crumb started selling his subversive underground comics out of a baby carriage on the streets of San Francisco. Today Crumb enjoys attention from the mainstream art world; his drawings are shown at New York's Drawing Center and major museums, and he has been the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary.

These are but a few examples of the countless artistic contributions to comics that have made more recent accomplishments in the medium possible. Comics are still young, barely over one hundred years old, and they continue to grow and change. This recent wave of recognition may prove to be only the beginning of a long climb for comics, toward the kind of status currently enjoyed by media like painting and literature. Comics are after all, both.

The drawings, vintage published strips, and reprints in The Story of 'Toons range from Bringing Up Father in the 1920s to recent Japanese manga and underground comics like the Watchmen. We are grateful to MSU's Special Collections' Russell B. Nye Popular Culture Collection and its curator Randy Scott, as well as the Muskegon Museum of Art for their generous loans of this work.