24,000 Vintage Cartoons to Explore Ages of Art and Irony

Uncover the rich history of cartoons: from early artist mock-ups to iconic political satires.

I'm sure you'll have some time to keep aside for these 24,000 vintage cartoon images from the Library of Congress that illustrate the history of this modern art form taking place from 1780 to 1977. If you truly have that much time you can find all of their collections here. But we will cover only one of them in depth:

The Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon, which only covers the 20th century, contains 2,085 of those drawings, prints, and paintings related to the art of caricature, cartoon, and illustration. It includes works by 521 American and foreign artists and illustrators. And no, we won't cover them all, either... How about we take only 5 of them...?

I know we went from 24.000 to 5 but you wouldn't read an article on 24.000 things anyways!

Russel Patterson

Russell Patterson was born in 1893 and lived through both world wars and even the dawn and fall of the hippie movement in the 60s. He was an American cartoonist, illustrator and scenic designer. Patterson's art deco magazine illustrations helped develop and promote the idea of the 1920s and 1930s fashion style known as the flapper.

Flappers were a subculture of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts (knee height was considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior... You can look up the etymology of the slang word "flapper" for yourselves, though!

Back to Russell: In 1925 after failing to lunch his career as a fine artist in the Southwest and distributing a mail-order art instruction course, consisting of 20 lessons, called "The Last Word in Humorous Illustrations." (An early Domestika prototype...?) he finally found some success as a magazine cover artist with magazines such as Life, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Cosmopolitan... Women of the time turned to Patterson's work to follow trends in clothing, jewelry and cosmetics. Where was Kim Kardashian then? I thought she was inmortal...!

Sal Buscema

Let's jump in time just to keep it fresh... I don't want more "flapper" talk! Sal Buscema who is now 88 years old, is an American comics artist, primarily for Marvel Comics, where he enjoyed a ten-year run as artist of The Incredible Hulk and an eight-year run as artist of The Spectacular Spider-Man.

He is the younger brother of comics artist John Buscema, of even bigger fame than Sal. John is best known for his run on the series The Avengers and The Silver Surfer, and for over 200 stories featuring the sword-and-sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. In addition, he pencilled at least one issue of nearly every major Marvel title, including long runs on two of the company's top magazines, Fantastic Four and Thor. I hope you didn't get jealous of your brother there, Sal. We'll get back to you now!

In 2017, Sal took his last job to date and started inking The Blue Baron, written by Darin Henry who has written for shows such as Seinfeld and Futurama... I don't know if I want to read a Seinfeld style comic book, would the canned laughter be written on text balloons at the end of every page?

George Luks

Okey, enough silly cartoons... Now, let's check out some more... Cartoons, without the "silly"!

Well, George Luks was mainly a painter actually, born in 1867 in the US, but he was also a comic artist for a brief while, continuing the comic strip 'The Yellow Kid' that as some of you might know ran for two years from 1896-1897 (oh, none of you knew...!) in The New York World after original creator Richard F. Outcault was bought away to join rival newspaper The New York Journal.

This also marked the first instance in comic history of two newspapers battling over one comic strip. Poor Yellow Kid...! And no, it wasn't a portrayal of an asian kid, I thought so too! But it was actually just a poor kid from the New York guetto dressing a yellow pijama gown... Don't look it up...!

Luks did not only do yellow but also black cartoons... 'Mose the Trained Chicken' (1897-1898) was a gag comic about stereotypically portrayed African-Americans who enjoy to steal chickens... Okey that's enough, George! What are you doing? Do you think Domestika is going to like this? Think ahead George, think ahead...! Do you think I want to tackle these issues...? Leaving me all the trouble to work out myself, jeez!

Robert Osborn

Robert found breaking into the ranks of serious artists difficult, and he soon turned to caricatures... There's a common thread, here! Another American, this time born in 1904.

Osborn, the satirist enlisted when World War II began, hoping to become a U.S. Navy pilot. However, the Navy apparently decided that he would be better employed with his hand wrapped around a pen rather than around a joystick. He produced pilot training manuals. I bet this rejection felt like the drawing above...!

Osborn began drawing cartoons of a pilot who was hapless, arrogant, ignorant and perpetually blundering in ways that put himself and his crew at unnecessary risk. He apparently couldn't contain himself, the satirist in him was too strong...! Maybe he also was hurt by not being able to become a pilot...! The name of this character was Dilbert Groundloop was soon to become a slang term used to refer to "sailor who is a foul-up or a screwball."

In 1946 after the war, he wrote a book called War is No Damn Good!, including a nightmarish skull-like depiction of an atomic bomb's mushroom cloud drawn only two weeks after Hiroshima. The title alluded to cartoonist William Steig's caption, "People are no damn good."... William the original creator of Shrek...! I would talk about it but I don't think it is part of the collection... I'm sorry, I'm just following orders!

Thomas Nast

The earliest cartoonist and satirist in this list was born in 1840 and was first known in the American Civil War for drawing battlefields on the frontier and in the southern states. These earned him the interest of the public and President Abraham Lincoln who called him "our best recruiting sergeant." (I guess he also recruited some soldiers in between drawing sessions...) Consequently, Nast later strongly opposed President Andrew Johnson and his Reconstruction policy.

Nast's illustrations contributed to the downfall of politician William Tweed, also known as "Boss." Tweed feared Nast's pencil so much that he sent an emissary who proposed a bribe of $500,000 to end his anti-Tweed campaign and to leave the country. The bribe constitutes $17,725,114.94 today... If I make fun of Joe Biden enough could I get a bribe like that? I'm already out of the country so...

Nast rejected the offer and redoubled his attacks. Tweed was arrested in 1873 and convicted of fraud... Those were different times! When the Boss tried to escape justice in December 1875, fleeing to Cuba and from there to Spain, the officials in charge of arresting him in Vigo were able to identify him thanks to Nast's drawings... I guess nowadays you would still need a drawing of Biden to be recognized in Vigo...!

Well, those are the five cartoonist I promised, now it's time to check out all of the 24,000 vintage cartoon images from the Library of Congress... If you ever finish, come back here and learn to draw some more cartoons (24,000 aren't enough...!) thanks to Domestika.

Become a satirist! With some luck you might get bribed a nice sum... Or killed...! Don't jinx it!

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