The World's First Comic and Its New Digital Format
The World's First Comic and Its New Digital Format
The Glasgow Looking Glass, which in its initial run lasted for 17 issues from June 1825 until April 1826, has now, but only recently, been accepted as the world’s first modern comic.[1] What was this satirically brilliant, thoroughly modern, publication that seems largely to have gone unnoticed? It was the creation of caricaturist William Heath (1795-1840[?]) who came up from London to create a panorama—a sort of latter-day IMAX—of the Battle of Waterloo on Buchanan Street, and maybe also to dodge some drinking debts.
The Glasgow Looking Glass, which in its initial run lasted for 17 issues from June 1825 until April 1826, has now, but only recently, been accepted as the world’s first modern comic.[1] What was this satirically brilliant, thoroughly modern, publication that seems largely to have gone unnoticed? It was the creation of caricaturist William Heath (1795-1840[?]) who came up from London to create a panorama—a sort of latter-day IMAX—of the Battle of Waterloo on Buchanan Street, and maybe also to dodge some drinking debts.
Origins of The Glasgow Looking Glass
Heath's new publication was sponsored financially by Thomas Hopkirk (1785-1841), the mastermind behind the new Botanic Gardens, and John Watson (active 1821-1826), a genius of the printing trade whose shop on Glasgow’s George Street used the very latest image technology, namely lithography. The Glasgow Looking Glass, which first saw the day on 11 June 1825 and changed title to the Northern Looking Glass from issue 6 (18 August 1825), contained a mixture of mocking portrayals of society, image narratives—basically what we now call comics—and informational titbits.
It seems that the publication was circulated in the drinking houses of Glasgow, as the wine stains on one surviving copy might confirm,[1] and it had the ‘citizens in roars of laughter’, to cite one near-contemporary account.[2] Despite its success, it initially only lasted for seventeen issues, before Heath abandoned ship and fled back to London, again, it would seem, due to drinking debts.[3] By dint of the storytelling that mixes pictures with text, for example in The Story of a Coat from numbers 4, 5 and 6, as well as the use of speech bubbles and the enticing wording ‘to be continued’, the Glasgow Looking Glass is indeed now seen as the world’s first modern comic (i.e. publication), containing within its pages the world’s first modern comic (i.e. strip). ‘Modern’ is of course key because we might argue that image stories can be traced as far back as cave paintings, but John Watson’s technology meant that this ‘comic’ could be mass produced, distributed, and even thrown away, just like more recent Scottish examples of the phenomenon, The Beano or The Dandy.
Surprisingly, perhaps, this cultural first for a format that is increasingly part of everyday culture, for many years, indeed decades, or even two centuries, passed largely unnoticed. A reprint was produced in 1906,[4] but generally overlooked. In a 2007 article in The Drouth John McShane did tell us that the Glasgow Looking Glass was the world’s first comic.[5] A 2016 Glasgow Hunterian exhibition, Comic Invention, had it as centrepiece, alongside artworks by Hogarth, Picasso, Lichtenstein and Frank Quitely.[6] And then in 2025, the Looking Glass’s bicentenary year, the Mitchell Library mounted a display to celebrate this important Glasgow first.[7]
It seems that the publication was circulated in the drinking houses of Glasgow, as the wine stains on one surviving copy might confirm,[1] and it had the ‘citizens in roars of laughter’, to cite one near-contemporary account.[2] Despite its success, it initially only lasted for seventeen issues, before Heath abandoned ship and fled back to London, again, it would seem, due to drinking debts.[3] By dint of the storytelling that mixes pictures with text, for example in The Story of a Coat from numbers 4, 5 and 6, as well as the use of speech bubbles and the enticing wording ‘to be continued’, the Glasgow Looking Glass is indeed now seen as the world’s first modern comic (i.e. publication), containing within its pages the world’s first modern comic (i.e. strip). ‘Modern’ is of course key because we might argue that image stories can be traced as far back as cave paintings, but John Watson’s technology meant that this ‘comic’ could be mass produced, distributed, and even thrown away, just like more recent Scottish examples of the phenomenon, The Beano or The Dandy.
Surprisingly, perhaps, this cultural first for a format that is increasingly part of everyday culture, for many years, indeed decades, or even two centuries, passed largely unnoticed. A reprint was produced in 1906,[4] but generally overlooked. In a 2007 article in The Drouth John McShane did tell us that the Glasgow Looking Glass was the world’s first comic.[5] A 2016 Glasgow Hunterian exhibition, Comic Invention, had it as centrepiece, alongside artworks by Hogarth, Picasso, Lichtenstein and Frank Quitely.[6] And then in 2025, the Looking Glass’s bicentenary year, the Mitchell Library mounted a display to celebrate this important Glasgow first.[7]
Why Recognition Took So Long
The Glasgow Looking Glass is not mentioned in most of the print-published scholarly histories of world or even ‘British’ (in reality ‘English’) comics. Why is this so, and why has full recognition taken so long? Firstly, the nature of the publication and of Heath’s antics are such that much of its history is covered in mystery. In Glasgow University Library, for example, it has often been classed amongst the local history holdings (specifically the Murray Collection), with understandably no thought that it might have had significance, due to its format, beyond Glasgow. Furthermore, it is very much an artefact of the pre-Internet age. When, in the 1990s, scholars were turning their erudite attention to the history of the comic form, primary sources were sought in the card catalogues of the libraries in Paris, New York, Geneva or London. Who would have thought that the collections of a working-class city famed for its shipyards and its whisky—both incidentally feature in the pages of the Looking Glass—would hide the world’s first comic?
As well as acknowledging the importance of Heath’s publication, the 2025 Mitchell display linked in with a witty reprint and rebirth, the New Glasgow Looking Glass.[8] And at the International Bande Dessinée Society and Graphic Novels and Comics conference in Brussels in July 2025, enthusiasm was shown for a complete digital reissue of what is now accepted to be a key milestone in Comics Studies.[9]
Our current progress takes us from reprint to digital, a natural progression in terms of the reception of the Glasgow Looking Glass, but also in terms of the disciplinary development of Comics Studies. It is hard to imagine any scholarly area in which a primary founding text is not available, either in an easily accessible complete reprint or online, yet until now this has largely been the case for Comics Studies. A reprint of the first number of the Looking Glass was included with the box-set publication to accompany Comic Invention, and some images are available on various websites,[10] but scholars wishing to consult the contents of the Looking Glass’s complete run have generally had to travel to a specialised library. This current edition will serve the scholarly community and enable future history books, whatever format, to be rewritten.
Laurence Grove, University of Glasgow/San Diego State University.
Published July 2026.
Why Recognition Took So Long
The Glasgow Looking Glass is not mentioned in most of the print-published scholarly histories of world or even ‘British’ (in reality ‘English’) comics. Why is this so, and why has full recognition taken so long? Firstly, the nature of the publication and of Heath’s antics are such that much of its history is covered in mystery. In Glasgow University Library, for example, it has often been classed amongst the local history holdings (specifically the Murray Collection), with understandably no thought that it might have had significance, due to its format, beyond Glasgow. Furthermore, it is very much an artefact of the pre-Internet age. When, in the 1990s, scholars were turning their erudite attention to the history of the comic form, primary sources were sought in the card catalogues of the libraries in Paris, New York, Geneva or London. Who would have thought that the collections of a working-class city famed for its shipyards and its whisky—both incidentally feature in the pages of the Looking Glass—would hide the world’s first comic?
As well as acknowledging the importance of Heath’s publication, the 2025 Mitchell display linked in with a witty reprint and rebirth, the New Glasgow Looking Glass.[8] And at the International Bande Dessinée Society and Graphic Novels and Comics conference in Brussels in July 2025, enthusiasm was shown for a complete digital reissue of what is now accepted to be a key milestone in Comics Studies.[9]
Our current progress takes us from reprint to digital, a natural progression in terms of the reception of the Glasgow Looking Glass, but also in terms of the disciplinary development of Comics Studies. It is hard to imagine any scholarly area in which a primary founding text is not available, either in an easily accessible complete reprint or online, yet until now this has largely been the case for Comics Studies. A reprint of the first number of the Looking Glass was included with the box-set publication to accompany Comic Invention, and some images are available on various websites,[10] but scholars wishing to consult the contents of the Looking Glass’s complete run have generally had to travel to a specialised library. This current edition will serve the scholarly community and enable future history books, whatever format, to be rewritten.
Laurence Grove, University of Glasgow/San Diego State University.
Published July 2026.
[1] The copy is GUL Spec. Coll. Murray Add. e8.
[2] John, Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs: Or Glimpses of the Condition, Manners, Characters, and Oddities of the City, During the Past and Present Centuries (London: Richard Griffin, 1856), page 339. GUL Spec. Colls. Mu23-b.1.
[3] This is suggested in a manuscript addition by the art critic Dawson Turner held in the Mitchell 63106299 copy of the Looking Glass. There was an attempt to revive the Looking Glass for further Glasgow (published by Richard Griffin of 75 Hutcheson Street) and then London (published by Thomas McLean of 26 Haymarket) numbers, but these were seemingly short-lived.
[4] Glasgow Looking Glass Afterwards Called Northern Looking Glass: The Scotch Punch of 80 Years Ago (Glasgow: David Bryce and Sons, 1906). GUL Spec. Coll. Bh26-x.6.
[5] John McShane, ‘Through a Glass Darkly: The Revisionist History of Comics’, The Drouth 23 (2007), 62-70.
[6] The exhibition ran from 18 March 2026 until 17 July 2016. See also the accompanying box-style publication: Laurence Grove and Peter Black, Comic Invention (Glasgow: BHP Comics, 2016).
[7] Scheduled from 1 May 2025 until 31 July 2025, and then extended until 30 August 2025.
[8] The crowd-funded publication was coordinated by Colin Maxwell in association with the Scottish Cartoonists Society.
[9] The conference ran from 30 June to 4 July 2025 and welcomed approximately 150 scholars.
[10] See, for example, for example TheGlasgowStory, https://www.theglasgowstory.com/index.php. See also the online version of a Yale copy at https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/alma:9942393993408651.
Footnotes
[1] The copy is GUL Spec. Coll. Murray Add. e8.
[2] John, Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs: Or Glimpses of the Condition, Manners, Characters, and Oddities of the City, During the Past and Present Centuries (London: Richard Griffin, 1856), page 339. GUL Spec. Colls. Mu23-b.1.
[3] This is suggested in a manuscript addition by the art critic Dawson Turner held in the Mitchell 63106299 copy of the Looking Glass. There was an attempt to revive the Looking Glass for further Glasgow (published by Richard Griffin of 75 Hutcheson Street) and then London (published by Thomas McLean of 26 Haymarket) numbers, but these were seemingly short-lived.
[4] Glasgow Looking Glass Afterwards Called Northern Looking Glass: The Scotch Punch of 80 Years Ago (Glasgow: David Bryce and Sons, 1906). GUL Spec. Coll. Bh26-x.6.
[5] John McShane, ‘Through a Glass Darkly: The Revisionist History of Comics’, The Drouth 23 (2007), 62-70.
[6] The exhibition ran from 18 March 2026 until 17 July 2016. See also the accompanying box-style publication: Laurence Grove and Peter Black, Comic Invention (Glasgow: BHP Comics, 2016).
[7] Scheduled from 1 May 2025 until 31 July 2025, and then extended until 30 August 2025.
[8] The crowd-funded publication was coordinated by Colin Maxwell in association with the Scottish Cartoonists Society.
[9] The conference ran from 30 June to 4 July 2025 and welcomed approximately 150 scholars.
[10] See, for example, for example TheGlasgowStory, https://www.theglasgowstory.com/index.php. See also the online version of a Yale copy at https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/alma:9942393993408651.