10 Figures Who Completely Reshaped Comic Book History

10. Rudolphe Töpffer

It's pretty debatable where comics definitively began. It really depends on your own definition, if it's just sequential art that tells a story then we're due some reissues of the Bayeux Tapestry, but a dark gritty rebooted version. The earliest individual figure to affect the structure of comics, as we know them today, is Swiss artist Rudolphe Töpffer.

Using his experience as a caricature artist Töpffer created stories with captions and dialogue for his friends as a hobby. He was pushed into publishing his work and was met with instant success. 1837's Histoire de M. Vieux, reprinted in English in 1842 as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, is widely considered by historians as the first comic book.

So this means the first comic book character is a bumbling Swiss man named Obadiah. And this leads to the debate of who will play him in the movie? Probably Tom Hardy.