Maurice Horn

At more than 400 pages, it is an encyclopedia-style rundown of every significant American comic strip from the late 1890s to the current day.

Maurice Horn (June 28, 1931 – December 30, 2022) was a French-American comics historian, author, and editor, considered to be one of the first serious academics to study comics.

He was the editor of The World Encyclopedia of Comics, The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, and 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics.

Born in France, he was based in New York City.

Horn died on December 30, 2022, at the age of 91.

Horn grew up in France particularly fascinated by American comics.

In the late 1950s, collaborating with countryman Claude Moliterni (later the editorial director of the French publisher Dargaud) under the joint pen names Karl von Kraft and Franck Sauvage (after Doc Savage), Horn co-wrote a number of French-language pulp mystery and spy novels.

From 1956 to 1960, Horn and Moliterni (as Franck Sauvage) wrote the radio mystery show Allô... Police! for Radio Luxemburg.

Looking for more lucrative writing work, Horn emigrated to the United States in 1959.

Returning frequently to France, he was a member of the 1960s groups Club Bande Dessinée and SOCERLID ("Société civile d’études et de recherché des littératures dessinées"), which championed the idea of comics as "the ninth art" and worthy of academic study.

Horn was instrumental in organizing three important exhibitions of comics art in the late 1960s and early 1970s:

Milton Caniff styled the Steve Canyon character M’sieu Toute (appearing in July through September 1968) after Horn.

With Claude Moliterni as Karl von Kraft:

With Claude Moliterni as Franck Sauvage:

Horn's two-volume The World Encyclopedia of Comics, first published in 1976, focused on American and European comics (although not exclusively), with extensive biographical notes and publication histories.

It was one of the first and most comprehensive resources of its kind, and spawned seven volumes.

His Comics of the American West (1977) traced the history of Western comics, dissecting how they contributed to the mythology of the American West.

The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons (first published in 1979) profiles the lives and work of more than 1,5000 cartoonists and animators from the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, and South America.

Horn was lead editor, Rick Marschall was assistant editor, and there were more than twenty other contributors.

A second volume was published in 1980; the fifth volume was published in 1983.

Horn's publications in the 1980s included his book Sex in the Comics (1985), which dealt with such topics as sex and violence, and the sex lives of superheroes.

His dictionary-style reference book Contemporary Graphic Artists (1986) included designers as well as illustrators, animators, and cartoonists, and highlighted each entrant's most famous works.

Horn's 1996 tome 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics is a history of American comic strips.

A complete edition was published in 1997 (and updated again in 1999), and included the work of fifteen contributors.

Horne was given the Special John Buscema Haxtur Award at the 2007 Salón Internacional del Cómic del Principado de Asturias (International Comics Convention of the Principality of Asturias).