There are two ways of writing stories, one in chapters, lines and words, and that we call 'literature,' or alternatively by a succession of illustrations, and that we call the 'picture story.' [...] The picture story to which the criticism of art pays no attention and which rarely worries the learned has always exercised a great appeal. More, indeed, than literature itself, for besides the fact that there are more people who look than who can read, it appeals particularly to children and to the masses, the sections of the public which are particularly easily perverted and which it would be particularly desirable to raise. With its dual advantages of greater conciseness and greater relative clarity, the picture story, all things being equal, should squeeze out the other because it would address itself with greater liveliness to a greater number of minds, and also because in any contest he who uses such a direct method will have the advantage over those who talk in chapter.

-Rudolphe Topffer, Essay du physiognomie, 1845(?)
Quote taken from The Experiment of Caricature, Chapter 10,
E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961)