Here's why:
* Printing Technology: Printing technology in the 1850s was not advanced enough to produce the kind of colorful, high-quality images that are essential to comic books.
* Mass Production: Mass production techniques, which are necessary to make comic books affordable, were also not yet developed.
* Target Audience: Comic books as we know them are aimed at a young audience. In the 1850s, most children were expected to work or help with household chores.
* Content: The content of comic books today often involves superheroes, fantastical stories, and humor. These themes were not common in 1850.
What did exist in 1850?
* Penny Dreadfuls: These were cheap, often sensationalized, fictional stories printed on cheap paper.
* Woodcuts and Lithographs: These were forms of image printing, but they were more expensive and time-consuming to produce than modern printing methods.
* Cartoon Strips: While not comics as we know them, early forms of cartoon strips did exist, often appearing in newspapers or magazines.
It wasn't until the late 19th and early 20th century that the technological and social conditions were right for the development of the comic book as we know it.