Why were Caran d’Ache’s newspaper strips important to comic strip history?

Caran d’Ache was a significant figure in the history of the comic strip due to his pioneering work in daily journalism and his innovative graphic techniques.12

His contributions were important for the following reasons:

• Newspaper Integration: In the late 1880s, Caran d’Ache drew the first comic strips to appear in a general-interest daily newspaper, specifically in supplements to Le Figaro. This marked a shift away from the genre's previous confinement to weekly satirical magazines with more restricted readerships.2
• Graphic Innovation: He was highly regarded for his witty, purely graphic style and frequently dispensed with captions entirely, advancing the development of the "silent" or wordless strip.2
• Motif Accumulation: He utilized a technique of "motif accumulation," where a visual motif or movement would snowball or crescendo ad absurdum. This approach was influential to later cartoonists, most notably the Australian-born artist H.M. Bateman.2

Essentially self-taught, Caran d’Ache was an early exponent of the episodic strip cartoon technique and was heavily influenced by the German caricaturist Wilhelm Busch.12