Timely Comics (later renamed Marvel) puts the Human Torch (often battling his nemesis The Sub-Mariner) in a solo title and in Whiz Comics from Fawcett Comics the extremely popular Captain Marvel begins with a “SHAZAM!”
Together, Superman and Batman will define the light and dark shades of the American superhero for decades to come.ġ940 sees an explosion of comic book superheroes: The Flash, Hawkman, The Spectre, and Hourman all debut in DC comic books, and Batman is joined by his teenage sidekick Robin. The creation of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, the success of “The Man of Steel” inaugurates the Golden Age of comics and establishes the conventions of the new superhero genre.ĭetective Comics #27 is published by DC Comics in May 1939 and contains the first appearance of the costumed crime fighter Batman created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. National Allied Publications, soon better known as DC Comics, publishes Action Comics #1 featuring Superman in June, 1938.
The issue sells out, demonstrating a new market for the new format. A second comic book, Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, expanded to 68 pages, follows in 1934 and Gaines stamps a 10¢ price on the cover and drops them at several newsstands. Gaines and colleagues reprint color Sunday comic strips as a promotional 8 page magazine Proctor & Gamble mails them to customers who send in coupons from their soap products. While many of these are collected and reprinted in book form, they are not yet in the eventual format of the “comic book” (actually a periodical magazine): reprints are often tabloid (half-newspaper) size, with cardboard covers, or in the case of popular “Big Little Books,” single panels facing pages of text.Ī precursor to the comic book, Funnies on Parade, is produced in 1933 by the Eastern Color Printing Company. The early 1930s are still dominated by newspaper comic strips. (1929), and Chester Gould’s crime-fighting cop Dick Tracy (1931). Other popular strips include George Herriman’s poetic, absurdist Krazy Kat (1913), Harold Gray’s social melodrama Little Orphan Annie (1924), adventure tales like Philip Nowlan and Dick Calkins’ Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. Early comics of note include Richard Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley, featuring The Yellow Kid (first printed in color in 1895), Rudolf Dirk’s The Katzenjammer Kids (1897), Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905), and Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff (1907).Ĭomic strips quickly broaden their content: the quotidian stories of Frank King’s Gasoline Alley begin to unfold in real time in 1918. The name “comic strip” derives from their largely humorous content (also the reason they are referred to as “funnies”) and arrangement in a sequence of panels. From their humble beginnings as reprints of comic strips, comic books have matured into works of art, literature and cultural significance in their own right.Ĭomic strips in the 1890s and early 20th century served to entertain and attract readers to the newspapers in which they appeared. Now an ingrained part of our cultural lexicon, the characters, conventions, art, and even language of comic books are everywhere including advertising, politics, and entertainment, in addition to being the subject of a growing field of scholarship. Through the decades of the last century and into our own, comic books have influenced culture as well as reflected it. As with its predecessors the political cartoon and newspaper comic strip, the comic book can provide an intriguing, entertaining, and sometimes critical mirror of society. The modern American comic book is an invention of the early 20th century.
Borrowing From Another Library & Document Delivery.Special Collections & University Archives.
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