Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, 1933
In 1933 the 36-page Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, which historians consider the first true American comic book was published; distribution took place through the Woolworth's department-store chain. It’s unclear whether it was sold or given away since the cover displayed no price.
When Delacorte Press declined to continue with the publication of Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, Eastern Color, which had been publishing newspaper comic strips, on its own published Famous Funnies #1 (cover-dated July 1934), a 68-page, ‘giant’, selling for 10¢. ‘Famous Funnies’ was distributed to newsstands by the mammoth American News Company which quickly proved the product to be a hit with readers during the cash-strapped Great Depression era. Famous Funnies would eventually run a total of 218 issues, inspire imitators, and in large part launch a new mass literary medium.
The early comic pages of the publications were filled with reprints of syndicated comic strips from newspapers, but within a few years, these were replaced by original content.
The next comic-book ‘hit’, which many call the first big hit, was not until 1938 via a feature that had been declined for years by the comic-strip organizations: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman.
By the end of the war II, sales of "mystery men" (as they were sometimes called then) plummeted. By 1950, the only ones left standing were DC's big three: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman and the most popular of them all: Fawcett Publication's Captain Marvel.
Captain Marvel was one of the most sophisticated comic series of the period. It combined magic, whimsical fun, absurd stories, high adventure with outlandish villains with plenty of action. Captain Marvel is now almost forgotten because it turns out that DC Comics, the owners of Superman, claimed that Captain Marvel was too close in concept to their character and therefore constituted copyright infringement. In 1953, after years of court battles, Fawcett Publication’s decided that Captain Marvel wasn't worth the effort and terminated publishing comics entirely. In a somewhat ironic twist, DC now owns Fawcett's Captain Marvel.
Regardless, in the late 1940’s superhero category fell into decline, however other categories were destined to take up more of the available news-stand display space. Science fiction via the productions of Planet Comics (1940-1953) was first, but by the 1950s the since fiction genre(category) really took off with titles such as Mystery in Space (1951-1966), Space Adventures (1952-1969) and Weird Science from 1950 to 1953.
Jungle adventures, especially the type with leggy ‘jungle girls’ in little leopard-skin bikinis, was another popular genre. It first began with the appearance of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle in Jumbo Comics #1 (1938) and was quite the rage until the mid-1950s.
The persistent advocate of sexism and widespread capitalism, first appeared in Pep Comics #22 (1941) in Archie, which contained many of the elements of the romance category; however the first full-blown romance comic book, was Young Romance which ran from 1947 to 1960.
Talking animals have been a part of comic pages since the mid-1930s. Pogo, by Walt Kelly, started out as a comic book series in the first issue of Animal Comics in 1940. However, by the 1980s, talking animals had acquired a new name, ‘anthropomorphic’, which means to display human behavior in nonhuman entities.
The ever popular Mad Magazine, before converting to full magazine format and content with its 28th issue, started life as a comic book. Some say it was / is possibly the most important humor title in comic book history.
You’ll probably want to know that the first major child character in comics was Robin, Batman's boy-wonder sidekick; he was first introduced in Detective Comics in 1940. Since the character was so successful, soon the Human Torch flew around with young Toro, Marvel Comics’ Captain America stamped out spies with Bucky, and Sandman fought crime with Sanderson “Sandy” Hawkins, the golden boy, etcetera, etcetera.
Although Feature Film, as a general rule, has been successful in adapting material from literary sources, in the historical sense, comics, have not had similar success. Although “Classics Illustrated” (1941-1971) lasted three decades and sold well for a time (now prized by collectors); its heavily edited stories are considered to be poor reflections of the source material and are often described as ‘clumsy’ or ‘awkward’ comics. Beginning in 1990 and ending in 1991, publisher, First Comics re-launched the Classics Illustrated line. However this time, top-notch cartoonists were given more artistic freedom to adapt classic literature to comics. Even though sales were poor, the comics themselves are considered excellent by most literary critics.
The superhero ‘revival’ didn’t start until 1956 with the first appearance of the new Flash in DC's showcase which is an updated version of the 1940s mystery man with the same name. The success of that revival led not only to Flash getting his own comic book but also inspired DC to revive and revitalize a number of their 40s mystery men.
Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, were first assembled as the Justice League of America in 1960 and then in 1961, Marvel Comics, in response to the success of DC's Justice League of America, came up with a super team of their own, called the Fantastic Four, which also proved to be a tremendous success.
In brief summation, the ‘comic book’ format originated in 1933; American comic books first gained wide popularity after the 1938 publication of Action Comics, which included the debut of the superhero Superman. This was followed by a superhero boom that lasted until the end of World War II. After the war, superheroes were marginalized, but the comic book industry rapidly expanded, so as to include categories such as westerns, romance, funny animals, and humor which ensured the livelihood of industry in general. The 1950s saw a gradual decline in popularity, especially due to new censorship laws and the spread of television. The 1960s saw a superhero revival, and superheroes continue to be the dominant genre today, although other categories have continued to find audiences; of late (2012) the popular AMC TV hit series The Walking Dead.
Perhaps most significantly of all, we should keep in mind that the purpose of the Comic Book medium has always been that of pure entertainment that allows each of us to “escape”, ever so briefly, from the confines of our hectic environment. With this thought in mind, is it any wonder that many of today’s most successful feature films are derivatives of the comic book?
In today’s world, proof of this is monetary earnings, as has been demonstrated with the domestic box office opening weekend earnings. Here's the opening weekend earnings statistics, in millions, for just a few of the top movies:
•"Marvel's The Avengers”: $207
•"The Dark Knight": $158
Sources: http://januarymagazine.com/features/comix.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_comic_book http://www.thecomicbooks.com/old/Hist5.html http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/life/film-latest-boom-in-comic-book-movies-is-making-cultural/article_b3e9543a-cd69-5376-817a-e4f7521f977a.html
Spent a lot of time sitting in Don's on Main Street eating french fries and reading comic books. Wish I had kept all those comics. They would be worth a lot of money now.
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