The first attempt at a new-look style of American comic was published on 16 January
1929 by George T.Delacorte Jr, head of Dell Publications. It was entitled The Funnies
and followed the newly popular tabloid (or half broadsheet) comic supplements of
several newspapers. Under the joint editorial control of Harry Steeger and Abril
Lamarque (billed as Comic Art Editor), this twenty-four-page comic sold at ten cents and
looked like a Sunday supplement crossed with a British comic paper: between the strips
appeared several pages of text stories, puzzles and features. Its resemblance to the
giveaway Sunday comics would prove its downfall: why should children pay for what
came free with dad’s newspaper? Dell tried many ways to expand sales—increased pages
(up to thirty-two), decreased price (down to five cents), but it was all to no avail. The
Funnies wound up after thirty-six issues, and it was good-bye to ‘Frosty Ayre’ by Joe
Archibald, ‘Rock Age Roy’ by Boody Rogers, and all the other original strips that the Comic
Art Editor had supervised.
The true father of the modern American comic book did not appear until 1933, and
even then it took a while to catch on. The now familiar format was devised by Max
Gaines and Harry Donenfield, who worked for the Eastern Colour Printing Co. By folding
a tabloid comic section in half, they came up with a handy sixty-four page booklet
measuring 7½ by 10 ½ inches. Into this they packed miniaturised reprints of popular
syndicated strips including ‘Reg’lar Fellers’, ‘Joe Palooka’ and the ubiquitous ‘Mutt and
Jeff’. The result, entitled Funnies On Parade, was not sold but given away as promotion
by the company Proctor and Gamble. They produced two further booklets: Century of
Comics was a one-hundred page edition; Famous Funnies was also a success, so they
decided to try selling their comic on news-stands at ten cents a time. Famous Funnies
Series One (1934) led to a regular monthly run, finally expiring at number 218 in July
1955.
The next step was an all-original comic book, which came from Major Malcolm
Wheeler-Nicholson, a pulp magazine writer, in February 1936. Entitled New
Fun, subtitled ‘The Big Comic Magazine’, this ten cent monthly initially made the
mistake of printing in Dell’s failed Funnies format, a large tabloid. However, after six
issues and a retitle to More Fun, it reduced to the Famous Funnies format; subtitled ‘The
National Comics Magazine’, it ran to 127 editions. Its partner, New Comics, began in the
now popular small size in December 1936, and with a name change to New Adventure
Comics, later Adventure, reached its 503rd edition before closing in September 1983.
Wheeler-Nicholson did not remain at the helm, however. He lost control quite early on
and the series was taken over by the same Harry Donenfield who had started Famous
Funnies. The company was known variously as National Periodicals and D.C.Comics,
under which style it continues to this day as America’s leading comic book publisher.
Comic books became the newest form of children’s publishing, and sixty-four-page
magazines (sixty-eight-page if you include the higher-quality paper covers) began to
flood the market. Several (Popular Comics, Super Comics) stuck to the old Famous
Funnies formula of reprinting popular newspaper strips, but others (Funny Pages, Funny
Picture Stories) preferred the ‘all new’ approach. Specialised comic books began to
appear (Western Picture Stories, Keen Detective Funnies), and finally, in June 1938,
Donenfield issued number one of the comic book that would set the seal on the form
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