Comics have existed in some form or another since the birth of man. What are cave paintings but a primitive form of the comic strip, telling a story with pictures. The humble comic has been used throughout history for everything from teaching the young to attacking political opponents. They come in every flavor you can think of, from spandex clad super heroes to western gunslingers and pulp detective, from Disney’s cast of anamorphic animals to racy erotic tales. But the modern comic book as we know it has only existed for about a century, though its evolution would start much earlier.
The earliest proto comic books were deluxe collections of newspapers strips. These hardback collections began appearing as early as 1833 in Europe, though the earliest known version published in English wasn’t until 1842. Short run comic magazines following a similar format of reprinted newspaper strips began showing up in 1897 with The Yellow Kid being the first. These were soft cover affairs, usually only a single volume and black and white, collecting particular runs or series from the daily strips, akin to a modern trade paperback collection. The Yellow Kid is also noteworthy as the first to actually have the term comic book printed on its cover. The first full color affair, The Blackberries, would appear in 1901, alas it would be several years before color would become a primary asset of the comic industry.
The first monthly publication, Comics Monthly, wouldn’t appear till 1922 and would only last a year before being canceled. The book was essentially a collection of a different newspaper strip series each month rather than any kind of ongoing series. Dell Publishing would follow a few years later when it began producing The Funnies, a weekly series, in 1929. It would run for 36 issues before being itself canceled. Though only 24 pages, 16 of those pages being a four color affair, it was the first comic magazine to feature original content on the newsstands. However as historian Ron Goulart describes it, the publication was less a comic book then it was “a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper”.
It wouldn’t be until 1933 that what many historian consider the first true monthly comic book would be published. Famous Funnies was the creation of Harry I. Wildenberg, an employee of Eastern Color Printing Company, a firm whose primary business at the time was printing the comic pages for popular newspapers. Wildenberg was an advertising agent who developed the idea of printing the comic strips into tabloid sized magazines to be given away as a promotional items. He successfully sold this idea to several companies and the popularity of the give aways led the way to his plan to publish a sixty-four page magazine. His creation would first find its way to the masses as a one issue run through Woolworths department stores. Its success, and Woolworths decision to end the partnership would lead Wildenberg to shift his focus to the newsstands. It took six months to turn a profit on the new magazine; but once it caught on the modern comic book industry was born. The series would start running reprints much like its predecessors, though it would add original content as the years went by reprints still made up the bulk of its content until its cancelation in 1955. However with that little original content such legends as a young Jack Kirby would get their starts.
This era prior to the release of Superman and the so called Golden age is often called the Platinum age by comic historians, its creations known as Proto-Comic Books. Famous Funnies would spawn dozens of imitators, but their reliance on newspaper reprints would make it hard for them to compete with all the original content soon to flood the market. And of course the old Yellow Kid and his pals could never compete with the super heroes that were soon to be born on the four color page.