Newspaper Comics and the Birth of an Industry

The Sunday newspaper comic supplement with plentiful illustrated features appeared in the 1890s and had become a universal fixture in publishing by the 1930s. The medium of the newspaper comic strip grew in scale, scope and reach throughout the first half of the century. 
 

 

Daily and Sunday comic strips sold innumerable newspapers across the country, copies of which were read by multiple people in a single household. Advertisers noticed their appeal; consumer goods companies published comic strip compilations as giveaways to their customers. The New York advertising agency of Johnstone and Cushing (founded 1936) specialized in developing comic strip advertisements to run in magazines.

 

 

The printers who produced the Sunday comic supplements for newspaper publishers took note of public demand and began to wonder: Couldn’t they publish comics themselves? The Eastern Color Printing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut issued Famous Funnies and Funnies on Parade, the first publications with the size, pulp stock, and page count that we would recognize as the comic book in 1933.

 

"It's a Big World for a Baby" by Nell Brinkley, ca.1920

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