Comics Before Comic Books
Before comics were in books, they were in newspapers. Though newspapers in America today aren’t what they once were, you can still find collections of some of the most influential strips compiled in books. Reading these reprints offers us the opportunity to see how some of the finest creators invented the language of sequential art storytelling even before Action Comics #1 ignited the industry we know today.
Newspaper comics served a diverse general audience, and not every comic strip was for every reader. Some were targeted directly at children, while others explored more adult themes within the constraints of family newspapers. Among the earliest creators were R.F. Outcault, who wrote and drew The Yellow Kid, and Windsor McCay, whose Little Nemo in Slumberland lent a new graphic sensibility to the medium. Nemo has been reprinted most recently by Sunday Press Books in association with Fantagraphics (MAY229165). Later, creators like Alex Raymond produced adventures of swashbuckling heroes like Flash Gordon, and Chester Gould’s police procedural, Dick Tracy, whose colorful villains paved the way for comic book villains today. Reading Flash Gordon today, you can really see how it inspired later creators like George Lucas.
Even superheroes made their appearance in the newspapers. Spider-Man published new stories from 1977 - 2019 and persisted as reprints after that. Batman and Superman both appeared in the newspapers of the 1940s and well beyond, and reprints of those runs are available. Lee Falk’s The Phantom debuted in the newspapers in 1936, two years before Superman ignited the comic book superhero genre in 1938 with Action Comics #1. Perhaps the best single volume to investigate the rich history of newspaper comics is The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. First released in 1977, ask your local shop owner if they have this oversized doorstop of a book. It features a wide selection of influential strips, and editors Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams provide commentary explaining how they fit into the history of comics.
Today, the Library of American Comics is published by Clover Publishing and continues to produce high-quality reprints of Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. Caniff’s run, from 1933 to 1946, was profoundly influential, and Caniff himself was a celebrity, as the creators of popular strips were in those days.
At your local comic shop, one place to look for this material is in magazine back-issue bins. Fantagraphics published Nemo, The Classic Comics Library from 1983 to 1990, with issues highlighting many of the strips already mentioned. Comics Revue is a long-running magazine that debuted in the ‘80s and has run more than 300 issues in the ensuing years. For some of the strips featured, Comics Revue is the only modern reprint available.
As a student of sequential art, exploring these pre-comic book origins of the genre is a great way to understand how comics developed into the vibrant, diverse medium we see today.
