Introduction

Tabloid-style comics papers had been published in Europe since the nineteenth century but, as a periodical with glossy covers, colour newsprint interiors, and a page size of approximately 7 x 10 inches, the ‘comic book’ first appeared in the United States around 1933–4. These were intended for young children and filled with the comedic exploits of anthropomorphic animals (the ‘funny animal’ genre), though from 1938 onwards the diversity of genres and readers expanded and sales exploded. Sales went into decline in the mid-1950s, primarily due to a glutted market and competition from other media, though helped along by blunt industry self-regulation.

In the 1950s comics companies occasionally experimented with book-format products, and the publisher EC tried to capture an adult market for comics with its New Directions line. These titles were soon cancelled after being launched, though the creative heart of EC – Mad magazine’s Harvey Kurtzman – wrote and drew Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book (1959), a short story sequence published as a paperback by Ballantine. This indicates the geography of graphic novel production in mid-century America: New York-based trade presses publishing long comics narratives by commercial illustrators and cartoonists. Some were lavish hardcovers indebted to the woodcut novels, others paperback reprints of newspaper strips, and many were major commercial successes.

The Comics Industry in the 1930s

In 1933 Harry Wildenberg, an employee of the Eastern Color Printing Company which produced comics sections for Sunday newspapers, convinced Gulf Oil to publish a comics tabloid reprinting popular newspaper strips. This was a free promotional gift for customers visiting Gulf Oil petrol stations. Wildenberg conducted further trials with Eastern’s printing presses, creating the now-standard dimensions of the comic book. Wildenberg and his colleague Maxwell C. Gaines persuaded Proctor & Gamble to commission Funnies on Parade using the new page dimensions. This was another reprint of popular newspaper strips devised as part of a marketing campaign, and Eastern went on to print comics for other brands, such as Milk-O-Malt and Canada Dry. The promotions functioned as follows: advertisements in newspaper comics sections contained a coupon that children were meant to cut out, fill in, and mail off, together with the top of a packet. The company then sent them a free comic featuring their favourite characters. To get the packet top in the first place, young readers were to pressurise parents to buy the requisite product.