Friday, April 5, 2024

THE FUNNIES, NUMBER ONE (OCTOBER 1936)

 Dell Comics launched The Funnies, a standard 1930's comic book that reprinted various newspaper strips, to compete with Eastern Color's Famous Funnies (the first rue comic book), which had made its debut some two years earlier.  This was Dell's second attempt at the title:  In 1929, they had started a 16-page tabloid newspaper insert, "more a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic book";  it lasted 32 issues. varying from a weekly to a monthly status.  (Interestingly, Eastman Color followed the same pattern, issuing their newsprint tabloid, Funnies on Parade, in 1933, before issuing Famous Funnies.)

The Funnies ran through May 1942, for a total of 64 issues.

This first issue of The Funnies, with its hodge-podge of content, provides an interesting look of at newspaper comic strips of the day, as well as at the birth of comics books as a publishing phenomena.

Included in this are Dan Dunn, Mutt and Jeff, Major Hoople, Pinhead Duffy, Daisybelle, Boots and Her Buddies, Tailspin Tommy, Flapper Fanny, The Nut Brothers, Mr. Blotto, Bronc Peeler, Myra North, Otto Honk, Captain Easy, Cicero's Cat, Alley Oop, Freckles, Ben Webster, Don Dixon, Happy Mulligan, and other characters, both famous and forgotten.   There's an awful lot crammed into 68 pages.

Enjoy this jaunt into the past.


https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=19461

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