Potrzebie
Monday, July 02, 2012
Death of Newspapers #25: Evolution of the daily comics page
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We often read that Mutt and Jeff was the first daily comic strip (November 15, 1907), but how did the daily newspaper comics page of stacked strips come about? Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams (in The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics) traced the evolution:
Weekday comic strips in black and white were initiated in the Hearst morning and afternoon papers across the country in the early 1900s. At first these were miniaturized versions of the Sunday strips… Some might appear for as many as ten successive weekdays, but that was accidental; the average frequency was three days a week, and the editorial purpose was to provide daily variety in strips, not daily duplication of the same features… On January 31, 1912, Hearst introduced the nation’s first full daily comic page in his New York Evening Journal, adding it to his other afternoon papers from coast to coast a few days later. Initially made up of four large daily strips, including Herriman’s Family Upstairs and Harry Hershfield’s Desperate Desmond (a continuing cliff-hanger), the Hearst page expanded to five, then six, and finally nine daily strips through the teens and early twenties. Other papers emulated the Hearst example, and by the 1920s the phenomenon was to be found in hundreds of newspapers around the country, fed by dozens of daily strips distributed by a multitude of small syndicates. From these early small syndicates emerged the giants of the thirties, such as Hearst’s King Features, Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, the Associated Press and United Features from United Press. By the 1930s, comic strips by the daily pageful and Sunday color section collections were to be found in most American and Canadian newspapers.
--Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams
August 12, 1926
We often read that Mutt and Jeff was the first daily comic strip (November 15, 1907), but how did the daily newspaper comics page of stacked strips come about? Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams (in The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics) traced the evolution:
Weekday comic strips in black and white were initiated in the Hearst morning and afternoon papers across the country in the early 1900s. At first these were miniaturized versions of the Sunday strips… Some might appear for as many as ten successive weekdays, but that was accidental; the average frequency was three days a week, and the editorial purpose was to provide daily variety in strips, not daily duplication of the same features… On January 31, 1912, Hearst introduced the nation’s first full daily comic page in his New York Evening Journal, adding it to his other afternoon papers from coast to coast a few days later. Initially made up of four large daily strips, including Herriman’s Family Upstairs and Harry Hershfield’s Desperate Desmond (a continuing cliff-hanger), the Hearst page expanded to five, then six, and finally nine daily strips through the teens and early twenties. Other papers emulated the Hearst example, and by the 1920s the phenomenon was to be found in hundreds of newspapers around the country, fed by dozens of daily strips distributed by a multitude of small syndicates. From these early small syndicates emerged the giants of the thirties, such as Hearst’s King Features, Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, the Associated Press and United Features from United Press. By the 1930s, comic strips by the daily pageful and Sunday color section collections were to be found in most American and Canadian newspapers.
--Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams
December 20, 1940
May 30, 1953
The pages above show the increase of strips in the stack from six to eight to ten. Note the episode titles above strips in the 1940 page, later dropped to squeeze more strips into the stack. Today, Bill Griffith's Zippy continues the tradition of centering a title above each daily strip.Labels: bill blackbeard, bill griffith, death of newspapers, hearst, martin williams, puck, smithsonian, zippy
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Saturday, September 11, 2010
Puck the Comic Weekly
At bottom are typographical emoticons from the March 30, 1881 issue of the satirical humor magazine Puck, published from 1871 until 1918. In 1916, it was purchased by Hearst, who later assembled Sunday comics under his Puck the Comic Weekly masthead (where Puck proclaimed "What fools these mortals be" each week). Puck the Comic Weekly was distributed to the 17 Hearst Sunday papers with a combined circulation of 5,000,000.
By the mid-1940s, Puck expanded to 16 pages (two eight-page sections). Puck in the New York Journal-American for January 11, 1948 carried George McManus' Snookums, Bringing Up Father, Flash Gordon, Dick's Adventures, Blondie, Prince Valiant, Uncle Remus, Little Annie Rooney, Tim Tyler's Luck, Seein' Stars, Gene Ahern's Room and Board, Harold Knerr's Dinglehoofer Und His Dog, Tillie the Toiler, Dudley Fisher's Right Around Home, Edwinna Dumm's Tippie, Buz Sawyer, Jungle Jim, Little Iodine, The Little King, Donald Duck, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, The Lone Ranger, Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, The Phantom and The Katzenjammer Kids.
Control click heading above to hear The Comic Weekly Man as broadcast August 6, 1950.
At bottom are typographical emoticons from the March 30, 1881 issue of the satirical humor magazine Puck, published from 1871 until 1918. In 1916, it was purchased by Hearst, who later assembled Sunday comics under his Puck the Comic Weekly masthead (where Puck proclaimed "What fools these mortals be" each week). Puck the Comic Weekly was distributed to the 17 Hearst Sunday papers with a combined circulation of 5,000,000.
By the mid-1940s, Puck expanded to 16 pages (two eight-page sections). Puck in the New York Journal-American for January 11, 1948 carried George McManus' Snookums, Bringing Up Father, Flash Gordon, Dick's Adventures, Blondie, Prince Valiant, Uncle Remus, Little Annie Rooney, Tim Tyler's Luck, Seein' Stars, Gene Ahern's Room and Board, Harold Knerr's Dinglehoofer Und His Dog, Tillie the Toiler, Dudley Fisher's Right Around Home, Edwinna Dumm's Tippie, Buz Sawyer, Jungle Jim, Little Iodine, The Little King, Donald Duck, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, The Lone Ranger, Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, The Phantom and The Katzenjammer Kids.
One of two statues of Puck on the Puck Building at 295 Lafayette Street.
Labels: blondie, buz sawyer, dudley fisher, hearst, pepsi, puck, roy crane
¶ 5:08 AM 2 comments
