Let us begin by looking at The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck by Swiss artist Rudolphe Töpffer. It is considered to be the oldest known comic book and started in Europe and was printed in several languages all the way back in 1837, but it was reprinted in 1842 in New York, the first printed comic book in America. There were no word balloons as you would imagine comics today, however there was text in the book to describe what was going on. This was produced in a period of comic book history called the Platinum Age.
Many decades later in 1897 Richard F. Outcault produced The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats, and at this point it still wasn't panel comics, and they're large illustrations that spanned a good page or so. Outcault actually started illustrating pictures in 1894 for Truth Magazine. It wasn't until 1922 though that we see Comics Monthly, the first monthly comic book as the name suggests, but it was short lived and only lasted for a year.
In 1933 we see the birth of The Funnies on Parade, and the year after Famous Funnies. They included the works of popular artists and this is when comic books really started to become more mainstream and popular. A lot of these actually included licence reprints but of course new and original material trickled in. Keeping in mind this was during the period of time known as the Great Depression so you're really trying to make a quick buck whenever you can. Purchasing rights to print other peoples work was considerably cheaper than hiring artists to produce new material. But as the popularity of this grew, it was clear it has become a new area in mass media. So it really was quite inevitable that at some point completely new and original material would appear. Enter Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, founder of National Allied Publications who released a series called New Fun. It had mixed humour in it, and also more dramatic stories.
At this point we are just before the Golden Age of comics and by the 6th issue of New Fun, artists Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster debuted their career there with Henri Duval and Doctor Occult. Are you starting to recognise the style of the comics now and perhaps even the names?
National Allied Publications became what you might now refer to as DC Comics. And Siegel and Shuster? The future creators of world renowned comic book hero, Superman.
