ow/white pgs; Mod (B-3): pcs added, cvr clnd, int. lightened, reinforced
1st monthly newsstand comic book; wraparound golf cover
Jon Berk CollectionEastern Color published Famous Funnies 1, in July 1934, a sixty-eight-page periodical they distributed to newsstands through American News Company. While it was a huge hit with readers during the cash-strapped Great Depression and sold close to ninety percent of its original 200,000 print run, the expenses left Eastern Color with a $4,000 loss. Eastern's luck would eventually change as the book turned a $30,000 profit with every issue after 11. Famous Funnies ran for 218 issues, inspiring imitators and launching a new form of entertainment readily consumed by the masses. It's quite possibly one of the most important comics ever published. Without this trailblazer it is hard to imagine that American comic book readership would have developed as successfully as it has."Famous Funnies reprinted popular newspaper strips of the day. As legend goes, the format of Famous Funnies was conceived by Harry Wildenberg, sales manager of Eastern Color Company of Waterbury Connecticut, to take up some of the slack time available on the presses. Eastern Color produced many of the Sunday comic funnies for the New York newspapers, and Wildenberg noted that the standard tabloid comic pages, when folded in half, yielded an appealing sized book which could be run on Eastern's presses. Adding a glossy cover, Wildenberg, together with M.C. Gaines, a salesman for Eastern Color, (yes, that M.C. Gaines!), came up with the idea of reprinting comic strips and giving away the books as premiums.
"After the initial success of the give-aways Funnies on Parade, Carnival of Comics and Century of Comics, financial backing was obtained to experiment and try to sell a comicbook. This resulted in the production of Famous Funnies Series 1, which was distributed only in the greater New York area in early 1934. Apparently, this experiment was successful enough so that Famous Funnies 1 was released under cover of July 1934.
"This historic issue, then, was the first newsstand comicbook series of the modern format."
-- Jon Berk
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