Famous Funnies
Famous Funnies comprised one of the earliest newsstand comic book titles in existence. But the bulk of its fare consisted of newspaper comics reprints. Original series in Famous Funnies included Fearless Flint and Speed Spaulding. As the supply of reprintable material vanished into the insatiable maw of a horde of monthly anthologies, new stories and art began displacing it. The first such comic books concentrated on newspaper reprints, but there was original material in them as early as the unnumbered Famous Funnies promotional edition. The success of both ventures attracted pulp publishers such as Martin Goodman , printers such as Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz , established comics producers such as King Features Syndicate, and other entrepreneurs; and within a few years comic books, in the format pioneered by Famous Funnies, had become firmly established as a branch of the U.S. Gaines responded by partnering up with McClure Syndicate to publish comic books of his own reprinting Moon Mullins,Don Winslow of the Navy, Alley Oop and many others; and suddenly Famous Funnies had competition.
Shortly after the monthly began, Eastern cut Gaines out of the deal and kept the comic book for itself. Famous Funnies, without the sub-title, became a monthly publication with the price printed right on it. The result may or may not have convinced an occasional visionary that a new industry was born, but it was encouraging enough to warrant further exploration. Gaines sold them on the idea of halving the size and increasing the number of pages to 64, so as to get more different comics between two covers.
Even this impressive run of fantastic Frazetta artwork did not save this now-struggling comic; after two more non-Frazetta covered issues, the series ended with the publication of its 218th issue. The issue featured here marks the first of a well-loved run of seven classic Buck Rogers covers drawn by comic wunderkind Frank Frazetta. The contents consisted of newspaper comic strip reprints, and that format continued even to this 209th issue. The first issue is recognized as both the very first comic book, and as the first monthly newsstand-distributed comic. Comic book covers presented at Cover Browser are republished within a fair use context. Eastern Color Printing took the 1950s slump in comic book sales as its cue to get out of the industry. But the market moved away from anthology comic books in general. Famous Funnies outlasted most of its comics-reprinting competitors, including Popular Comics , King Comics and Sparkler Comics.