GUEST POST BY BARRY PEARL: THE FIRST ORIGINAL COMIC BOOK!

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I promised you a post by the mighty BARRY PEARL (and a promise made is a debt unpaid) - so here it is!  Thanks to Barry for all his hard work.

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I know this sounds contradictory, but there are no "firsts" in comics!

Many concepts thought to be original when used by the major publishers, may have first appeared earlier in the more obscure publications, not available on the local newsstands.  Also, comics were published internationally and American historians tend to not to consider them.  Many publishers did not widely distribute the comics. Treasure Chest comics distributed in parochial schools in the U.S. from 1946 to 1972.  March of Comics and Buster Brown comics were distributed free to retail customers.  So someone is often able to find an exception to any "declaration" about "comics".

My favorite story about this is Stan Lee telling an audience at the New York Comic Con in 2003 that Marvel had just produced the first Hispanic super-hero!!!!  He got thunderous applause.  Except he forgot that Marvel did that in 1974 in "Sons of the Tiger" (In Deadly Hands of Kung Fu) and Latin American countries had produced Hispanic super-heroes for decades!

But is it a comic?

Funnies on Parade (1933) is regarded as one of the first publication to feature comics.  In this case they were reprints of comic strips.  Funnies on Parade was not a comic book, but a big newspaper size page folded down to eight pages.  It was used as a promotion for Proctor and Gamble products.  Previously, Dell Publishing in 1929 had produced a 16-page publication entitled the The Funnies which was a tabloid insert.  Neither was available on newsstands.

Famous Funnies (1933) is often called the first comic book.  It was available on the newsstands and  featured reprints of comic strips.  It really was not a comic "book" but a "magazine."  But ever since then we have called "comic magazines" "comic books."  (Or as Stan called them, "comicbooks" - one word.)

Before Famous Funnies, Couples & Leon, beginning in 1903, produced several small books with cardboard covers, featuring reprints of over 100 comic strips including The Katzenjammer Kids, Alphonse and Gaston and Happy Hooligan.  Most famously, they went on to reprint Little Orphan Annie, among other titles.  Technically, I guess, they were really the first comicbooks!

In 1934, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, owner of National Allied Publications, published New Fun #1 (Feb. 1935).  It is often described as the first comic book containing all-original material - but was it?

Enter: Dan Dunn, Secret Operative 48.

Dick Tracy and the crime genre had become popular in both the pulp magazines and comic strips of the times.  Dan Dunn was, obviously, influenced by Dick Tracy. Dunn made his grand entrance in the story, "The White Cat Murder", a 32 page ORIGINAL story that appeared in the short lived Humor Publications.  Like the Couples and Leon books, this story appeared in a book featuring cardboard covers and newsprint interiors.  In was a true comic BOOK, but not a magazine.

It was only a one-shot appearance but its creator, Norman Marsh, retooled it for a comic strip that began on September 23, 1933.  It was slightly retitled: Dan Dunn, Secret Operative 48.

So you can debate among yourselves exactly what a comic book is and, therefore, what came first.  I think Dunn did it.

Posted in: Cartoons