[The Australian Panther]

Seems to me that where there has clearly been a 'managing' editor the publishers comes to be seen to have a defined over-all style.
So, Eisner's early packaged work, Dell and then Gold Key, Harvey in the 60s, Fawcett, Disney while published by Dell, Charlton towards the end, Marvel under Stan Lee [Both a strength and a weakness] EC [ also both a strength and a weakness.]
Right now' both Marvel and DC seem to lack over-arching editorial control.   

[Robb_K]

Seems to me that where there has clearly been a 'managing' editor the publishers comes to be seen to have a defined over-all style.
So, Eisner's early packaged work, Dell and then Gold Key, Harvey in the 60s, Fawcett, Disney while published by Dell, Charlton towards the end, Marvel under Stan Lee [Both a strength and a weakness] EC [ also both a strength and a weakness.]
Right now' both Marvel and DC seem to lack over-arching editorial control.   

Weren't the "managing editors" often the owner/publishers, like Victor Fox at Fox Features, Max Gaines at All-American, Eastern Color printing, & E.C., Busy Arnold at Quality, Robert Farrell at Four Star/Farrell/Ajax, L.B. Cole at Star, Walter Lantz at Lantz productions, Stanley Morse at Key Publications, Lev Gleason at his namesake, Aaron Wyn at Ace Magazines, Elliot Caplin at Toby/Minoan Press, Jerry Iger at Fiction House, John Goldwater at MLJ, Vin Sullivan at Magazine Enterprises, etc., making the final decisions.  Later on, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, some of the larger comics publishers, like Western/Dell and D.C. must have added several assistant editors, and the company owner/publishers were mostly out of the daily operations.  During the 1950s, Harvey and Archie Series must have joined in that format.

When the owners weren't the overseer, as in the case of Richard Hughes at Better/Nedor/Standard (Ned Pines), and Ben Sangor's Creston/ACG, and Stan Lee at Timely/Marvel, Bernard Baily for Cambridge House, Oscar Lebeck at Western Printing, Al Fago for Charlton, Vin Sullivan for National-Allied and Columbia Comics, etc., it seems to me the owner-publishers were the overseers of the single editor, who, even IF he or she had an assistant editor, the latter had little power, if any to make final decisions.  So, the single editor, with the active publisher either watching over him, or not, most often made the final decisions. 

[Morgus]

Maybe the only over-arching control at either DC or Marvel these days is for 'the deal'. And by that, I mean the next TV or movie project.

It’s really hard to find a good story, well told, drawn and presented, let alone a good story that the guy in the street cares about. And it’s harder than ever to even get a comic unless you go to a comic store.

My drugstore doesn’t sell them. No,wait...you can get Archie digest reprints. The bookstore pulled them a few years ago, the same with my news stand. Even MAD is gone. When I was a kid, you could get comics at K-mart right there at the front. Four to a pack.

[The Australian Panther]

Weren't the "managing editors" often the owner/publishers,

You are quite right, but these guys usually hired and appointed editors who had the skills to shape the content.
Stan Lee was both paid staff and family for Atlas/Timely/Marvel. And that was key to the problems between Lee and Kirby, who, like most of the content creators, was freelance.
But what I was trying to point out, is that those owners were not necessarily the creators of the styles we associate with those publishers, although they had approval and the right of Veto.

cheers!   

[Quirky Quokka]

My drugstore doesn’t sell them. No,wait...you can get Archie digest reprints. The bookstore pulled them a few years ago, the same with my news stand. Even MAD is gone. When I was a kid, you could get comics at K-mart right there at the front. Four to a pack.

When I was growing up, we lived right across the road from a convenience store and they had one of those rotating stands full of comics and magazines. I didn't have the money to buy many, but I would always be looking. Newsagents also used to stock a few. Now convenience stores don't sell them, and the newsagents only tend to have Phantom comics and the occasional Archie digest, as well as a few comics for little kids. Fortunately, I live in a town that has a good comic book store, and I've picked up a number of facsimile copies of old DC and Marvel comics there. We also have a couple of bookstores that stock graphic novels and comic book compilations, so I've also picked up some good copies there.

Cheers

QQ

[Robb_K]

And it’s harder than ever to even get a comic unless you go to a comic store.

My drugstore doesn’t sell them. No,wait...you can get Archie digest reprints. The bookstore pulled them a few years ago, the same with my news stand. Even MAD is gone. When I was a kid, you could get comics at K-mart right there at the front. Four to a pack.

When I was young, in both Canada and USA, comic books were sold in newsstands, grocery stores, drug store/pharmacies, dime stores/discount stores, specialty stores, and used book stores.  In The Netherlands, starting in the early 1950s, comic books were sold in the larger newsstand/book agents (especially in train stations and large shopping areas, the largest grocery stores, and both in new and used book stores, as well as in some specialty and novelty shops.  Unlike in Canada and USA, where they have become restricted mainly if not exclusively to specialty comic book shops, comic books are still sold in most of the types of outlets mentioned that sold them during the 1950s and 1960s.

[FraBig]

I can confirm: here in Italy you can get comics both from specialized comic book stores and from newsstands. In newsstands you usually find "stapled" comics and paperbacks (the smaller ones), while for bigger paperbacks and hardcovers you'll need to go to a specialized comic book store or a bookstore.

I use "stapled" because it's the direct translation for the word we use here to describe the classic 20-ish pages US format for comics. Essentially, it's the single issues that come out monthly.

[Morgus]

I was in the dollar store the other day and they were selling the Mickey and Goofy Peach Tree reprints for a buck. I was reading them and this kid, maybe not even ten, just stared. I told him, no, you WANTED to read these...they were classic reprints from the 50’s or the Sunday comics and were actually GOOD.
He sort of chuckled and took one down and I mentioned that he should, by ‘any means necessary’ get some Carl Barks and his work with Donald Duck. “You WANT him. He’s amazing.”
By then the mother swooped down and was probably relieved on a lot of counts. The kid went with the comic and thanked me and repeated ‘Carl Barks’ back at me, and I confirmed the name by repeating it again. Mom stopped dead in her tracks and asked who HE was. I told her an ‘American master’ who made the best Donald Duck comics of all time. Required reading. You’d thank me.
She nodded again, in relief.
Now. I know the odds of mom taking that kid to a comic store and asking about Carl Barks are about as good as my odds for my dream date with Sandra Bullock. America invented half a dozen art forms, comics one of them. But how can you expect that art form to thrive unless you get it into the hands of the buyer?
Q.Q I remember those rotating racks too. Some times at auction sales I’ll see an old empty one being sold off. Kids will go over and stand in front of it. Like birds at an empty bird feeder.

[The Australian Panther]

America invented half a dozen art forms, comics one of them. 

That's quite a big statement. There are a lot that would disagree.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
– Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

When you think about it, education is doing what Sir Isaac Newton did. He said his advances in science were possible because he learned all the discoveries of the great scientists and mathematicians that came before him.

That means when we say “I’m studying math and science,” what we are really saying is “I’m finding out everything that mankind has already learned.”

This principle applies to all types of Human creative endeavour.
It can be argued that visual narrative is the ancestor of the cartoon and the comic and can be traced back to the pryamids and beyond. Then there was the Bayeux Tapestry which recorded the story of the  Norman conquest of the UK as a visual narrative.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-americas/medieval-europe-islamic-world/a/bayeux-tapestry
Arguably modern comics - on the American model can be traced back to the work of the Deutsch Artist Wilhelm Busch whose Max and Moritz [1865] was imported into the US as 'Der Katzenjammer Kids'.
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/busch.htm
I think there may be examples on CB+
But credit where credit is due, because of its population size, relative freedom of expression, and of literacy, what the US did do was market and popularize the artform and create a specific US form, which it then re-exported back to the greater world.
As the US also did with Music, Art, Photography and Film, to list only a few. And for which we are all the richer.
And I suspect Paw might have something to say regarding early Scottish comic art!
Cheers!           

 

[paw broon]

Before I get to Morgus and "the claim", the talk of comics on spiners brought back memories.  Growing up in Scotland mid '50's  early '60's, most newsagent shops stocked comics, British weeklies, many distinctly designed for boys, others for girls and those American look-a-likes.  All on counters or suspended on a wire by pegs.  By 1959 American comics were distributed and many shops had spinners, but still, some shops just had small piles on counters.  Sometimes those piles were of Australian comics.
A bit of thinking needed now about the Glasgow Looking Glass. 
Housework first.

[SuperScrounge]

It can be argued that visual narrative is the ancestor of the cartoon and the comic and can be traced back to the pryamids and beyond.

*ahem* Cave paintings, anyone?

Arguably modern comics - on the American model can be traced back to the work of the Deutsch Artist Wilhelm Busch whose Max and Moritz [1865] was imported into the US as 'Der Katzenjammer Kids'.

I don't think Rudolph Dirks was importing it so much as he was stea... inspired by Max und Moritz. 

A few months back I read an American translation of Max und Moritz and while there are some bits that might qualify as proto-comic material it really was just an illustrated story. An inspiration, yes, but not what I would call a comic.

[Morgus]

Perhaps I overstated. But the way I ‘was learned’ was that Max Gaines did the first comic book, in America, by printing old strips he found in the attic. Figured if HE wanted to read them others would. This may  oversimplify, but probably not by much. It always seemed reasonable. Like those guesses as to what the first rock and roll song was. Good for all night arguments, depending on who’s swinging.

[FraBig]

I always assumed Yellow Kid was the first proper "comic book", and that's American. But I know these debates about "who came first" always come to the conclusion that there's no definitve answer.

I guess Man's Geist (to improperly borrow a term from Hegel) is always the same throughout history and we end up replicating and reimagining the same things over and over.

[Morgus]

Yeah Yellow Kid is a contender, and I think I’m about to find out about the Glasgow Looking Glass, judging by “Paw. I love the education. Like stacking the ‘first rock and roll songs’ on the turntable. Elvis? Little Richard? Ike Turner? Chuck Berry? Louis Jordan?
Why not?
Thing is, I don’t want to lose track of where I was going with this. We could probably talk firsts until the cows come home. We can, however, all agree that if Americans didn’t INVENT the comic book, they had a lot to do with it, like ‘Panther says, marketing it and popularizing it and shipping it back out to the world.

But I just now had to go through a Wal-Mart and they aren’t selling comic books either. And to me, this is right up there with the fact that for decades, you could NOT buy Chuck Berry records in their original mono form in the country that he made them in. Or Buddy Holly. Or Elvis. All were only available in re-processed stereo.

An American kid can go into a Wal-Mart and buy a Spiderman DVD, video game, T shirt or toy. Easy. But he cannot buy a Spiderman comic book. That’s the point I don’t want to lose sight of that I’m trying to make.

Maybe Max Gaines invented the comic book. Maybe somebody else. But sure as shooten’, Marvel did invent Spiderman and right now it’s easier for me to get any ancillary merchandise than the comic book he got started in. To me, that’s really sad and dumb.

And I can’t remember the last time I was engaged by either a Spiderman or, say, a Batman story line. DC got mean, and you could go crazy trying to keep track of just the Spiderman premutations in the Marvel universe. Is is it so hard to make a good comic book and get it into the hands of the next generation at the place where they buy stuff?

[crashryan]

"Yellow Kid" was a newspaper feature, not a comic book. He's been proposed as the first Sunday strip. I don't know. I'm not heavily invested in firsts. Everything depends on the definition of "first." Is a one-shot, cardboard-covered reprinting of a newspaper strip a comic book? To qualify as a comic book must it have floppy paper covers? Does it have to be published on a set schedule? And so on. "One of the earliest..." is good enough for me.

For most of my youth (we're talking USA here) comic books were sold on wire spinner racks which were almost always topped by a "Hey, Kids! Comics!" sign. If not in racks, they were displayed with the magazines, either grouped together at one end or placed in a row under the general circulation mags.

Looking back I notice how many comic-selling venues no longer exist in their original form. Dime stores, variety stores, corner drugstores, and grocery stores have all been absorbed by national chains like Wal-Mart. Big outfits like that want high-volume product with a good profit margin. The majority of the old stores were mom-and-pops or regional chains. They were fine with making a few cents on a comic book sale. According to the CoinNews Inflation Calculator 10 cents in 1953 is equivalent to $1.13 in 2023 money. I don't know what the retailer's cut of a comic book dime was. If it was 5 cents they'd net what today amounts to just over 50 cents. Only the dollar store chains operate on such slim margins, and most of them have raised prices and become "dollar and up" stores.

[SuperScrounge]

The Yellow Kid* is considered to be the first comic strip, specifically the October 25, 1896 comic** since it was the only one that matched the specific definition***.

* Mickey Dugan, the Yellow Kid, first appeared in 1894 in Hogan's Alley, then moved with Outcault to another paper where he appeared in MacFadden's Row of Flats. The comic specifically called The Yellow Kid was more of a daily b&w comic featuring you know who.

** Oddly enough no other The Yellow Kid comic ever matched the definition of comic strip.

*** It is specific, something to the effect of a series of sequential pictures with dialogue in word balloons and the words & pictures must work together for the joke to work.

Just think of how many comics we think of as comic strips don't match that definition?
Prince Valiant, nope, it has captions under the pictures.
Henry or The Little King, nope, they don't have word balloons.
Cathy, nope, the humor relies on the wall-of-text, not the art.
The American Dennis the Menace, nope, it's a gag panel, not a series of sequential panels.

As for the first comic book, well...

The oldest known use of the term was in a 1902 advertisement for a book collection of Yellow Kid cartoons.

What we think of as a comic book is usually the floppy magazines sold on newsstands, or stores, and the earliest known newsstand comic seems to be 1933's Detective Dan Secret Agent 48. This however didn't spark other publishers into trying the same thing.

Max Gaines' attempt to sell repackaged comic strips in a floppy magazine for sale at newsstands, & what not, did however encourage other publishers to try to make money the same way.

So depending on how you want to define what a comic book is there is a couple of different answers to what was the first comic book. 

[SuperScrounge]

But I just now had to go through a Wal-Mart and they aren’t selling comic books either.

A few years ago DC had a deal with WalMart to sell special editions of the comics, and Marvel sold packs of selected issues as well. Oddly enough these were not in the book section, but I think were considered novelties or some such and were sold alongside card games (like Magic the Gathering) and small toys. DC's deal, and probably Marvel's seem to have ended.

Another publisher called Allegiance Arts made a deal with Walmart to sell comics in an end cap display at the book section and my local Walmart still has it up, although I haven't seen any new comics in it for months?... a year? They seem to be hoping to sell off the old books.

[Morgus]

‘Crash that wire spinner rack was everywhere when I was a kid. The word ‘wholesome’ always reminds me somehow of Howard Chaykin’s introduction to the Alex Toth ZORRO books.  He makes fun of Dell Comics motto; “...mmm boy, they had slogans then...” My brother and I would do a W.C. Fields voice and say; “Wholesome” and ‘Entertaining” to each other until the druggist kicked us out.

’Super, I’m glad to hear that about Wal-Mart. There might be signs of life yet. And the overview from Yellow Kid to Cathy was cool.

[FraBig]

Oh I see, you were talking about the "standard" comic book format and who invented it. I usually use "comic book" and "comics" as if they're the same thing, but I know there's a difference between "comic strip" and "comic book". I always took Yellow Kid as the first step in "comics" in general, for its use of the shirt as the first instance of speech balloons.
I tend to consider speech balloons the real step between "illustrated story" and "comic".

[paw broon]

Word balloons are a difficult one for me, and others.  Prince Valiant has no word balloons so do we classify it as some thing different from a comic? Yes, I know it was a newspaper strips but it's also available in floppies.
And there are mainstream examples of "silent" comic book stories. eg, Ragman #4 with that lovely Kubert no balloons story.
Glasgow Looking Glass.
The attached image features word balloons.
This link is for an article on Down The Tubes:-
https://downthetubes.net/through-the-looking-glass-inside-the-pages-of-the-oldest-comic-in-the-world/
I make no claims for GLG being the first comic but it is an early contender, if you want word balloons.
Ally Sloper's Half Holiday which started in 1884 included word balloons in illustrations but there weren't any sequential stories as such.

[Quirky Quokka]

Hi everyone - It's been interesting reading everyone's experiences of comic books in stores then and now. I was a kid in the 60s, teen in the 70s. I think Australia has pretty much gone the way that America has. The standard comic books (32 pages, stapled in the centre) are mostly relegated to the comic book stores now and events like ComicCons that have stalls.

Book stores and chain stores like K-mart sell some graphic novels and comic book compilations (e.g., you can buy the paperback collection of 'Batgirl of Burnside' there but not the individual issues of the comic book). The only comic books you tend to see in newsagents these days are Phantom (Frew Publishers here are still doing Phantom comics and compilations), the occasional Archie digest (i.e., the smaller A5 size 80-page paperbacks, not the standard comic books), and comics for little kids like 'My Little Pony'. I live in a town that has a great comic book store, but most of my friends wouldn't even know it existed.  Our library has a big collection of graphic novels and lots of DC and Marvel compilations. But I kind of miss the days of the rotating comic book stands at my local convenience store.

Cheers

QQ

[Morgus]

Q.Q. and ‘Crash, I keep thinking I’ll BUY one of those racks and stack it with Charlton and DC and Marvel spooky comix and just GIVE THEM AWAY  at Halloween one year. Probably cheaper than the candy and less tooth decay!
Wow. Glad to see The Phantom is still kicking. That’s cool. My kids will love it. They were the only ones who liked the Billy Zane movie.
Hey, Super? There was Dennis the Menace in comic book forum you mentioned that was also published over here. Beetle Bailey was also a comic book for a while. Archie and Disney and Warner Brothers both proudly ran with comic books and strips since the 50’s. Superman. Spiderman. Star Wars. Tarzan. Mandrake overseas. Phantom. Who am I missing?

Is there a difference seen by the profession between the two mediums? Frazetta and Wood went happily back and forth between working on strips and books. Is it just a case of opportunity or is one looked on as somehow ‘better’ than another?

[Quirky Quokka]

Q.Q. and ‘Crash, I keep thinking I’ll BUY one of those racks and stack it with Charlton and DC and Marvel spooky comix and just GIVE THEM AWAY  at Halloween one year. Probably cheaper than the candy and less tooth decay!

Morgus, we don't celebrate Halloween as much in Australia, though all of the stores try to convince us that we do. But if I went trick or treating and you offered me a comic book from your revolving stand, I would think it was brilliant!

Frew comics are still very active here. I'm not sure if they ship overseas, but they have lots of cool stuff:

https://www.phantomcomic.com.au

Cheers

QQ

[crashryan]

Is there a difference seen by the profession between the two mediums? Frazetta and Wood went happily back and forth between working on strips and books. Is it just a case of opportunity or is one looked on as somehow ‘better’ than another?

For artists who grew up during the heyday of newspaper strips--the 1920s through late 1940s--having your own newspaper strip was the Holy Grail. The most successful strip creators, guys like Gus Edson, Ham Fisher, George McManus, Al Capp, Milt Caniff, and Alex Raymond, were media superstars. They lived very well, did celebrity endorsement ads, and had lucrative licensing deals. Superstar comic strip artists were a very small minority but every comics artist longed to hit that big time. Reading interviews with comic book artists of the period you find that almost everyone had a pile of daily strip samples that they pitched unsuccessfully to the syndicates. Even moderately successful newspaper strips paid much better than comic books.

The fantasy that having a daily strip meant living the good life was still around in the early 1980s though the golden years of newspaper strips, especially continuity strips, was long over. A lot of old-timers assumed drawing a big-name property like the Dallas strip meant a cushy salary, when in fact I landed the job only because I was too naive to realize I was being paid a quarter of the going rate.

[The Australian Panther]

s there a difference seen by the profession between the two mediums? Frazetta and Wood went happily back and forth between working on strips and books. Is it just a case of opportunity or is one looked on as somehow ‘better’ than another?   

Back then, for a creator, getting your own newspaper strip was the Holy Grail, The comic 'book' was always a lesser option, probably because as an artist or a writer you were more under the control of a publisher and an editor.  Also - and I'm guessing here, your rate of pay might increase with the increase in the number of papers that took your strip.
Spinner Racks
Yes, we had those in Australia - right up to fairly reccent times. But there was another way to get comics.
An annual big event in Australia is 'the Show' - started as what in the US would probably be called 'County Fairs' - a time and place to show off the produce and animals from the district and augmented by sideshows and food stalls and other entertainment.
If you were a child you could buy a 'show bag' - the bag itself highlighting some local business but inside were all kinds of goodies, cheap toys, sweets, collectable cards and a comic. You never knew what you were going to get till you opened them.
Whoever produced them clearly purchased remaindered comics for use in the show-bags.
Well, they always had a lot left over, so they sold them to movie theatres - so went to the matinee- at half-time you could buy an ice-cream, a drink and a show-bag. And in the theatres the price of the bag was half that of a comic from the newsagents rack! The comics were mostly Frew and I remember opening them to solve the mystery with great fondness.
Back then there were a lot of second-hand bookshops which also had quite a lot of comics. There are still some second-hand bookshops but they don't usually have comics anymore.
cheers!