1700s

William Hogarth introduces the style of paintings and engravings that are rich in detail and meant to be
viewed in sequence – a precursor to the modern comic strip, comic book, and graphic novel.

Mid-1800s
Rodolphe Töpffer employs cartooning in his light satiric picture stories.

1895
The Yellow Kid by Richard Outcault debuts in The New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, as
perhaps the first example of the style of a political cartoon.

March 1897
The Yellow Kid is compiled into the Hearst Sunday Journal and sold for 5 cents.

1905
Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, a children's fantasy comic strip that was often dark,
surreal, threatening, and even violent.

1915
A few book publishers (notably Cupples & Leon) began collecting popular daily comic strips such as
Bringing Up Father by George McManus & Tillie the Toiler by Russ Westover into softcover "album"
form. These series were published regularly from around 1915 through the mid 1930s and were very
successful

1917
Chicago American produces the first collected book of comic strips, a Mutt and Jeff promotion.
Readers could receive an 18 inch by 6 inch landscape book by clipping six coupons from the
newspaper. Despite the fact that this comic sold a remarkable 45,000 copies, it was not for another
eighteen years that it would be done again.

1920s
Frans Masereel produces “woodcut novels” (first introduced in the late 1910s) that do not employ
words but instead utilize stark imagery. Lyn Ward would do the same in the 1930s.

Max Ernst brings the “collage novel” to light. It is a form of an artist’s book in which images are
selected from other publications and collaged together following a theme or narrative (not necessarily
linear).

January 1929
George Delacorte, working for pulp publisher New Fiction Company, published The Funnies No. 1, the
first four-color comic newstand publication, featuring original comic pages and a cover price of 10
cents.

October 1931
Chester Gould's Dick Tracy (originally called Plainclothes Tracy) first appeared in the pages of the
Chicago Tribune, inspired by the local gang wars.

1933
Sales manager Harry L. Wildenberg and saleman Max. C. Gaines, employees of Eastern Color Printing
Company in New York, saw the plates for comic strips and figured two of these plates could fit on a
tabloid page and produce a 7 1/2 by 10 inch book when folded. Gathering 32 pages of newspaper
reprints including Mutt and Jeff, Joe Palooka, and Reg'lar Fellas, they created Funnies on Parade.

M.C. Gaines created the first comic book, called New Funnies, which reprinted daily comic strips.
Later that year, a company called Humor Publications printed the first all original comic book,
Detective Dan.

February 1935
Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, an ex-calvalry officer and pulp writer, published the tabloid-sized
anthology title New Fun Comics No. 1 through National Allied Publications, later named DC Comics. It
was the first comic to publish NEW material

Wheeler-Nicholson began a second anthology, also with new characters, New Comics No. 1
(December 1935) later that year. New Comics changed its name several times, while continuing the
numbering. In 1937, with No. 12 it became New Adventure Comics, and in 1938, with No. 32, it
became Adventure Comics. The title remained Adventure Comics until it ended publication with No.
503 in 1983.

1937
Wheeler-Nicholson, after having financial trouble launching his third title, was forced to take on one of
his printers to whom he owed money, Harry Donenfield, as a partner. The new company was called
Detective Comics and their first new title, the company's third, was Detective Comics No.1, launched
in March 1937. The new title concentrated solely on crime and suspense stories, instead of the usual
varied themes, and is the title that would later launch Batman. The initials of the title eventually would
provide the company's new name.