Wayback Whensday: Comics History
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Featuring the illustrated “Heroes! The Astounding True Story of America’s Comic Book Creators” by Roy Schwartz and Frank Stockton from the Summer 2026 issue of The Smithsonian magazine and the 1933 thesis A History and Analysis of the American Comic Strip by Harry Emsley Wood, Jr.
The Summer 2026 America 250 issue of The Smithsonian Magazine presents a one page illustrated Comics Origin Story, or: Heroes! The Astounding True Story of America’s Comic Book Creators by Roy Schwartz and Frank Stockton.
A groundbreaking cartoonist paired images with a running narrative in 1896 to create the first comic strip. They’ve mutated into books, blockbuster movies and Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novels
Note: The Yellow Kid, or Hogan’s Alley was not the first comic strip and there were many multi-panel newspaper comics dating back to the 1870s. Also: Max Gaines was an employee of Eastern Color Printing when he helped create the 1933 Funnies On Parade comic book which followed The Funnies comic book of 1929.
From 1933 comes what may be the earliest full-blown (as opposed to magazine articles or chapters in a book) A History and Analysis of the American Comic Strip by Harry Emsley Wood, Jr.
In the nearly 100 years since Harry Wood, Jr. wrote his thesis many facts have been discovered that historians were unaware of then. So, while the best resourced history of newspaper comics at the time (some of which continued to be printed into the 1980s and 1990s), it can no longer be considered gospel.
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