Comical comics
Comical comics |
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Page 24 of 34  Cover; Mad (1953). Art/script: Harvey Kurtzman. Although it was true that these children's comics (the funny animal and kid titles) dominated the humour market in terms of numbers, the more adult readers of comics were never forgotten. There was a parallel market aimed at a mixed-age readership, and this had two main expressions. Firstly, comics reprinted from newspaper strips continued to hold their own, while in time the most popular characters had comics devoted to them consisting of original material. Hits included Popeye (Dell, 1941), Joe Palooka (Harvey, 1945), Blondie (1950) and Dagwood (1950). These were joined by newer characters that had debuted in newspapers. The most celebrated example was probably George Baker's Sad Sack (Harvey, 1949), which originally ran in the services newspaper Yank: it started out as a fairly acid commentary on army life (the title came from the phrase 'sad sack o' shit'), but was progressively toned down in its comic book form. |