Once upon a time, a Walt Disney character appeared in DC Comics, and nobody thought anything of it. Of course, he wasn’t exactly a “Disney character,” and it was the very first DC Comic, so things were different then. Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of New Fun Comics #1 awaits!
NEW FUN COMICS #1
Writer: Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson/Sheldon Stark/Adolphe Barreaux/Bert Salg/Ken Fitch/Jack Warren/Joe Archibald/Lyman Anderson/Lloyd Jacquet/Eugene Koscik/Tom McNamara/Dick Loederer/John Lindermayer/Ken Mitch
Penciler: Lyman Anderson/Dick Loederer/Charles Flanders/John Lindermayer/Adolph Schus/Lawrence Lariar/Adolphe Barreaux/Henry Kiefer/Charles Flanders/Bert Salg/Clem Gretter/Jack Warren/Joe Archibald/Eugene Koscik/Tom McNamara
Inker: Lyman Anderson/Dick Loederer/Charles Flanders/John Lindermayer/Adolph Schus/Lawrence Lariar/Adolphe Barreaux/Henry Kiefer/Charles Flanders//Bert Salg/Clem Gretter/Jack Warren/Joe Archibald/Eugene Koscik/Tom McNamara
Editor: Lloyd Jacquet/Dick Loederer/Sheldon Stark/Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson
Publisher: National Allied Publications (DC Comics)
Cover Price: 10 Cents
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $60,000.00
Release Date: January 11, 1935
Previously in New Fun Comics: With the success of Famous Funnies #1 (considered to be the first real comic book), former Army infantryman Major Malcolm Nicholson-Wheeler saw money to be made in the field of publishing. Creating his own publishing company, National Allied Publications, the Major and his editorial team assembled this issue as a tabloid-sized magazine, fifteen inches high by 10 inches wide, similar in size to Life magazine. (If you don’t know Life, congratulations, your back probably doesn’t hurt right now.) Nicholson-Wheeler’s debut comic was the shape of things to come, featuring not all-new material instead of the reprints of Famous Funnies, et al. It also featured advertisements rather than being sponsored by a single entity.
As a fan of the classic Charles Atlas ads from the pulps and comics of yore, it’s kind of satisfying to find it here, in the first of the comics from DC… Well, from one of the companies that would become DC Comics. (Long story somewhat short: Wheeler’s National Allied Publications would work in concert with his other, later publishing concern, Detective Comics Inc., eventually merging and absorbing All-American Publications by the end of the 1940s. The characters of modern DC originated with both National Allied and All-American publishing.) As for the features in this issue, we open with the first recorded activities of Agent 37, Sandra McLane. Or, as she was known in her 35 published adventures, Sandra of the Secret Service.
This story’s artist, Charles Flanders would take over art chores for the daily comic strip adventures of The Lone Ranger in 1938, a job which continues for over thirty years. Based on the comic strips of the era, though, her first adventure is just a single-page strip with a cliffhanger ending, but it is kind of fun to know that the first character to ever appear in a DC book was a woman. (Take that, sexist “fans”.) If you check out the bottom of the page, though, you’ll see another interesting bit of pop culture history, a three-panel strip featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks in 1927, Disney lost the rabbit to Universal Studios, and went on to do something involving a mouse. Oswald’s appearance here is actually due to the tabloid format, with a series of three-panel strips appearing throughout New Fun Comics #1 to fill what would otherwise be a huge dead space at the bottom of the pages. The Lucky Rabbit’s multiple appearances make his the only story in this issue to be more than a single page long.
In addition to the adventure, cowboy, and funny animal strips, the issue has short “news” stories, science features, and a look at upcoming films. There’s even a hobby page with instructions on how to build model airplanes and a model ship out of materials found in your home!
There’s also the novel Fun Films strip, designed to be cut out and pulled through the frame provided to simulate a cartoon/movie experience. Anthology comics were clearly designed to emulate the experience of movie theatres of the times, which would probably make this the cartoon feature. Either way, readers of 2023 aren’t used to the expectation that they should take scissors to their newly purchased comic books. And speaking of 2023, we also get a somewhat surprising reminder that, 88 years ago, that far-flung future year was a science-fiction world of stratoplane/submarines and faster-than-light communications.
We were all promised teleporters and flying cars, and instead, we get social media and a Freestyle soda machine. It feels somehow unfair. The future cops of 2023 are the last true feature in the comic, though there is an additional comic strip to be had. The back cover of the issue features a single-page adventure of movie cowboy Tom Mix, wherein the day is saved by Jimmy and Jane with their official Tom Mix Zyp-Guns!
Yes, friends, with one box-top from Ralston wheat cereal, you too can get your own Zyp-Gun. Ralson wheat cereal: The flavor of raw twine with the fiber content of fourteen sheets of cardboard! All in all, though, New Fun Comics #1 is another intriguing look at times past, foreshadowing the next few decades of comic books in form and function, if not size, and well worth seeking out if you have sixty grand lying about, earning 3 out of 5 stars overall. The presence of Oswald in these pages kept this book from being reprinted for decades, with DC specifically wanting to showcase it in their Millennium Series at the turn of the century. It wasn’t until 2020 that the issue was finally recovered, restored, and reprinted as part of the Famous First Edition line for DC Comics’ 85th anniversary.
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NEW FUN COMICS #1
More like a Sunday funnies page than today's comic books, it's still a historically significant magazine in comic book history, even if its utterly huge and chockful of early installment comic book weirdness.
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Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.