jan 1, 1933 - First Comic Book (Funnies of Parades)

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The first comic book was made in 1933, and it was based on the comic strip called Funnies of Parades published by Eastern Color Printing. The comic book was given out as a free promotional tactic to customers who submitted their coupons from the Proctor and Gamble company and was not even sold on newsstands. It consisted of reprinted comic strips the company had previously done, but the format was like the standard comic book dimensions the American public knows now. Then Maxwell C. Gaines collaborated with Eastern Color Printing and Dell Publishing to publish Famous Funnies in the same format the promotional comics were in and sell them to the public! This was important to the comic industry because comic strips were only published in newspapers or journals, and no one had thought of publishing them on their own in physical book form. This altered how the comic industry thought because they wanted to follow the same comic book format of Famous Funnies because they saw how people gravitated towards buying the comic book. Also, since comics strips started to be published in comic books, it created more opportunities for comic creators to experiment with genres and allowed for more creative freedom. Another significant impact of the creation of the comic book is its convenient format made it so more people could read comics because they were cheap and available in places like newsstands. The creation of the first comic book sparked comics popularity and led to many famous comic book publications like Superman!

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