Terms of use for this historical timeline:
This Timeline is provided as a service to those who'd use it as a basis for one of their own with only two small conditions.
1. The information taken from here must always be free and placed in a forum or format that allows for access without people having to join a group or online endeavor to view it, where anyone may co-op the information as their own.
2. Credit must be given to Aja Frost in acknowledgement for what's she's done here and a link to this page provided. That's it.
1. The information taken from here must always be free and placed in a forum or format that allows for access without people having to join a group or online endeavor to view it, where anyone may co-op the information as their own.
2. Credit must be given to Aja Frost in acknowledgement for what's she's done here and a link to this page provided. That's it.
An Informal History of the Comic Book Industry
Comic Book History Timelines
Oct. 18, 1896: Richard Outcault’s "Yellow Kid," recognized as the first major modern comic-strip character, first appeared in the New York Journal. In late 1902, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal released five 50¢ books with cardboard covers reprinting Sunday comic strips in full color, referring to them as "the best comic books that have ever been published."
1932: The Adventures of Dick Tracy, published by Whitman, was the first Big Little Book.
May 1934: Famous Funnies #1 (dated July) went on sale. Begun by Eastern Color salesman Max C. Gaines, it ran for 218 issues over the next 21 years, was the first monthly comic book, and sold for 10¢.
1935: New Fun was the first DC comic book.
March 1937: The first issue of DC’s Detective Comics was published. Though Batman didn’t make his debut in its pages until #27, this title is now the longest-running comic-book series in the world.
September 1937: Sheena, Queen of the Jungle is a fictional, American comic book jungle girl heroine, published originally by Fiction House. She originally appeared in Wags Issue #46 dated November 1937 in Great Britain and in 1938 in the United States and appeared in subsequently in every issue (Sept. 1938 - April 1953). Then featured in Jumbo Comics #2 in 1940. She was the first female comic-book character with her own groundbreaking, 18-issue spin-off, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (Spring 1942 - Winter 1952). She possessed the ability to communicate with the wild animals after having grown up with them since being orphaned in the jungle. She was fiercely proficient in fighting with knives, spears, and bows, and improvised with makeshift weapons.
June 1938: Action #1 had this as its cover date; the issue featured the first appearance of Superman.
October-November 1939: This was the cover date for Marvel Comics #1, one of the comic-book issues bringing the highest prices as a collector’s item today. The company became known as Timely through most of the Golden Age — not adopting the "Marvel Comics" imprint until the 1960s.
February 1940: Fantomah is a fictional character, best remembered as the being the first comic book superheroine that actually displayed super powers. Created by Fletcher Hanks, the character first appeared in Jungle Comics #2, published by Fiction House. Fantomah exhibited a large number of magical abilities, generally as required by the story's plot. Among others, she demonstrated the ability to fly, transform objects into different objects, levitate other objects, cause humans to mutate into other forms, and so on. Generally, whenever Fantomah used her powers, she would change her face from a normal human woman to a blue-skinned skull-like visage.
May 8, 1940: Chicago Daily News Literary Editor Sterling North denounced comic books as "a poisonous mushroom growth of the last two years," adding that comics were "guilty of a cultural slaughter of the innocents."
December 1941: Wonder Woman #1 debuts.
1942: Stan Lee became editor at Timely, when Simon and Kirby left for DC.
Fall 1942: E.C. started — with Picture Stories from the Bible.
June 1947: All-Negro Comics #1 is published. It's the first comic to be published by Black Americans to feature Black characters and Black creators and may also be the first independent comic as well.
March 1948: In a Town Meeting of the Air radio broadcast, Saturday Review of Literature drama critic John Mason Brown described comic books as "the marijuana of the nursery; the bane of the bassinet; the horror of the house; the curse of the kids; and a threat to the future."
September 1954: It wasn't until the release of Waku, Prince of the Bantu in the omnibus Jungle Tales from Marvel Comics' 1950s predecessor Atlas Comics, that mainstream comic books depicted an African character as a strong, independent hero. Waku was an African chieftain in a feature with no regularly featured Caucasian characters.
October 1954: The Comics Magazine Association of America started to censor comics before publication.
September-October 1956: Showcase with this cover date (issue #4) reintroduced The Flash, a DC super-hero from the ’40s. The issue marked the start of The Silver Age.
Spring 1961: The world of widespread comics fandom emerged with the (almost simultaneous) publication of two amateur magazines devoted to comics: Alter Ego and Comic Art.
Fall 1961: Fantastic Four #1 was published with a cover date of November; it was the start of the so-called "Marvel Age of Comics."
July 27, 1964: Fan Bernie Bubnis put together a Monday-afternoon event in New York City that is usually acknowledged as the first comics convention, and by 1966, there was a two-day July event that followed much of the same format as today’s comics conventions.
December 1965: Lobo, the first Black comic character to be featured as lead in his own title starred in Dell Comics' little-known but groundbreaking, two-issue series.
July 1966:The first known Black superhero in American comic books is Marvel's Black Panther, an African who first appeared in Fantastic Four vol. 1, #52.
November 1967: Zap Comix #1 was printed, with a run of 5,000 for the 25¢, 24-page underground comic book.
The Falcon, comic books first Black American superhero was introduced in 1969 to great fanfare in Captain America number 117.
November 1970: The first edition of what came to be known as The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide was published; the print run was about 1,800, and a Mint copy of the eight-year-old Amazing Fantasy #15 was listed at $16, more than 100 times its original price of 12¢.
Spring 1971: High-school student Alan Light began publication of The Buyer’s Guide, a comics collectors’ publication which evolved into the weekly Comics Buyer’s Guide.
June 1972: Luke Cage, born Carl Lucas and later called Power Man, is a fictional superhero appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Archie Goodwin and artist John Romita, Sr., he first appeared in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1.
September 5, 1972: Comics & Comix was founded in Berkeley, Calif. Store spokespeople estimated later that there were fewer than 25 stores of the type in the country at the time. By 1978, the line had expanded to six locations.
1974: Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom began from Bud Plant: an independent, non-anthology, non-"underground" title.
February 1975 (but sporting a May 1975 cover date): Storm was the first African female character to be featured from a major American company in Giant-Size X-Men #1, from Marvel.
1975: Phil Seuling began (non-returnable) direct distribution of Marvel and DC comics to comics specialty shops, later incorporating with partner Jonni Levas as Sea Gate Distributors, Inc.
December 1977: Cerebus by Dave Sim began with this date — a comic book that became so immensely popular that copies of the first issue were eventually forged. Sim’s initial print-run was 2,000; it grew to 10 times that within a decade.
March 1978: Fantasy Quarterly carried this date — and the first installment of Wendy and Richard Pini’s ElfQuest, one of the success stories in self-published comics.
September 30, 1978: Independent publisher Eclipse published Sabre #1, its first title.
November 1982: First published its first comic book: Warp #1, dated March 1983.
December 1, 1982: Krause Publications took over The Buyer’s Guide, which became Comics Buyer’s Guide and introduced a newspaper format. The comics publishing field had its own trade journal, one that served creators, publishers, distributors, shops, and collectors.
December 1982: The first issue of Camelot 3000 appeared. It was a 12-issue maxi-series, the first DC comic produced exclusively for the direct-sales market.
April 6, 1984: Peter A. Laird and Kevin B. Eastman placed an ad in CBG to sell 3,000 copies of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1. The title’s success led to a black-and-white explosion of titles in the comics field.
Late 1986: New World bought Marvel.
February 1987: Four publishers cut off comics-shop distributor Glenwood, and that distributor ceased business by May.
April 1987: Tom DeFalco follows Jim Shooter as Marvel editor in chief.
1988: Andrews Group, Inc., bought Marvel for $82.5 million.
August 1988: Bud Plant sold his distribution company to national comics-shop distributor Diamond Comic Distribution, Inc.
1989: In Illinois v. Correa (familiarly known in the comics community as the "Friendly Frank’s case"), a comics shop manager was charged with a crime for having material for adults in his shop. Out of the case was born the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to help fight legal problems for comics creators and retailers. Cases continue to this day.
July 1990: Spider-Man #1 by Todd McFarlane set what was the highest recorded paid circulation for a comic book to that point. The first printing had sales of 2,350,000. When all editions were added, the total paid circulation was approximately 2,650,000 copies.
Summer 1991: MacAndrews and Forbes sold 40% of Marvel to the public, raising $74 million for debt reduction and owner dividends.
June 1991: X-Force #1 by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld beat the record set by Spider-Man #1. Thanks in part to a marketing gimmick in which collector’s cards were bagged with the issue, the paid circulation came to approximately 3,900,000.
July 1991: X-Men #1 by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee, and Scott Williams beat the paid circulation record set by X-Force #1. Marvel released the issue in five editions with variant covers. Estimated paid circulation was approximately 7,500,000.
February 1992: Several hot creators left top series at Marvel to form their own imprint, Image. Initially solicited and distributed by Malibu, the titles were eventually completely taken over by the creators.
July 4, 1992: Marvel announced it would acquire Fleer Corp. for $265 million.
Nov. 17, 1992: DC shipped between 2.5 million and 3 million copies of Superman #75, featuring the death of Superman. They vanished from stores, as the issue brought more new customers into comics stores than ever before. In Detroit alone, more than 175,000 copies sold in one day.
May 1993: Milestone Media was founded by a coalition of African-American artists and writers, namely Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis and Derek T. Dingle, who believed that minorities were severely underrepresented in American comics. Milestone Media was their attempt to correct this imbalance. Milestone Media characters were published through DC Comics.
Mid-1993: The glut of new comic books caused by a speculator bubble hit more than 700 per month.
Dec. 28, 1994: Marvel bought Heroes World, the third-largest direct-market distributor.
March 3, 1995: Marvel announced that, beginning with July-shipping product, Heroes World would become the exclusive distributor of Marvel products, eventually leading to the dissolution of the International Association for Direct Distribution, Inc.
March 9, 1995: Marvel bought SkyBox for about $150 million.
April 30, 1995: DC announced its product would be distributed exclusively by Diamond Comic Distribution, Inc. On July 24, Image and Dark Horse announced they would be exclusive with Diamond. Many other companies followed suit, with ensuing jockeying for exclusivity between national distributors Diamond and Capital City Distribution, the second-largest national comics distributor, in the months that followed. Capital exclusives eventually included Kitchen Sink and TSR.
Sept. 22, 1995: Marvel and DC announced their entire universes would cross over for the first time in a joint publishing project.
Dec. 14, 1995: Marvel announced it had hired two Image founders to reshape The Avengers, Captain America, Fantastic Four, and Iron Man.
July 1996: Diamond bought Capital City, making Diamond the last remaining major distributor for comic books to direct-market comics shops.
September 1996: Rob Liefeld left the Image group.
October 1996: Superman married Lois Lane.
Dec. 27, 1996: Marvel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
June 2000: CrossGen began publication with its monthly Scion, Sigil, Meridian, and Mystic titles.
September 2000: Bill Jemas took over Marvel Comics operations, and Joe Quesada was hired as Editor in Chief.
October 2000: Marvel launched its "Ultimate" line with Ultimate Spider-Man.
May 4, 2002: Free Comic Book Day marks the industry's first broad cooperative promotional venture.
------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
I want to thank Michael Reed who put in a few items left out by comic book historians to make the comic book history more complete and accurate. (Like the contributions of Women and Blacks in the timeline). - Aja Frost
Oct. 18, 1896: Richard Outcault’s "Yellow Kid," recognized as the first major modern comic-strip character, first appeared in the New York Journal. In late 1902, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal released five 50¢ books with cardboard covers reprinting Sunday comic strips in full color, referring to them as "the best comic books that have ever been published."
1932: The Adventures of Dick Tracy, published by Whitman, was the first Big Little Book.
May 1934: Famous Funnies #1 (dated July) went on sale. Begun by Eastern Color salesman Max C. Gaines, it ran for 218 issues over the next 21 years, was the first monthly comic book, and sold for 10¢.
1935: New Fun was the first DC comic book.
March 1937: The first issue of DC’s Detective Comics was published. Though Batman didn’t make his debut in its pages until #27, this title is now the longest-running comic-book series in the world.
September 1937: Sheena, Queen of the Jungle is a fictional, American comic book jungle girl heroine, published originally by Fiction House. She originally appeared in Wags Issue #46 dated November 1937 in Great Britain and in 1938 in the United States and appeared in subsequently in every issue (Sept. 1938 - April 1953). Then featured in Jumbo Comics #2 in 1940. She was the first female comic-book character with her own groundbreaking, 18-issue spin-off, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (Spring 1942 - Winter 1952). She possessed the ability to communicate with the wild animals after having grown up with them since being orphaned in the jungle. She was fiercely proficient in fighting with knives, spears, and bows, and improvised with makeshift weapons.
June 1938: Action #1 had this as its cover date; the issue featured the first appearance of Superman.
October-November 1939: This was the cover date for Marvel Comics #1, one of the comic-book issues bringing the highest prices as a collector’s item today. The company became known as Timely through most of the Golden Age — not adopting the "Marvel Comics" imprint until the 1960s.
February 1940: Fantomah is a fictional character, best remembered as the being the first comic book superheroine that actually displayed super powers. Created by Fletcher Hanks, the character first appeared in Jungle Comics #2, published by Fiction House. Fantomah exhibited a large number of magical abilities, generally as required by the story's plot. Among others, she demonstrated the ability to fly, transform objects into different objects, levitate other objects, cause humans to mutate into other forms, and so on. Generally, whenever Fantomah used her powers, she would change her face from a normal human woman to a blue-skinned skull-like visage.
May 8, 1940: Chicago Daily News Literary Editor Sterling North denounced comic books as "a poisonous mushroom growth of the last two years," adding that comics were "guilty of a cultural slaughter of the innocents."
December 1941: Wonder Woman #1 debuts.
1942: Stan Lee became editor at Timely, when Simon and Kirby left for DC.
Fall 1942: E.C. started — with Picture Stories from the Bible.
June 1947: All-Negro Comics #1 is published. It's the first comic to be published by Black Americans to feature Black characters and Black creators and may also be the first independent comic as well.
March 1948: In a Town Meeting of the Air radio broadcast, Saturday Review of Literature drama critic John Mason Brown described comic books as "the marijuana of the nursery; the bane of the bassinet; the horror of the house; the curse of the kids; and a threat to the future."
September 1954: It wasn't until the release of Waku, Prince of the Bantu in the omnibus Jungle Tales from Marvel Comics' 1950s predecessor Atlas Comics, that mainstream comic books depicted an African character as a strong, independent hero. Waku was an African chieftain in a feature with no regularly featured Caucasian characters.
October 1954: The Comics Magazine Association of America started to censor comics before publication.
September-October 1956: Showcase with this cover date (issue #4) reintroduced The Flash, a DC super-hero from the ’40s. The issue marked the start of The Silver Age.
Spring 1961: The world of widespread comics fandom emerged with the (almost simultaneous) publication of two amateur magazines devoted to comics: Alter Ego and Comic Art.
Fall 1961: Fantastic Four #1 was published with a cover date of November; it was the start of the so-called "Marvel Age of Comics."
July 27, 1964: Fan Bernie Bubnis put together a Monday-afternoon event in New York City that is usually acknowledged as the first comics convention, and by 1966, there was a two-day July event that followed much of the same format as today’s comics conventions.
December 1965: Lobo, the first Black comic character to be featured as lead in his own title starred in Dell Comics' little-known but groundbreaking, two-issue series.
July 1966:The first known Black superhero in American comic books is Marvel's Black Panther, an African who first appeared in Fantastic Four vol. 1, #52.
November 1967: Zap Comix #1 was printed, with a run of 5,000 for the 25¢, 24-page underground comic book.
The Falcon, comic books first Black American superhero was introduced in 1969 to great fanfare in Captain America number 117.
November 1970: The first edition of what came to be known as The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide was published; the print run was about 1,800, and a Mint copy of the eight-year-old Amazing Fantasy #15 was listed at $16, more than 100 times its original price of 12¢.
Spring 1971: High-school student Alan Light began publication of The Buyer’s Guide, a comics collectors’ publication which evolved into the weekly Comics Buyer’s Guide.
June 1972: Luke Cage, born Carl Lucas and later called Power Man, is a fictional superhero appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Archie Goodwin and artist John Romita, Sr., he first appeared in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1.
September 5, 1972: Comics & Comix was founded in Berkeley, Calif. Store spokespeople estimated later that there were fewer than 25 stores of the type in the country at the time. By 1978, the line had expanded to six locations.
1974: Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom began from Bud Plant: an independent, non-anthology, non-"underground" title.
February 1975 (but sporting a May 1975 cover date): Storm was the first African female character to be featured from a major American company in Giant-Size X-Men #1, from Marvel.
1975: Phil Seuling began (non-returnable) direct distribution of Marvel and DC comics to comics specialty shops, later incorporating with partner Jonni Levas as Sea Gate Distributors, Inc.
December 1977: Cerebus by Dave Sim began with this date — a comic book that became so immensely popular that copies of the first issue were eventually forged. Sim’s initial print-run was 2,000; it grew to 10 times that within a decade.
March 1978: Fantasy Quarterly carried this date — and the first installment of Wendy and Richard Pini’s ElfQuest, one of the success stories in self-published comics.
September 30, 1978: Independent publisher Eclipse published Sabre #1, its first title.
November 1982: First published its first comic book: Warp #1, dated March 1983.
December 1, 1982: Krause Publications took over The Buyer’s Guide, which became Comics Buyer’s Guide and introduced a newspaper format. The comics publishing field had its own trade journal, one that served creators, publishers, distributors, shops, and collectors.
December 1982: The first issue of Camelot 3000 appeared. It was a 12-issue maxi-series, the first DC comic produced exclusively for the direct-sales market.
April 6, 1984: Peter A. Laird and Kevin B. Eastman placed an ad in CBG to sell 3,000 copies of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1. The title’s success led to a black-and-white explosion of titles in the comics field.
Late 1986: New World bought Marvel.
February 1987: Four publishers cut off comics-shop distributor Glenwood, and that distributor ceased business by May.
April 1987: Tom DeFalco follows Jim Shooter as Marvel editor in chief.
1988: Andrews Group, Inc., bought Marvel for $82.5 million.
August 1988: Bud Plant sold his distribution company to national comics-shop distributor Diamond Comic Distribution, Inc.
1989: In Illinois v. Correa (familiarly known in the comics community as the "Friendly Frank’s case"), a comics shop manager was charged with a crime for having material for adults in his shop. Out of the case was born the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to help fight legal problems for comics creators and retailers. Cases continue to this day.
July 1990: Spider-Man #1 by Todd McFarlane set what was the highest recorded paid circulation for a comic book to that point. The first printing had sales of 2,350,000. When all editions were added, the total paid circulation was approximately 2,650,000 copies.
Summer 1991: MacAndrews and Forbes sold 40% of Marvel to the public, raising $74 million for debt reduction and owner dividends.
June 1991: X-Force #1 by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld beat the record set by Spider-Man #1. Thanks in part to a marketing gimmick in which collector’s cards were bagged with the issue, the paid circulation came to approximately 3,900,000.
July 1991: X-Men #1 by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee, and Scott Williams beat the paid circulation record set by X-Force #1. Marvel released the issue in five editions with variant covers. Estimated paid circulation was approximately 7,500,000.
February 1992: Several hot creators left top series at Marvel to form their own imprint, Image. Initially solicited and distributed by Malibu, the titles were eventually completely taken over by the creators.
July 4, 1992: Marvel announced it would acquire Fleer Corp. for $265 million.
Nov. 17, 1992: DC shipped between 2.5 million and 3 million copies of Superman #75, featuring the death of Superman. They vanished from stores, as the issue brought more new customers into comics stores than ever before. In Detroit alone, more than 175,000 copies sold in one day.
May 1993: Milestone Media was founded by a coalition of African-American artists and writers, namely Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis and Derek T. Dingle, who believed that minorities were severely underrepresented in American comics. Milestone Media was their attempt to correct this imbalance. Milestone Media characters were published through DC Comics.
Mid-1993: The glut of new comic books caused by a speculator bubble hit more than 700 per month.
Dec. 28, 1994: Marvel bought Heroes World, the third-largest direct-market distributor.
March 3, 1995: Marvel announced that, beginning with July-shipping product, Heroes World would become the exclusive distributor of Marvel products, eventually leading to the dissolution of the International Association for Direct Distribution, Inc.
March 9, 1995: Marvel bought SkyBox for about $150 million.
April 30, 1995: DC announced its product would be distributed exclusively by Diamond Comic Distribution, Inc. On July 24, Image and Dark Horse announced they would be exclusive with Diamond. Many other companies followed suit, with ensuing jockeying for exclusivity between national distributors Diamond and Capital City Distribution, the second-largest national comics distributor, in the months that followed. Capital exclusives eventually included Kitchen Sink and TSR.
Sept. 22, 1995: Marvel and DC announced their entire universes would cross over for the first time in a joint publishing project.
Dec. 14, 1995: Marvel announced it had hired two Image founders to reshape The Avengers, Captain America, Fantastic Four, and Iron Man.
July 1996: Diamond bought Capital City, making Diamond the last remaining major distributor for comic books to direct-market comics shops.
September 1996: Rob Liefeld left the Image group.
October 1996: Superman married Lois Lane.
Dec. 27, 1996: Marvel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
June 2000: CrossGen began publication with its monthly Scion, Sigil, Meridian, and Mystic titles.
September 2000: Bill Jemas took over Marvel Comics operations, and Joe Quesada was hired as Editor in Chief.
October 2000: Marvel launched its "Ultimate" line with Ultimate Spider-Man.
May 4, 2002: Free Comic Book Day marks the industry's first broad cooperative promotional venture.
------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
I want to thank Michael Reed who put in a few items left out by comic book historians to make the comic book history more complete and accurate. (Like the contributions of Women and Blacks in the timeline). - Aja Frost