The Platinum Age

The rise of the comic strip industry in the United States happened to coincide with spectacular advances in four-color printing, the phenomenal birth of American Cinema, and the rise of an enormous new age of spiritual, scientific and political inquiry.

The obliteration of the Cuban Revolution in 1898 and the seizure of Guantanamo Bay marked the maturation of the United States as an imperialist power. The socialist Fabian Society would come of age during this time.

Who Is Madame Blavatsky

Although Madame Blavatsky herself had died in 1891, her Theosophical Society was still a major force amongst the guard in the intellectual circles of the Western elite. So too, this was a tumultuous era in the formal re-structuring of the Order of the Golden Dawn.

It is today without question that all of these institutions and events would ultimately provide enormous inspiration to the young artists who would spend the greater part of the first three decades of the 20th Century canonizing the early conventions of what would ultimately come to be called the comic book's Platinum Age.

The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats

   
In 1897 publisher GW Dillingham gained permission from the Hearst Company to publish a 'comic book' adaptation of The Yellow Kid called The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats. The small square book sold for 50 cents and it carried the words "Comic Book" on the back cover. Most comic books were done in hard cover during this time. In 1901, the first full color comic book came out called The Blackberries.

For the first two decades comics were largely produced in a magazine format and although their popularity was rising steadily as is attested by the popularity of Outcault's Buster Brown, still they had not yet adhered to any one standard format, as far as shape, size, price, availability or content is concerned. The first monthly series did not arrive until in 1922. It was called Comics Monthly.

Comics Came From The Funny Pages Of Newspapers

Comic Books gained their name from their genesis as serial humorous newspaper strips which were originally called Funnies. The also had a role as an early form of entertainment during the intermission of silent films. In 1924, cartoonist Roy Crane evolved a humorous comic strip named Wash Tubbs into an adventurous dramatic series full of spine-tingling cliff hangers.

The age of comic book adventure had suddenly arrived. Nonetheless, it would still require another decade for the 'Funnies' to evolve from out of their solid niche which seem to make them available solely as a vehicle for humorous forms of escapism.

Fortunately, there was a plentiful well of adventure to draw from. Most notably, Edgar Rice Burroughs novel Tarzan about a White undomesticated child raised in isolation by apes in the African wilderness. Tarzan of the Apes debuted in magazine form in 1912 and then came out as a book two years later.

First illustrated in comic book format by Hal Foster in 1929, Tarzan has been drawn over and over again by a seemingly endless array of comic book artists. It has become one of the most popular narratives in American literary history.

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