When The Sunday Funnies Were Wednesday Comics
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Before the Golden Age comic book size of 7½” by 10½” became the accepted standard there were various sizes. What some consider “the first American newsstand comic book of all original material,” The Funnies, was published in the tabloid dimensions of 10.5″ x 15.5.”
By the late 1930s the size of stapled comic books were the same size, give or take a quarter inch, and that’s the way they stayed, gradually shrinking and inch or so over the decades. That excepts the magazines, MAD being the most famous, and comic digests like the Humorama line.
Then in 1967 a company that specialized in toys and novelties (Frisbee, Hula Hoop, Slip ‘n’ Slide) decided to become a comic book publisher, and being Wham-O there had to be a twist. And so Wham-O Giant Comics appeared at department stores and newsstands. Giant being the operative word the comic book was newspaper broadsheet size measuring 21″ tall and 14″ wide!
The Wham-O editors made a call for comics and cartoonists sent in submissions, many of which seems to failed comic strip proposals. The comics were cut and pasted, sometimes awkwardly, to fit on the newspaper-sized page. There was no rhyme or reason as to what was acceptable. But there was a bigger problem: like all comic books Wham-O Giant Comics were stapled, which meant it comic couldn’t be folded to fit on newsstand shelves. The comic flopped over continually, it couldn’t be folded to fit with the newspapers, it was a pain. And ended the broadsheet comic book.
For ten years anyway.
Just a bit smaller 17″ tall by 12″ wide and with no staples it could be folded to fit the store shelves. By the second half of the 1970s comic book stores were spreading across the nation and with a line-up that consisted of Joe Kubert, John Severin, Doug Wildey, Lee Elias, Dick Giordano, Sergio Aragonés, and Steve Bissette creating two or three page features it should have been a hit with comic fans. It lasted two issues.
At that time the DC and Marvel tabloid sized (10 in. x 13.5) “treasury editions were making a splash in fandom.
But the allure of drawing a full broadsheet comic like the cartoonists of old was strong.
The draw for Steve Rude was irresistible in 2015.
This all comes about because DC Comics is publishing a new edition of Wednesday Comics.
In 2009 DC Comics published twelve weekly issues of Wednesday Comics (the day comics were released to comic book stores then). While I had long since forsaken superhero comics I ordered these through my LCBS wanting to support this effort, hoping for it to succeed and maybe develop into genres I would prefer. I do remember reading a few of the series and being wowed by Ben Caldwell’s Wonder Woman art. But the attraction to me was a weekly Sunday Funnies type publication in full size (14″ x 20″) just like the weekend newspapers.
The hardcover collection, first issued in 2010, has two new stories I have never read but sound great: Plastic Man – story by Evan Dorkin with art by Stephen DeStefano and Beware the Creeper – story by Keith Giffen with art by Eric Canete.
Hey, if enough of these are sold maybe DC Comics will be tempted to publish a new weekly series.
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