New Fun #1
New Fun #1 is the founding document of what would become DC Comics and a genuine turning point for the American comic book medium — it was the first ongoing comic book title composed entirely of original material rather than newspaper-strip reprints, establishing the template of an anthology of continuing characters that all subsequent superhero publishers would follow. Published on January 11, 1935 by National Allied Publications, the company that would grow, through a series of mergers, into DC Comics, it proved that a sustainable market existed for comic books that did not depend on licensed syndicate content. The issue also introduced Barry O'Neill, one of the earliest action-adventure heroes to debut in a comic book format, and carried the first comic book appearance of Oswald the Rabbit. The series that began here — eventually retitled More Fun Comics — ran until 1947 and would go on to debut the supernatural hero Doctor Occult (the first true DC superhero by most reckonings) and Superboy, making this inaugural issue the seed of an unbroken publishing lineage.
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Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, a prolific pulp fiction writer and former Army officer, founded National Allied Publications in the fall of 1934 after observing the newsstand success of reprint-based books like Famous Funnies. His innovation — and financial calculation — was to bypass the newspaper syndicates entirely and commission all-new strips at lower cost, producing a tabloid-sized, 36-page, black-and-white anthology with a color cardstock cover measuring roughly 10 by 15 inches. The first four issues were edited by Lloyd Jacquet, formerly of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, who is credited in the indicia; Wheeler-Nicholson himself wrote several of the strips in the debut issue. The series ran for only six issues under the New Fun banner before the smaller-format successor More Fun Comics replaced it, but not before issue #6 introduced Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — the future creators of Superman — to comics readers for the first time.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published January 11, 1935 (cover-dated February 1935) by National Allied Publications — retroactively recognized as the very first DC comic book.
- First American comic book composed entirely of original material; all previous comic book publications reprinted existing newspaper comic strips.
- Tabloid-sized format: approximately 10 by 15 inches, 36 pages, black-and-white interior with a color cardstock cover — the largest format of any comic book published to that date.
- Tom Mix appears not as a fictional comic strip character but in a comic strip advertisement for Ralston Whole Wheat Cereal promoting the Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters radio show; his appearance here predates his regular comics feature in Dell's Popular Comics #4 (1936) and his own Fawcett title Tom Mix Western (1948).
- First comic book appearance of Oswald the Rabbit, a character originally created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks and owned at the time by Universal Pictures.
- Debut of Barry O'Neill (with villain Fang Gow) and Sandra of the Secret Service — the latter regarded by some sources as the first female lead in a DC comic book.
- Edited by Lloyd Jacquet (future founder of Funnies, Inc.) with Wheeler-Nicholson himself contributing as writer; the issue also carried what is believed to be one of the first Charles Atlas advertisements to appear in a comic book.
- Reprinted in part in Big Book of Fun Comics #1 (1935); reprinted in full for the first time in Famous First Edition #C-63 (2020) and again as a Facsimile Edition in 2025.
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
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Jim Kenyon, en route to California, arrives in New Orleans. Trying to catch up on foot with the departed wagon train, he hears cries for help and rescues a trapper from quicksand. Riding on the trapper's horse after the wagon train they are waylaid by Indians.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).