Comic strip formats
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Comic strip formats vary widely from publication to publication, so that the same comic strip may appear in half a dozen different formats, with different numbers of panels, different sizes of panels, and different arrangement of panels.
The first distinction in comic strips formats is between the daily strip and the Sunday strip. A daily strip usually carried on a standard newspaper page, often alongside other, non-comics matter. It is usually printed as either a strip (longer than it is tall) or a box (roughly square) in black and white. There is a much greater variety in Sunday strip formats.
Sunday strips are usually carried in color, in a special newspaper section called the comics section. Comics sections usually come in one of two sizes, full page or tabloid. A few newspapers have run their comics in a comic book size section.
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[edit] Full page
Full page is a format roughly 20 inches high and 14 inches wide. The Denver Post Sunday comics section is full page size, though today no individual strips are still printed to take up a full page. When Sunday strips first appeared in newspapers, near the beginning of the Twentieth Century, they were usually in the full page size. Early full page Sundays included Thimble Theater, Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, and Bringing Up Father. Many full page comic strips had a topper, a small strip that ran above or occasionally below the main strip, usually by the same artist. The topper on Thimble Theater was Sappo, the topper on Little Orphan Annie was Maw Green and ran at the bottom of the full page. Dick Tracy never had a topper while it was still a full page, but much later had a topper, which ran at the bottom of the tabloid page, titled Sawdust.
During World War II, paper rationing led to fewer strips having a full page of their own in the Sunday Comics. Many strips were reduced in size to half page or one-third of a page. Collectors call these formats "halfs" and "thirds". Only a few strips, notably Prince Valiant, were still published in full page format after the war.
In the mid-1950's, there were a few attempts to revive the full page Sunday comic strip, notably Lance and Johnny Reb and Billy Yank. These were an artistic but not a commercial success, and were reduced to half page format after a short full page run.
The last full page Sunday strip was Prince Valiant, which continued in full page format in some newspapers until 1970. New Prince Valiant stories still appear in newspapers today, but in half page or smaller formats.
Three and only three books have been published reprinting full page Sunday strips in their original size, The Golden Age of Tarzan, Prince Valiant — An American Epic, and Little Nemo.
[edit] Half page
Half page is a Sunday strip format that is roughly 10 inches high and 14 inches wide. Today it is the largest and most complete format for most Sunday strips, including Peanuts, Prince Valiant, and Doonesbury. The half page Sunday strip was introduced in the 1920's, to fit two Sunday strips on a single page. Some strips, such as The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and Terry and the Pirates were introduced in this format. Other strips, such as Flash Gordon and Blondie had panels rearranged, cropped, or removed to make the full page fit in a smaller size. During World War II, paper rationing caused most newspapers to cut back on the number of pages devoted to Sunday comics and, rather than drop strips, they often reduced the size. Beginning about this time, the half page became the standard size, and the third of a page strip was introduced, fitting three strips on each page, one above another. A half page typically had three tiers, the third page either reduced, rearranged and cropped these panels, as was the case with Li'l Abner or, more commonly, just dropped the top tier, as was the case with Peanuts. Most newspaper readers did not realize there were only seeing part of what the artist drew, and the artists were forced into increasingly restrictive formats to make dropping panels possible. Today, only the Reading Eagle and a few other newspapers run any of their Sunday strips in the complete, half-page format. The Sunday Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was so popular that the artist was able to insist that it run half page, over the objections of newspaper editors. That strip has since ended, and today the only strip that requires the half page format, thought not necessarily the half page size, is Opus.
[edit] Third
Third is used by comic strip collectors and dealers to describe one of the formats in which Sunday strips appear in US newspapers. One page of a full color comics section can be divided horizontally into two, three, or four parts. Comic strip collectors call strips that occupy one-third of a full page "thirds". From the mid-1940's until at least the 1980's "thirds" were the most common comic strip format, and "thirds" are still common today. "Thirds" usually drop several panels, and so are often incomplete, and are not as sought after by collectors as half pages or full pages. Most people who casually read the Sunday comics are not aware that they are missing several panels of a strip if their newspaper runs it as a "third".
A few comic strips were designed to be run as "thirds", for example, Steve Canyon and (except for the last few years of its run) On Stage. These strips are complete in the third of a page format, and are cropped and rearranged in the half page, tab, or full page format. Other strips, such as The Amazing Spider-Man and the current Alley Oop are drawn in the third-of-a-page format and the half page is created by adding a title tier, which is either the same every week (in the case of Alley Oop), or comes in a small number of different varieties (in the case of Spider-Man and the other strips based on Marvel Comics characters).
[edit] Tab
A tab or tabloid comic strip is a strip published on a full page of a tabloid size newspaper. Most cities without subways have newspapers that are roughly 20 inches high and 14 inches wide, while cities with subways usually have smaller newspapers, roughly 14 inches high and 10 inches wide. The smaller format is called "tabloid". In New York City, for example, the New York Times is a full size newspaper while the New York Post is a tabloid. Many collectors of newspaper comic strips prefer the tabloid or "tab" size Sunday strip for such strips as Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, and Terry and the Pirates.
[edit] Half tab
Half tab is a comic strip format that fills half of a page in a tabloid newspaper Sunday comics section. Usually, though not always, it is the same as the half page format, only smaller. As modern newspapers cram more and more strips onto one Sunday page, even full sized newspapers often use the half tab format. For example, Reading Eagle usually runs Tarzan in half tab, and sometimes reduces the Opus half page to half tab.
