More Fun Comics

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New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 (Feb. 1935) was the first comic book with all original material rather than comic-strip reprints.
New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 (Feb. 1935) was the first comic book with all original material rather than comic-strip reprints.

More Fun Comics was a DC Comics title which began as New Fun Comics in February 1935 and changed to More Fun with its seventh issue. It was cancelled with issue 127 in 1947.

New Fun Comics was a groundbreaking comic book from pulp magazine writer Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications (some sources give National Allied Magazines). It was the first comic publication to feature solely original material rather than reprints of newspaper comic strips, and the first such magazine published by the company that would become DC Comics.

Premiering with a February 1935 first issue titled New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine, the publication was a tabloid-sized, 10-inch by 15-inch, 36-page magazine without glossy covers. An anthology, it offered humor features, such as the funny animal comic "Pelion and Ossa" and the college-set "Jigger and Ginger", mixed with such dramatic fare as the Western strip "Jack Woods" and the "yellow peril" adventure "Barry O'Neill", featuring a Fu Manchu-styled villain, Fang Gow.

The earliest issues were edited by future Funnies, Inc. founder Lloyd Jacquet, the next by Wheeler-Nicholson himself. Beginning with #7 (January 1936), the title was changed to More Fun Comics, with the magazine featuring primarily adventure stories and, after the advent of Superman in the same company's Action Comics in 1938, superhero stories.

Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster made their comic-book debut, in fact, in New Fun #6 (Oct. 1935). The writer-artist team began their careers with the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval" (doing the first two installments before turning it over to others) and "Doctor Occult", starring a supernatural crimefighter and on which they would continue through More Fun #32 (June 1938).

Apart from Dr. Occult, several other well known superheroes debuted in More Fun Comics, including The Spectre (#52, February 1940), Doctor Fate (#55, May 1940), Johnny Quick (#71 September 1941), Green Arrow (#73 November 1941), Aquaman (#73 November 1941), and Superboy (#101, January/February 1945).

With issue #107 all the superhero features were moved from More Fun into Adventure Comics and it became a humor title. The widely-promoted kids' fantasy-feature "Jimminy and the Magic Book" failed to sell the series, and More Fun Comics was cancelled with issue #127 in 1947.[1]

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