Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

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sponsorship. He designed and produced a comic book of reprints specifically for
consumer sale: “When it sold out at ten cents a copy, he engineered a successful sequel
in May, Famous Funnies No. 1; and when the second issue of Famous Funnies hit the
stands in July 1934, it signaled the arrival of the monthly comic book” (Harvey, The Art
17). Despite Gaines's innovative sales strategy, his product still differed from what our
modern idea of what a comic book should be because it did not contain original material.
Around the same time period, though, other businessmen were experimenting with the
form's potential who realized the value of releasing new content. One of these
individuals was Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, a former cavalry officer who had risen to
the rank of Major before resigning and becoming a writer of adventure stories. Wheeler-
Nicholson formed National Allied Publications, a company whose first publication was
released in black and white and called New Fun; it was cover-dated February 1935.
Although the company would later blossom into one of the industry's giants, this title and
other subsequent ones achieved only marginal commercial success (ibid).
Meanwhile, industry pioneer Max Gaines was fairing very differently. After
leaving Eastern Color Printing, Gaines began working for the McClure Newspaper
Syndicate where he introduced his new concept. Next, he formed a partnership with
George Delacorte of Dell Publishing. Together they produced thirty-five thousand copies
of Famous Funnies. Using Funnies on Parade as a model, Gaines's collaborative effort
with Delacorte retained the same amount of pages and dimensions as the earlier
publication. Unlike the first efforts, though, Famous Funnies had an innovative new
marketing strategy. Corporate middlemen were cut out of the equation as copies were
distributed to and then sold directly from newsstands. Besides this publication, the team