Envisioning Consumer Culture: Comic Strips, Comic Books, and Advertising in America, 1890 - 1945.

In the late nineteenth century American newspaper owners and comic strip artists transformed European traditions of visual humor and graphic narrative into a new commercial form of leisure, the Sunday color comic strip. These strips focused on continuing characters and narratives. In the early years of the twentieth century comic strips induced both urban and rural audiences to purchase a part of their leisure in the form of a newspaper. By 1903, both of these audiences received the same comic strips, and nationally recognized comic strip characters helped create a consumer culture. Richard Outcault successfully licensed his character, Buster Brown, to the manufacturers of a wide array of products, most notably shoes and textiles. Although some entrepreneurs followed Outcault's example, advertisers in general did not realize comic art's potential for advertising until George Gallup's 1930 survey, which demonstrated the popularity of the strips. Advertisers then adopted the techniques of comic art to sell numerous products. These advertisers mostly eschewed the direct use of comic strip characters, but those characters indirectly fostered a consumerist way of life. The comic strips themselves were commodities sold by syndicates to newspapers across the country, and the content of the strips served as an advertisement for the values and practices of consumer culture. In the 1920s and 1930s comic strips, such as "Gasoline Alley" and "Winnie Winkle," suggested the appropriate means of incorporating commodities into everyday life. In the 1940s a new form of comic art, comic books, promoted consumerism as a way of life both in stories and through extensive licensing of superhero characters such as Superman. In this manner comic art contributed significantly to the creation of a consumer culture.