Full Runs

Comic strip formats vary widely from publication to publication, so that the same comic strip may appear in half a dozen different formats, with differnt numbers of panels, different sizes of panels, and different arrangement of panels. more...

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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.

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-Nineteen-Fifties, there were a few attempts to revive the full page Sunday comic strip, notably Lance (comic strip) 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.

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 nineteen-twenties, 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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org