Ronald McDonald

The McDonald's restaurant mascot clown brought his fast-food adventures to comics in a 1970 Charlton Comics series, starring in kid-friendly stories set in the whimsical McDonaldland universe alongside other familiar burger-chain characters.

Few characters blur the line between pop culture icon and comic book curiosity quite like Ronald McDonald, who made his four-color debut in 1970 courtesy of creator Bill Yates at Charlton Comics — right in the heart of the Silver Age. Spanning an impressive three decades across titles like Ronald McDonald, Fun Times, and McDonaldland Comics, this familiar clown found a surprisingly enduring home on the comics page well into 2001. It's a delightfully offbeat corner of comics history, the kind of promotional oddity that serious collectors love to track down — proof that the Silver Age was wonderfully, gloriously weird in the best possible way.