Feature Funnies #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFeature Funnies #1 is the founding publication of what would become Quality Comics — one of the most creatively influential houses of the Golden Age — and as such it marks the origin point of a lineage that would eventually produce Plastic Man, Blackhawk, and Doll Man. The issue brought several beloved newspaper comic strip characters into comic book format for the first time, giving Depression-era readers Joe Palooka, Jane Arden, Mickey Finn, Dixie Dugan, The Bungle Family, and Lala Palooza all under one cover — a then-novel anthology strategy that helped establish the bundled comic book as a viable mass-market format. Although almost entirely composed of reprint material, it also contains what the DC Database identifies as the very first original Quality character, Crack Casey, making it the conceptual wellspring of the publisher's later commitment to developing wholly owned original content. The series it launched — running 20 issues as Feature Funnies before becoming Feature Comics — ran for 144 issues total and ultimately passed to DC Comics when that company acquired Quality in 1956.
Feature Funnies #1 is an anthology comic containing multiple stories. "Lala Palooza" by Rube Goldberg follows a countess and her social circle as they attend a football game and box lunch event where they meet various guests and encounter mishaps. "Ned Brant" by Bob Zuppke depicts a football player dealing with injuries and setbacks on his team, losing key prospects before an important game. "Dixie Dugan" by J.P. McEvoy and J.H. Striebel shows a woman preparing for and attending a benefit fight and social event for charity, accompanied by a man in a tuxedo.
Crack Casey tangles with a pair of thieves trying to steal a woman's jeweled ring—only to find himself face-to-face with a mysterious foreigner who claims the young woman as his ward and warns the troublemaker to mind his own business. This action-packed adventure launches Casey's story with a clash of wills and the promise of complications to come.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Publisher Everett M. 'Busy' Arnold, betting that Depression-era audiences preferred the comfort of familiar, established strips over untried original material, formed Comic Favorites, Inc. in partnership with three newspaper syndicates — the McNaught Syndicate, the Frank J. Markey Syndicate, and Iowa's Register and Tribune Syndicate — to secure the reprint rights that filled the book. Arnold hired prominent cartoonist Rube Goldberg and Goldberg's assistant Johnny Devlin to help launch the title out of offices at 389 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan in mid-1937, with the first issue carrying an October 1937 cover date. The book's editor was Ed Cronin, who is also associated with the Jim Swift feature that debuted in this issue — possibly drawn from samples of an unsold comic strip pitch, though its precise origins remain unconfirmed. Arnold initially sourced new filler material from the Harry 'A' Chesler packager shop, before later shifting entirely to the Eisner & Iger studio, whose contributions would dramatically elevate the series' original content in subsequent issues.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: October 1937; the debut publication of Comic Favorites, Inc., the imprint that became Quality Comics.
- First comic book appearances of several major newspaper strip characters: Joe Palooka (Ham Fisher), Jane Arden (Monte Barrett & Russell E. Ross), Mickey Finn (Lank Leonard), Dixie Dugan (J.P. McEvoy & J.H. Striebel), The Bungle Family (H.J. Tuthill), and Lala Palooza (Rube Goldberg).
- Crack Casey, introduced here as an original (non-reprint) feature, is identified by the DC Database as the first original Quality Comics character — though the feature never returned after this issue.
- The Jim Swift adventure strip also debuted here and ran through Feature Funnies #6; it may have been produced from samples of an unsold syndicate pitch by editor Ed Cronin, making its IP ownership ambiguous.
- The cover of issue #1 was drawn by Rube Goldberg, the famous cartoonist and Pulitzer Prize winner who was already contributing his Lala Palooza strip to the book's interior.
- Executive editor was Everett M. 'Busy' Arnold; Ed Cronin served as the book's editor — both are credited in the DC Database issue listing.
- The series ran 20 issues as Feature Funnies before being retitled Feature Comics with issue #21 (June 1939), continuing through issue #144 (May 1950) — a total run of 144 issues that DC Comics inherited when it acquired Quality in 1956.
- Golden Age reprints of Quality Comics material from this era, including Feature Funnies #1 content, were collected by Gwandanaland Comics in their 'Golden Age Firsts of Quality Comics: Volume 1' (May 2018).
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