Modern Mechanix and Inventions #1

History

Modern Mechanix and Inventions was Fawcett Publications' flagship science-and-technology magazine, originating in the late 1920s as Modern Mechanics and Inventions before being retitled in 1932; it would later pass through the names Modern Mechanix and Mechanix Illustrated before becoming Home Mechanix and finally Today's Homeowner in 1993. Illustrator Norman Saunders joined Fawcett as a staffer in 1927 and produced covers for the title into the 1930s, though the cover artist for Vol. 11 #1 is not documented in available sources. The November 1933 issue was published during a period of rapid growth for Fawcett, whose Minneapolis-to-New York expansion was still several years away; the editorial decision to devote prominent coverage to comic-strip cartoonists reflects how mainstream the funny pages had become as a business and entertainment force by the early 1930s.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published as Vol. 11 #1, November 1933, by Fawcett Publications; a non-fiction science and technology pulp magazine running approximately 148 black-and-white pages in a softcover, roughly 6¾ × 9½-inch format.
• The cover depicts Mickey Mouse, Popeye, and Buck Rogers — three of the most recognizable fictional characters in American popular culture at that moment — making it a visually striking artifact of early-1930s pop-culture crossover.
• Contains the article 'How Comic Cartoons Make Fortunes' by Alfred Albelli, featuring photographs of top earners in the comics field including Walt Disney, Bud Fisher (creator of Mutt and Jeff), Sidney Smith (creator of Andy Gump / The Gumps), George McManus, Robert L. Ripley, Rube Goldberg, and Grant Powers.
• Mutt and Jeff (indexed characters Mutt and Jeff) were created by Bud Fisher in 1907 and are widely regarded as the first successful American daily comic strip; by 1933 the strip had been largely ghost-drawn by Al Smith since the death of assistant Ed Mack in 1932.
• Andy Gump (indexed character Andy Gump) is the title character of The Gumps, created by Sidney Smith and launched February 12, 1917, in the Chicago Tribune; the strip is credited as one of the earliest continuity newspaper strips and was appearing in approximately 400 newspapers worldwide by the 1930s.
• Mickey Mouse (indexed) and Walt Disney (indexed as a named subject) appear both on the cover and in the editorial content; Disney's studio had released the first Mickey Mouse sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, in 1928, and Mickey was already a global entertainment phenomenon by 1933.
• Popeye (indexed) had debuted in E.C. Segar's Thimble Theatre strip on January 17, 1929, and by 1933 had spun off into the Fleischer Studios animated shorts series — his presence on the cover alongside Mickey underscores his rapid rise to cultural prominence.
• The Grand Comics Database classifies each issue of this series as less than 50% comics content, indexing only the comics sequences; the publication was not a comic book but a general-interest science pulp that regularly incorporated comics-adjacent features.

Cast · 6 characters

Full credits

Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers