Tip Topper Comics #16
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeTip Topper Comics #16 holds a singular place in the history of Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts: it is the first issue of the Tip Topper anthology series to reprint Schulz's newspaper strip featuring Charlie Brown and his companions, making it among the earliest comic-book homes the strip ever had — published only weeks or months after the co-first appearances in Tip Top Comics #173 and United Comics #21 earlier in 1952. As a United Feature Syndicate anthology built around the most popular strips of the day, the issue also captures a specific editorial moment when Fritzi Ritz, Li'l Abner, and Curly Kayoe shared pages with a brand-new strip that would go on to become one of the defining cultural phenomena of the twentieth century. The Peanuts strips collected here represent the characters in their earliest, most raw visual form — rounder-headed, more innocently rendered — a snapshot of Schulz's style before it fully crystallized into the look familiar from the mid-1950s onward.
An anthology issue featuring multiple stories and features. The main story follows a counselor at a youth center who meets Curly Kayoe, a troubled boy with a delinquent brother named Jimmy, and works to help keep the boy out of trouble. The issue also includes an "Elizabeth Woodward Says" advice column on party planning with oddities and novelties, a "Stamp" feature about Cuban patriot Antonio Maceo, and various advertisements and classifieds related to stamp collecting.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 16 grades ▾
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Tip Topper Comics was launched by United Feature Syndicate in October/November 1949, growing directly out of the self-titled Fritzi Ritz comic book series, which the Tip Topper name replaced beginning with issue #7. The series ran for 28 issues through April/May 1954 and functioned as a color reprint vehicle for UFS newspaper strips, with Ernie Bushmiller — creator and artist of the Fritzi Ritz and Nancy strips — supplying the covers throughout this era. Issue #16's copyright registration (number B346746) is recorded in the 1952 Catalog of Copyright Entries, placing its publication firmly in 1952. United Feature Syndicate had been publishing comic-book adaptations of its strip properties since 1936, giving this anthology a well-established editorial infrastructure for packaging newspaper material in the comic-book format.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Tip Topper Comics #16 (United Feature Syndicate, 1952) is identified as the first issue in the Tip Topper series to reprint Charles Schulz's Peanuts newspaper strip, according to the Peanuts Fandom Wiki and the MyComicShop database entry for the issue.
- The Peanuts content consists of newspaper strip reprints — four-panel daily strips and/or Sunday pages — presented across two pages, not original comic-book stories.
- The issue's Peanuts appearance comes shortly after the co-first comic-book appearances of the strip in Tip Top Comics #173 and United Comics #21, both dated March/April 1952, making it one of the earliest comic-book printings of Schulz's characters.
- The Peanuts characters as they appear in this era are visually distinct from their later familiar forms: larger-headed, more simply drawn, and more overtly childlike in their linework.
- Alongside Peanuts, the issue features Ernie Bushmiller's Fritzi Ritz (with her boyfriend Phil Fumble), Al Capp's Li'l Abner (including a storyline where 'Surprising Smith wants to marry Daisy Mae'), and the boxing strip Curly Kayoe.
- Stories and art credits for issue #16 include Ernie Bushmiller, Charles Schulz, Al Capp, Sam Leff, and Henning Mikkelsen, with the cover by Ernie Bushmiller.
- Tip Topper Comics ran for 28 issues from October/November 1949 through April/May 1954, after which the Fritzi Ritz title was continued first by St. John Publications and later by Dell.
- Peanuts would continue appearing in Tip Topper Comics through issues #16–22 and #24–28, making the series one of the most sustained early comic-book homes for Schulz's strip during the first wave of United Feature Syndicate publications.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Comics on Parade #83 (1952), Fritzi Ritz #30 (1953)
Key issues in Tip Topper Comics
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.