February 27: first strip of Mickey Mouse the mail pilot, by Floyd Gottfredson and Ted Obsborne; debut of the mechanic Gloomy and of the captain Dobermann, two recurring Mickey’s supporting characters in the Thirties.
April
April 17: Orhan Halil Tolon publishes Zıpzıp Ali'nin Serüvenleri (The Adventures of Ali the Hopper).[2]
Printer Eastern Color Printing makes its first foray into comic book publishing with Gulf Comic Weekly #1. The comic is 10 ½" x 15", and is advertised on national radio. All four pages contained one-page, full color comic strips. The tabloids are grabbed up as fast as Gulf Oil service stations can offer them. Gulf Comic Weekly is soon changed to Gulf Funny Weekly, and distribution shoots up to 3 million copies a week. The series runs as a tabloid until 1939 and runs for 422 issues until May 23, 1941. Around the same time, Eastern also prints another four-page tabloid for Standard Oil, titled Standard Oil Comics.
Eastern Color Printing makes its second foray into comic book publishing with Funnies on Parade.
May
May 11: First issue of the Italian comics magazine Il Monello. It will run until 12 October 1990.
July 14: Premier of the Fleischer Studios' Betty Boop animated short Popeye the Sailor, which introduces Popeye as an animated character. It will lead to his own animated film series which will increase the popularity of Popeye's comics by E.C. Segar all across the world.[3]
July 16: The final episode of Tack Knight's Little Folks is published.[4]
August 9: Wiley Padan's newspaper cartoon panel It's True, with trivia about Hollywood films and actors, is first published and will run until his death in 1947.[8]
Francisco Darnis' Nick, Pecho de Hiero debuts.[11]
Births
January
January 13: Ron Goulart, American comics writer (wrote scripts for Marvel Comics, Star Hawks and TekWar), author and historian (The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips in the Thirties, Comic Book Culture: An Illustrated History, The Great Comic Book Artists, Focus on Jack Cole, Ron Goulart's Great History of Comic Books, The Encyclopedia of American Comics, The Comic Book Reader's Companion, Masked Marvels and Jungle Queens: Great Comic Book Covers of the '40s, The Funnies: 100 Years of American Comic Strips, Comic Book Encyclopedia: The Ultimate Guide to Characters, Graphic Novels, Writers and Artists in the Comic Book Universe, Alex Raymond: An Artistic Journey, Adventure, Intrigue and Romance), (d. 2022).[12]
July
July 3: Carmen Barbará, Spanish comics artist and illustrator (Mary Noticias),[13]
July 31: Nico Visscher, Dutch cartoonist and comics artist (De Wolken, Korrel), (d. 2021).[14]