Sparkle Comics
- By : Nat
- Category : Classic finds, Reviews
I just completed my run of Peanuts appearance in the comic book series Sparkle Comics, which wasn’t that tricky to do – they were only in one issue. Peanuts started in issue 33 (Feb-Mar 1954), and the series never saw an issue 34. Sparkle was published by United Features Syndicate, the folks who owned and distributed Peanuts, and is filled with various United Features strips reprinted in color. There’s Nancy, Li’l Abner, Willie, The Captain and the Kids, Little Coronado (which I think are just strips from Gus Arriola’s “Gordo” focused on one of the supporting characters), and Strange As It Seems. Oh, and a text feature on constructing things; comics of that era had such text features not because they expected people to read them, but because it was necessary to meet post office regulations for cheap mail rates.
It’s 1954, so Peanuts is not yet considered anything special – they’re not among the three strips represented on the cover. They only get two pages inside, running four daily strips. Admittedly, that doesn’t put them at the bottom of the respect list; Willie gets one page, and Strange As It Seems gets 3/4s of a page.
United Features had several series exploiting largely the same body of strips – Sparkle Comics, Sparkler Comics, Tip Top Comics, and Tip Topper Comics. If that sounds confusing, it’s probably intentional, and the clue for the likely reason is in that “Feb-Mar” date. Back in 1936, United Feature launched Tip Top as a monthly series and added Sparkler a few years later. Then suddenly, after more than a decade, they cut Tip Top back to coming out every other month, and in months they didn’t put out that book, they put out Tip Topper. Same thing happened with Sparkler and Sparkle. Obviously, someone who was looking for Sparkler would recognize Sparkle as basically the same mag. So why would a publisher go to the extra effort and confusion of splitting the title?
Simple: because if you have two bimonthly books, you get more space on the newsstand. The retailer leaves each issue up for two months, creating more chance for each copy to sell rather than getting returned for a refund. (As long as the retailer is wiling to put up with you hogging the space.)
United Features had one other long running title, Comics on Parade, which appears to have undergone a bimonthly split, but the second title was United Comics; I guess they didn’t think they could get away with Comics on Parader. But this book never included Peanuts. These books started disappearing in 1954, with the last issue of any of them being Comics on Parade for February 1955. Later that year, St. John’s would revive some of the titles, merely reprinting material from earlier issues.
