1932:
The Adventures of Dick Tracy, published by Whitman, was the first
Big Little Book.

May 1934: Famous Funnies
#1 (dated July) went on sale. Begun by Eastern Color salesman Max C.
Gaines, it ran for 218 issues over the next 21 years, was the first
monthly comic book, and sold for 10¢.

1935: New Fun was the
first DC comic book.

March 1937: The first issue
of DC’s Detective Comics was published. Though Batman didn’t make
his debut in its pages until #27, this title is now the longest-running
comic-book series in the world.

June 1938: Action #1
had this as its cover date; the issue featured the first appearance of
Superman.

October-November 1939: This
was the cover date for Marvel Comics #1, one of the comic-book
issues bringing the highest prices as a collector’s item today. The
company became known as Timely through most of the Golden Age — not
adopting the "Marvel Comics" imprint until the 1960s.

May 8, 1940: Chicago
Daily News Literary Editor Sterling North denounced comic books as
"a poisonous mushroom growth of the last two years," adding that comics
were "guilty of a cultural slaughter of the innocents."

1942: Stan Lee became editor
at Timely, when Simon and Kirby left for DC.

Fall 1942: E.C. started —
with Picture Stories from the Bible.

March 1948: In a Town
Meeting of the Air radio broadcast, Saturday Review of Literature
drama critic John Mason Brown described comic books as "the marijuana of
the nursery; the bane of the bassinet; the horror of the house; the
curse of the kids; and a threat to the future."

October 1954: The Comics
Magazine Association of America started to censor comics before
publication.

September-October 1956:
Showcase with this cover date (issue #4) reintroduced The Flash, a
DC super-hero from the ’40s. The issue marked the start of The Silver
Age.

Spring 1961: The world of
widespread comics fandom emerged with the (almost simultaneous)
publication of two amateur magazines devoted to comics: Alter Ego
and Comic Art.

Fall 1961: Fantastic Four
#1 was published with a cover date of November; it was the start of the
so-called "Marvel Age of Comics."

July 27, 1964: Fan Bernie
Bubnis put together a Monday-afternoon event in New York City that is
usually acknowledged as the first comics convention, and by 1966, there
was a two-day July event that followed much of the same format as
today’s comics conventions.

November 1967: Zap Comix
#1 was printed, with a run of 5,000 for the 25¢, 24-page underground
comic book.

November 1970: The first
edition of what came to be known as The Official Overstreet Comic
Book Price Guide was published; the print run was about 1,800, and a
Mint copy of the eight-year-old Amazing Fantasy #15 was listed at
$16, more than 100 times its original price of 12¢.

Spring 1971: High-school
student Alan Light began publication of The Buyer’s Guide, a
comics collectors’ publication which evolved into the weekly
Comics Buyer’s Guide.

September 5, 1972: Comics &
Comix was founded in Berkeley, Calif. Store spokespeople estimated later
that there were fewer than 25 stores of the type in the country at the
time. By 1978, the line had expanded to six locations.

1974: Jack Katz’s The
First Kingdom began from Bud Plant: an independent, non-anthology,
non-"underground" title.

1975: Phil Seuling began
(non-returnable) direct distribution of Marvel and DC comics to comics
specialty shops, later incorporating with partner Jonni Levas as Sea
Gate Distributors, Inc.

December 1977: Cerebus
by Dave Sim began with this date — a comic book that became so immensely
popular that copies of the first issue were eventually forged. Sim’s
initial print-run was 2,000; it grew to 10 times that within a decade.

March 1978: Fantasy
Quarterly carried this date — and the first installment of Wendy and
Richard Pini’s ElfQuest, one of the success stories in
self-published comics.

September 30, 1978:
Independent publisher Eclipse published Sabre #1, its first
title.

November 1982: First
published its first comic book: Warp #1, dated March 1983.

December 1, 1982: Krause
Publications took over The Buyer’s Guide, which became Comics
Buyer’s Guide and introduced a newspaper format. The comics
publishing field had its own trade journal, one that served creators,
publishers, distributors, shops, and collectors.

December 1982: The first
issue of Camelot 3000 appeared. It was a 12-issue maxi-series,
the first DC produced exclusively for the direct-sales market.

April 6, 1984: Peter A.
Laird and Kevin B. Eastman placed an ad in CBG to sell
3,000 copies of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1. The
title’s success led to a black-and-white explosion of titles in the
comics field.

Late 1986: New World bought
Marvel.

February 1987: Four
publishers cut off comics-shop distributor Glenwood, and that
distributor ceased business by May.

April 1987: Tom DeFalco
follows Jim Shooter as Marvel editor in chief.

1988: Andrews Group, Inc.,
bought Marvel for $82.5 million.

August 1988: Bud Plant sold
his distribution company to national comics-shop distributor Diamond
Comic Distribution, Inc.

1989: In Illinois v.
Correa (familiarly known in the comics community as the "Friendly
Frank’s case"), a comics shop manager was charged with a crime for
having material for adults in his shop. Out of the case was born the
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to help fight legal problems for comics
creators and retailers. Cases continue to this day.

July 1990: Spider-Man
#1 by Todd McFarlane set what was the highest recorded paid circulation
for a comic book to that point. The first printing had sales of
2,350,000. When all editions were added, the total paid circulation was
approximately 2,650,000 copies.

Summer 1991: MacAndrews and
Forbes sold 40% of Marvel to the public, raising $74 million for debt
reduction and owner dividends.

June 1991: X-Force #1
by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld beat the record set by Spider-Man
#1. Thanks in part to a marketing gimmick in which collector’s cards
were bagged with the issue, the paid circulation came to approximately
3,900,000.

July 1991: X-Men #1
by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee, and Scott Williams beat the paid
circulation record set by X-Force #1. Marvel released the issue
in five editions with variant covers. Estimated paid circulation was
approximately 7,500,000.

February 1992: Several hot
creators left top series at Marvel to form their own imprint, Image.
Initially solicited and distributed by Malibu, the titles were
eventually completely taken over by the creators.

July 4, 1992: Marvel
announced it would acquire Fleer Corp. for $265 million.

Nov. 17, 1992: DC shipped
between 2.5 million and 3 million copies of Superman #75, featuring the
death of Superman. They vanished from stores, as the issue brought more
new customers into comics stores than ever before. In Detroit alone,
more than 175,000 copies sold in one day.

Mid-1993: The glut of new
comic books caused by a speculator bubble hit more than 700 per month.

Dec. 28, 1994: Marvel bought
Heroes World, the third-largest direct-market distributor.

March 3, 1995: Marvel
announced that, beginning with July-shipping product, Heroes World would
become the exclusive distributor of Marvel products, eventually leading
to the dissolution of the International Association for Direct
Distribution, Inc.

March 9, 1995: Marvel bought
SkyBox for about $150 million.

April 30, 1995: DC announced
its product would be distributed exclusively by Diamond Comic
Distribution, Inc. On July 24, Image and Dark Horse announced they would
be exclusive with Diamond. Many other companies followed suit, with
ensuing jockeying for exclusivity between national distributors Diamond
and Capital City Distribution, the second-largest national comics
distributor, in the months that followed. Capital exclusives eventually
included Kitchen Sink and TSR.

Sept. 22, 1995: Marvel and
DC announced their entire universes would cross over for the first time
in a joint publishing project.

Dec. 14, 1995: Marvel
announced it had hired two Image founders to reshape The Avengers,
Captain America, Fantastic Four, and Iron Man.

July 1996: Diamond bought
Capital City, making Diamond the last remaining major distributor for
comic books to direct-market comics shops.

September 1996: Rob Liefeld
left the Image group.

October 1996: Superman
married Lois Lane.

Dec. 27, 1996: Marvel filed
for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

June 2000: CrossGen began
publication with its monthly Scion, Sigil, Meridian, and
Mystic titles.

2000: Bill Jemas took over
Marvel Comics operations, and Joe Quesada was hired as Editor in Chief.

October 2000: Marvel
launched its "Ultimate" line with Ultimate
Spider-Man

May 4, 2002: Free Comic Book
Day marks the industry's first broad cooperative promotional venture