130 Years of Funny

Every strip in the directory, placed on the timeline of comics history — from 1897's ink-stained pioneers to today's Webtoon hits.

1890s

The funny pages are born. Hearst and Pulitzer wage circulation wars with full-color Sunday supplements, and rambunctious kid strips invent the speech balloon as we know it.

1900s

The daily strip arrives. Winsor McCay turns newsprint into dream architecture while Bud Fisher proves a comic can run every single day — and sell papers doing it.

1910s

The first golden age. Surrealist poetry from George Herriman, marital warfare from George McManus, and strips that would still be running a century later get their start.

1920s

Comics conquer the world. Orphans, flappers and adventurers rule the dailies; Belgium answers with a boy reporter, Australia with a red-headed scamp.

1930s

The adventure boom. Detectives, spacemen, jungle phantoms and knights in shining Sunday color — plus a sandwich-loving everyman named Dagwood — define the decade.

1940s

War and wit. Soldier gags, swamp-possum satire and soap-opera serials carry the funny pages through the war years and into the suburbs.

1950s

The character age. A round-headed kid and his beagle change everything: smaller panels, bigger feelings. Half the strips born this decade are still running.

1960s

The funnies loosen up. Family panels and gentle gag strips boom while pioneering voices — including the first nationally syndicated Black cartoonist — quietly integrate the page.

1970s

Satire moves in. Doonesbury wins comics' first Pulitzer, an orange cat discovers lasagna, and the strip page learns to talk politics, careers and anxiety.

1980s

The last newsprint golden age. Calvin, Hobbes, Opus and a planet of two-legged cows make the funny pages appointment reading one final, glorious time.

1990s

The web logs on. While Dilbert conquers cubicles in print, the first webcomics post their first strips — no editor, no syndicate, no looking back.

2000s

The webcomic boom. Stick figures explain physics, dinosaurs philosophize in six fixed panels, and creators discover they can make a living one pageview at a time.

2010s

Comics go social. Instagram panels, Webtoon epics with a billion views and watercolor cat-news reports — the strip finds new shapes for new screens.