The Sunday News Funny Papers

Distributors and dealers were free to arrange the sections of the Sunday News in any order they saw fit and most put the funny papers on top. For many readers, the unmistakable chiseled-profile of the indestructible Dick Tracy was the face of the Sunday News. Radio listeners could also hear the News comics read over WNEW on Sunday mornings. Some of the Sunday News readers, including those who sneered at the lowbrow news content and reviled its editorial positions, bought the paper for the comics. Patterson took an avid interest in the comic strips that appeared in the News and Chicago Tribune and were syndicated nationwide. Many of them were his own ideas.

Tracy and creator Chester Gould ’s assemblage of colorful characters like Mumbles, Gravel Gertie, Tess Trueheart, Flattop and B.O. Plenty, had been in the News since 1931 and were big favorites. Tracy could endure any injury without being stopped.

Another popular strip was the warmly humorous “Gasoline Alley, ” which occupied the back page of the section. When it was introduced in 1919, the strip was a more conventionally comic look at the new pastime of motoring. Then protagonist Walt Wallet found an abandoned baby on his doorstep and family life took over. Cartoonist Frank King' s innovation was to have the characters age in real time. In 1946 Skeezix, that abandoned baby boy, had just returned from the service and was readjusting to civilian life, like many of the strip's readers.

The paper’s very first comic strip, “The Gumps,” which had introduced continuous, serialized storylines to the genre back in 1919, was still running.

Another veteran of that first year, Carl Ed’s “Harold Teen,” remained a favorite, although not as influential as it had been in the twenties when, according to John Chapman in Tell It To Sweeney, it had introduced or popularized fads like bell bottom trousers, exaggerated plus fours, marked up tin lizzies, autographed sweat shirts and the gedunk sundae, made with two scoops of ice cream in a glass of chocolate and taken with a bib. Ed also coined the popular phrases and words of the time like “Yowsah", "pitch a li'l woo,"and "pantywaist."

One of the most popular strips was “Little Orphan Annie ” by Harold Lincoln Gray. Annie escaped from the orphanage in 1924, found Daddy Warbucks the following year and was still a curly-haired redhead twenty-two years later.

“Smitty,” by Walter Berndt, had been a perennial office boy since 1923, while "Winnie Winkle" was a working girl who had never worn the same dress twice since Martin Branner first drew her in 1921. Both of them had kid brothers. “Winnie Winkle” was the first Chicago Tribune-News syndicate cartoon strip that came from New York.

Frank Willard’s dimwitted roughneck “Moon Mullins ” joined the News in 1923. He lived in a boarding house filled with colorful characters, including a kid brother, Kayo, and Lord Plushbottom, an English gentleman of sorts.

“Sweeney & Son” was a strip about a father and his kid, drawn by Al Posen, an associate of the Marx brothers. Posen also drew “Jinglet,” a four-panel gag that ran at the bottom of “Sweeney & Son.”

“ Smokey Stover ” by Bill Holman was the comic adventures of a fireman, known as "the foo fighter" while “Spooky,” also by Holman, was an accompanying four panel about a cat.

“The Ripples ” by George Clark was about a family. Clark also did "The Neighbors,"about urban family life since 1939 in the daily and the whimsical “Aunt Peachy's Pet Shop” on Sunday.

"The Teenie Weenies " was in short story format illustrated by William Donahey and meant for small children. It told the adventures of a group of miniature kids and had first appeared in the News in 1921 then returned in 1941 after a seven year absence. In the interim “Tiny Tim ” by Stanley Link, began in 1933 , had a similar premise told in a more conventional comic strip format but by 1946 Tim was an almost normal size boy who could shrink himself to two inches when the occasion warranted. Link also drew the offensively racist "Ching Chow" panel in the Daily News which offered fortune cookie aphorisms from a stereotyped Chinese man with a pigtail in the daily paper. Because "Ching Chow" ran on the racing page, it was often said to contain hidden betting tips.

“Terry and the Pirates ” by Milton Caniff was the romantic adventures of Terry Lee, a young American in China; journalist Pat Ryan, ; Connie, their number one boy; and Big Stoop, a Mongolian mute. Seductive women like Dragon Lady, Burma and Raven Sherman were an important part of the mix. Terry and Pat fought in the Air Force during WW2 on the China-Burma-India front. Caniff left the strip in December 1946 to do "Steve Canyon" for Hearst but the adventures of Terry and the Pirates continued at the News with George Wunder at the helm.

“Smilin' Jack ” by Zack Mosley, featured the adventures of a daredevil aviator.

See Dan Markstein’s wonderful online encyclopedia of the comics, Toonopedia for more.

The funny papers was a popular place to advertise cereals, toothpaste and detergent.s