Guest blog by Sergeant Clayton Brown
What was going on in the world before the ‘Golden Age’ of Comics began?
In Ontario, in the 1920’s, amendments to the Constables Act made Counties responsible for their own policing. At that time there were over 180,000 vehicles registered in the Province of Ontario and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) used motorcycles to patrol the Highways. Between 1922 and 1939, the OPP underwent major reform and growth. The organization transitioned from centralized command to military style procedures and the organization issued standardized equipment and uniforms for the officers (as referenced on the OPP Museum website). In 1920, the Department of the Treasury created the first sizable Federal Police Agency. It was responsible for enforcing prohibition and grew to approximately 4,000 officers during the peak of the crusade on alcohol.
On November 13, 1923, Governor Walker appointed Sylvia Daly Connell as the first woman Deputy Sheriff in New York State and assigned her to Richmond County. In 1924, the New York Police Departments Women Bureau was created. In the United States, in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover became head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and laid the groundwork for a strategy that would make the FBI one of the most prestigious police organizations in the world. In the 1920’s, the nationwide ban on alcohol led to a huge black market and to the rise of criminal gangs that corrupted and intimidated political leaders and police. Further evidence of the decline in public confidence in the police was demonstrated in Hollywood’s portrayal of the police as the inept ‘Keystone Kops’.
Although comic material has been in existence since before the turn of the century, it was not until 1933 when Famous Funnies #1 from Dell Comics was published. The Funnies were more like a colour newspaper supplement than what we would consider a comic book. It was published without a cover, making it different from the comic books we would see at a book store today. However, prior to its printing, almost all comics were part of newspapers, magazines or supplements (The History of Comics Decade by Decade by Taylor Ramsey – Wed Article posted 05Feb2013). While it is true that Funnies were the first collection of its kind and became a guide for comics going forward, it bears minimal resemblance to what would come later.
Most comic characters from the 1920’s were created for newspaper strips rather than stand-alone books and very few, unfortunately, have survived to the present day. There were literally hundreds of characters and comic strips created in the first few decades of the 20th century, but only a few made the jump to comic books and fewer still are known to any degree today. A few of the survivors from that era are; Popeye, Tintin, Buck Rogers and Tarzan. Although some were made into comic books (Popeye, Tarzan), some made it to television (Buck Rogers 1979 – 1981) and some were made into movies, such as 2016’s ‘Tarzan’ – none of these characters draw readers or the public attention like they did in their prime.
A few of the characters from this bygone era have fallen into the public domain which means that those characters are now legally available for any modern comic company to use for new stories without any violation of copyright law. A few modern comic book companies (Chapterhouse publishing among others) have made use of this expiry on copyright and have begun breathing new life into these characters from the past.
Join us next month when the ongoing special about Policing in Comics continues with a look at the 1930’s.
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