Proto-comic books and the Platinum Age
The development of the modern American comic book happened in stages. Publishers had collected comic strips in hardcover book form as early as 1833, with The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, which appeared in New York in 1842, as the first example published in English.The G. W. Dillingham Company published the first known proto-comic-book magazine in the U.S., The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats, in 1897. It reprinted material – primarily the October 18, 1896 to January 10, 1897 sequence titled "McFadden's Row of Flats" – from cartoonist Richard F. Outcault's newspaper comic strip Hogan's Alley, starring a character called the Yellow Kid. The 196-page, square-bound, black-and-white publication, which also includes introductory text by E. W. Townsend, measured 5x7 inches and sold for 50 cents. The neologism "comic book" appears on the back cover.