The first comic book, a collection of comic strips called Funnies on Parade, appeared in 1933, but it was not the first time comic strips had been collected. Books of collected strips had been published for decades, and one year earlier a form of collected comic strips first appeared and enjoyed immediate and substantial success: Whitman's Big Little Books.

Big Little Books were small, thick "novels" alternating a page of text with a captioned illustration. First sold in discount stores for ten cents apiece, the books were extremely popular with children of various ages, who could read them at whatever level they were comfortable. Most of the first Big Little Books adapted! stories and characters from comic strips; the first three titles, for instance, featured Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse, and Little Orphan Annie. Other sources came from movies and radio shows. From 1932 to 1938 Whitman...