The Funny Wonder - It's Wonderfully Funny

It's not often I head back to comics pre-1950 on this blog, but today I'll be showing you some pages from The Funny Wonder, a comic which ran for two series from 1892 - 1901 and 1914 - 1942 (and it continued from then on under the name Wonder). I'll be showing you some pages from the second run.

The first issue I'll be showing comes from 1915, early in the run for the second series. As you can see, the cover star was Charlie Chaplin and I think this was his first appearance in the comic. Since the 75th Birthday issue of The Beano celebrities have taken over the comic. Many are unhappy about this change, stating "celebrities don't belong in comics". Whereas I agree there was a few too many, this example below should prove that they've always been appearing in them - I for one find this particular episode hilarious! This particular comic was part of Denis Gifford's 'Six Comics Of World War One' that was released in 1972. As always, click on the image to view in full size.

Moving inside and the majority of the contents is made up of text. One such story is All On His Own, which began in this issue and was spread over one and a half pages.

Move forwards to 1932 and Charlie is still the star of the cover, which is hardly surprising seeing how popular his films were and how popular they are now!

I won't be showing any more text stories but I will show some small humour strips from the center spread. Many comics had their center spreads filled with comic strips, and the front and back covers as well, with the rest of the comic filled with text. A classic layout that The Funny Wonder also followed.

Finally, we come forwards to 1939. As you can see, Charlie Chaplin had been replaced on the cover by a fat 'n thin duo who go by the names of Pitch and Toss.

Charlie still had his strip, but it was small and was hidden amongst others on the center spread.

Also to be found on the center pages was Little Elf - a strip remarkably similar to Little Plum.

I've reached the end of this blog post all-too-soon. I hope you've enjoyed these old comic strips, and hopefully I'll return to this era in the not too distant future.