SPARKLE COMICS
SPARKLE COMICS is a rarity brought to my attention by Nat Gertler of the excellent PEANUTS website WWW.AAUGH.COM. Nat writes that “SPARKLE COMICS was published by United Features Syndicate and is filled with various United Features strips reprinted in color. There’s Nancy, Li’l Abner, Willie, The Captain and the Kids, Little Coronado (which I think are just strips from Gus Arriola’s “Gordo” focused on one of the supporting characters), and Strange As It Seems.
United Features had several series exploiting largely the same body of strips – Sparkle Comics, Sparkler Comics, Tip Top Comics, and Tip Topper Comics. If that sounds confusing, it’s probably intentional, and the clue for the likely reason is in that “Feb-Mar” date. Back in 1936, United Feature launched Tip Top as a monthly series and added Sparkler a few years later. Then suddenly, after more than a decade, they cut Tip Top back to coming out every other month, and in months they didn’t put out that book, they put out Tip Topper. Same thing happened with Sparkler and Sparkle. Obviously, someone who was looking for Sparkler would recognize Sparkle as basically the same mag. So why would a publisher go to the extra effort and confusion of splitting the title? Simple: because if you have two bimonthly books, you get more space on the newsstand. The retailer leaves each issue up for two months, creating more chance for each copy to sell rather than getting returned for a refund. (As long as the retailer is wiling to put up with you hogging the space.)”
TIP TOP COMICS, which Nat mentions above, has a separate listing on this website for the many comic books featuring GORDO in its title. Nat was also generous enough to share these images from SPARKLE:
Images from TIP TOP COMICS #140 courtesy of Brett Bydairk and Ger Appeldoorn http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/search/label/Gus%20Arriola
