{"id":7011407,"date":"2026-08-03T07:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T07:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/hometown-heroes-library-of-american-comics\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T07:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T07:05:07","slug":"hometown-heroes-library-of-american-comics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7011407","title":{"rendered":"Hometown Heroes \u2013 Library of American Comics"},"content":{"rendered":"


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On the cusp of America\u2019s 250th birthday, its citizens increasingly turn their backs on printed products for both news or entertainment. Over the past decade Time<\/em> magazine reportedly averages three-to-four million readers per issue; readership of the New York Times <\/em>for the same period is estimated at around twelve million. On the fiction front, Rebecca Yaros\u2019s 2025 \u201cromantasy,\u201d Onyx Storm<\/em> (part of the Empyrean<\/em> series), was the fastest-selling adult novel of the past twenty years, according to BookScan\u2019s data. Onyx Storm <\/em>sold 2.7 million copies in its first week of availability.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d \u2014 and of course, the answer is, \u201cNothing.\u201d A lot of magazine publishers would love to have three million regular readers; plenty of authors would be over the moon to rack up a fraction of Onyx Storm<\/em>\u2018s sales. And yet \u2014 and yet \u2026<\/p>\n

When we think back to the heyday of newspaper comics, it was not unusual for the most popular strips of the day to claim audiences of thirty million or more \u2014 not just 30,000,000 one-timers, but readers who came back every day<\/em> to learn how Terry Lee fared in the Far East, or how Blondie and Dagwood were getting along, or what troubles Little Orphan Annie would encounter once she unexpectedly had to fend for herself in the wake of \u201cDaddy\u201d flying away to distant, exotic lands.<\/p>\n

In those days America was a nation of readers, and tens of millions of regular readers loved the comics. Several of the cartoonists who created them enjoyed a degree of celebrity that is today afforded primarily to singers, athletes, actors, and Internet personalities.<\/p>\n

The newspapers serving towns that also claimed a marquee-name comics impresario as a current or former resident regularly filled their column-inches with illustrations, photos, and articles about those \u201chometown talents made good.\u201d These papers would return to their cartoonist-subjects time and time again, keeping the audience up to date with the latest events in the artist\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Always a master of promotion (and self-promotion), Milton Caniff enjoyed the benefits of having two <\/em>Ohio newspapers claim him as their own. Caniff was born in Hillsboro, Ohio, where the Press Gazett<\/em>e was always ready to give him coverage. He spent most of his boyhood in Dayton, and he grew to have a reciprocal love affair with the city\u2019s Journal Herald<\/em>. At left in the montage below, Daytonians in 1939 were treated to this view of the mastermind behind Terry and the Pirates<\/em>. It was authored by Martha Schauer, Caniff\u2019s Stivers High School teacher and an early mentor as he developed his skills. The artwork accompanying the piece is from a then up-and-coming Stivers student, Lloyd Ostendorf. (Click images thruout for an isolated view.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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