Comic Strip Formats - Full Page

Full page is a format roughly 20 inches high and 14 inches wide. The Reading Eagle Sunday comics section is full-page size, though today no individual strips are still printed to take up a full page. When Sunday strips first appeared in newspapers, near the beginning of the 20th Century, they were usually in the full-page size. Leading full-page Sundays included Thimble Theater, Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy and Bringing Up Father. Many full-page comic strips had a topper, a small strip that ran above or occasionally below the main strip, usually by the same artist. The topper on Thimble Theater was Sappo, the topper on Little Orphan Annie was Maw Green and ran at the bottom of the full page. Dick Tracy never had a topper while it was still a full page, but much later it had a topper, Sawdust, which ran at the bottom of the tabloid page.

During World War II, paper rationing led to fewer strips having a full page of their own in the Sunday comics, as did increased advertising in comics sections. Many strips were reduced in size to half of a page or one-third of a page. Collectors call these formats "halfs" and "thirds". Only a few strips, notably Prince Valiant, were still published in full-page format after WWII. In the mid-1950s, there were a few attempts to revive the full-page Sunday comic strip, notably Lance and Johnny Reb and Billy Yank. These were an artistic but not a commercial success and were reduced to half-page format after a short full-page run. The last full-page Sunday strip was Prince Valiant, which continued in full-page format in some newspapers until 1970. New Prince Valiant stories still appear in newspapers today, but in half-page or smaller formats.

Only a few books have been published reprinting full-page Sunday strips in their original size: The Golden Age of Tarzan, Prince Valiant: An American Epic and Little Nemo.