Comic Strip Formats - Third

Third is used by comic strip collectors and dealers to describe one of the formats in which Sunday strips appear in American newspapers. One page of a full-color comics section can be divided horizontally into two, three or four parts. Comic strip collectors call strips that occupy one-third of a full page "thirds". From the mid-1940s until at least the 1980s, "thirds" were the most common comic strip format, and "thirds" are still common today. "Thirds" usually drop several panels, and these incomplete strips are not sought after by collectors as much as half-page or full-page strips. Most people who casually read the Sunday comics are not aware that they are missing several panels of a strip if their newspaper runs it as a "third".

A few comic strips were designed to be run as "thirds", for example, Steve Canyon, the early Garfield and On Stage (except for the last few years of its run). These strips are complete in the third of a page format, and they are cropped and rearranged in the half-page, tab or full-page format. Other strips, such as The Amazing Spider-Man and the current Alley Oop are drawn in the third-of-a-page format and the half page is created by adding a title tier, which is either the same every week (in the case of Alley Oop), or comes in a small number of different varieties (in the case of Spider-Man and other strips based on Marvel Comics characters).