The Des Moines Register - Register and Tribune Syndicate

Register and Tribune Syndicate

In 1922, Gardner Cowles' son, John Cowles, launched the Register and Tribune Syndicate. At its peak, the syndicate offered other newspapers some 60 to 75 features, including editorial cartoonist Herblock and commentaries by David Horowitz, Stanley Karnow and others. The cartoons and comic strips included Spider-Man. Will Eisner's The Spirit was part of a 16-page Sunday supplement known colloquially as "The Spirit Section". This was a tabloid-sized newsprint comic book sold as part of eventually 20 Sunday newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies. The most successful comics feature was The Family Circus, eventually distributed to more than 1,000 newspapers. In 1986, the Register and Tribune Syndicate was sold to Hearst and the King Features Syndicate for $4.3 million.