An ongoing compendium of secondary sources for comic strip history I have found valuable.
Books
- Ahmed, Maaheen, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Comics, Cambridge University Press, 2023
- Ahrens, Jorn Ahrens and Arno Meteling, eds. Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence, Continuum, 2010 and Arno Meteling, eds. Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequence, Continuum, 2010
- Berger, Arthur Asa. The Comic-Stripped American; What Dick Tracy, Blondie, Daddy Warbucks, and Charlie Brown Tell Us About Ourselves. New York: Penguin, 1973
- Blackbeard, Bill, The Comic Strip Century: Celebrating 100 Years of an American Art Form, Kitchen Sink Press, 1995
- Blackbeard, Bill. R.F. Outcault’s The Yellow Kid: A Centennial Celebration of the Kid Who Started the Comics. Northampton, 1993.
- Blackbeard, Bill, The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics,Smithsonian, 1977
- Scott Bukatman, The Politics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit, University of California Press, 2012.
- Canemaker, John. Winsor McCay : His Life and Art. Revised, Expanded Edition, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005
- Jean Lee Cole, How the Other Half Laughs: The Comic Sensibility in American Culture, 1895-1920, University Press of Mississippi, 2020.
- Jared Gardner, Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First Century Storytelling, Stanford University Press, 2012.
- Ian Gordon, Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, 1890-1945, Smithsonian, 1998.
- Harvey, R.C.. The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History
- Harvey, Robert C., Children of the Yellow Kid: The Evolution of the American Comic Strip, University of Washington Press, 1998
- Harvey, R.C. Milton Caniff
- Marshall, Richard. America’s Great Comic Strip Artists. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989.
- Mullaney, Dean and Bruce Cantwell, King of the Comics: One Hundred Years of King Features Syndicate, IDW, 2015
- Katherine Roeder, Wide Awake in Slumberland: Fantasy, Mass Culture and Modernism in the Art of Winsor McCay, University Press of Mississippi, 2014.
- Robinson, Jerry, The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art, Penguin, 1974
- Walker, Brian, The Comics: Since 1945, Abrams, 2002
- Walker, Brian, The Comics: Before 1945, Abrams, 2004
- Wanzo, Rebecca, The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, New York University Press, 2020.
Online Articles
- R.C. Harvey. “Outcault, Goddard, The Comics and the Yellow Kid.” The Comics Journal, 2016. Web Site
- Heer, Jeet, “The Complex Origins of Little Orphan Annie,” August, 2020, Bunk.
- Heer, Jeet, “Pulp Propaganda,” Sept. 30, 2015, The New Republic.
- Westbrook, David. “From Hogan’s Alley to Coconino County: Four Narratives of the Early Comic Strip.” 1999: Web Site