Fabulous Find: 1980 Chapters Newspapers

Hey gang, time for a new Fabulous Find, this week, and I’ve brought to light five (5) tabloid newspapers which presented comic strip reprints.  The newspapers are entitled; “Chapters”, subtitled; “showcasing the finest in continuity comic strips”.  And yes the quotation marks are actually included in the title of the newspaper!

Issue number 0ne (1) is dated June 1980 and the newspaper was published monthly for six months.  Yep, I’ve got the first five issues, but I am missing the final issue, number six (6), which was cover dated November 1980.

Here is the cover to the first issue:

Chapters # 1 June 1980

It has twenty-four (24) pages and is published by Devil’s Trident Publications.  The publisher was Leo Giroux Jr. and it was edited by Richard Howell and Carol Kalish.

The newspaper reprinted the following comic strips:

Tarzan by Russ Manning

Wonder Woman by Charles Moulton & H. G. Peter

Buz Sawyer by Roy Crane

On Stage by Leonard Starr

Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell

The Thimble Theater, featuring Popeye by E. C. Segar

Terry & the Pirates by Milton Caniff

Gordo by Gustavo Arriola

Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray

and Johnny Hazard by Frank Robbins

All but Tarzan ran in the five (5) issues I own.  Tarzan just ran in the first four (4) issues.

The first four (4) issues all contained twenty-four (24) pages and sold for $1.25 each.  Issue number five (5) expanded to forty (40) pages and sold for $2.00.  The sixth issue, I understand, again increased it’s page count to fifty-six (56) pages and sold for $2.50.

Alley Oop by V. T. Hamlin was added beginning with the third (3rd) issue and in issue number five (5) Dickie Dare by Coulton Waugh was added, along with; Todd Steele’s World by Al Bradford and Spicy Third Reich Stories by publisher, Leo Giroux Jr.

I have never been a huge comic strip reader or collector, but these newspapers were a nice way to read long lost comic strips in one location!

Each cover highlighted one of the strips.  The first, as you can see from above features Caniff’s Terry & the Pirates, the second issue highlighted Starr’s On Stage, the third issue cover featured Hamlin’s Alley Oop, the fourth issue highlighted Gray’s Little Orphan Annie and the fifth issue featured O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise.

I suspect the reason I bought these newspapers were for the Modesty Blaise reprints, but I can not be sure thirty-seven (37) years later.  But I know I was big into reading the Modesty Blaise novels that O’Donnell also wrote, so I think that was what drew me to these.

Sorry, I don’t own the sixth issue, so I can’t give you a low down on that one.  If I ever find one, maybe I’ll do an update somewhere in the future.

Anyway, hope you found this Fabulous Find interesting and please come back next week for a new RETRO REVIEW. Be seeing  you …