I always enjoy Steve Bennett's column, Confessions of a Comic Book Guy.  His opinions are generally well supported, so that even when one might disagree with them they are at least food for thought.

 

But comic books starting with Famous Funnies?  That's not a matter of opinion; that's demonstrably not true.

 

First, it confuses Eastern Color Printing's Famous Funnies (1934) with their earlier Funnies on Parade (1933), and second, it buys into the long ago disproven meme that comic books started in 1933 in the first place.

 

Although lower in page count and cover price than the comic strip reprints that preceded it, what except format--and much lower circulation--separates comic strip reprint Funnies on Parade from other such comic strip reprint publications as Bringing Up Father?

 

Before the Great Depression, comic books had been a thriving business with multiple series selling in the millions of copies.  The challenges of the international financial calamity did indeed bring on a series of transformations, but they are akin to debating the differences between a car and a SUV.

 

Calling the comics business 80 years old is off by at least five decades, and there's a lot of excellent research about the art form's development that shows its roots to be much older than that.