Chicago’s role in the development of the early comic strip is the focus of a temporary exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center. Curated by artist and author Chris Ware, and Chicago Cultural Historian Emeritus, Tim Samuelson, “Chicago: When the Comics Came to Life” features the works of prominent Chicago artists and publishers from circa 1880 to 1960, with most artifacts coming from the curators’ personal collections. The vibrant and colorful story of the history of comics runs through the White City of the 1893 World Fair in Chicago.

The first appearance of color comics printed in the United States were on the covers of the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper during the World’s Columbian Exposition. One display case features four Inter Ocean Supplement covers. Two fanciful pieces are a collage of Midway performers by Charles W. Saalburg titled “A Midway Plaisance Patchwork Quilt” and a nine-panel comic about a reluctant Ferris Wheel rider. Two other covers feature full-page drawings, one of a scenic view “At the World’s Fair” depicting Brazil and Fisheries buildings and another of visitors “On the Veranda of the Wisconsin Building.”

The exhibit “Chicago: When the Comics Came to Life” features a display case about the first color comics in the United States, which debuted on the covers of the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper during the 1893 World’s Fair.

In his lively labels for these rudimentary three-color cartoons, curator Ware writes: “Something of a missing link between the Victorian/Edwardian era pantomime picture stories of Punch and Puck and actual, slightly later, Sunday newspaper pages, these are exceedingly rare examples of early Chicago ‘comics’.” A fifth Inter Ocean cover about the World’s Fair (“Fagged Out”) is included in a section about artist Art Young, and a cartoon by Chicago Tribune artist Gaar Williams depicting gondolas in the Grand Basic is on display elsewhere in the exhibit.

Art Young’s cover for the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper offers a whimsical depiction of exhausted visitors in the French section of the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 World’s Fair. [Photograph from the exhibit “Chicago: When the Comics Came to Life” at the Chicago Cultural Center, 2021.]

Chris Ware has fallen under the spell of the 1893 Dream City before. His award-winning graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon Books, 2000) includes a storyline taking place at the World’s Columbian Exposition.

“Chicago: When the Comics Came to Life” runs from June 19, 2021 through January 9, 2022 in the Sidney Yates Gallery, on the 4th Floor North in the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St,) and is free and open to the public.