0526: Little Ike #3 (1953)

"Little" is probably the most interesting word in our corpus. Forty-six of our comics have the word "Little" in them, beginning in 1948 with Little Audrey #4 and ending in 2013 with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #9. Without checking, it may be the single word that occurs most frequently in our titles. But the most interesting thing is the rate of occurrence. Almost all of our "Little" titles come in the first quarter of the corpus. In the 1940s and 1950s, the comics world was replete with them (Little Dot, Playful Little Audrey, Wendy, the Good Little Witch, Little Sad Sack, Little Archie, Hot Stuff, the Little Devil, and, of course, Marge's Little Lulu), but after Harvey ceased publishing this little comics craze was on its last legs. Few things speak as plainly about the audience expectations of the comics world as the transition of this one key term. In short: young readers were the absolute drivers of the comics industry for, well, that's part of what we're looking to determine. Forty years? Fifty?

Little Ike was not a successful player in this genre, this is his third of four issues. The comic itself is probably exactly what you'd imagine it to be - a series of short gag stories featuring a mostly child cast. 

Probably predictably, the next comic in the corpus is Little Iodine #21.