[1] The series started out as a reprint collection of newspaper comic strips that was published by Harry "A" Chesler between 1937 and 1939, for twenty issues entitled Feature Funnies.

It featured cannily mixed color reprints of popular newspaper comic strips like Joe Palooka, Mickey Finn and Dixie Dugan with a smattering of new features.

Publisher Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, deducing that Depression-era audiences wanted established quality and familiar comic strips for their hard-earned dimes, formed the suitably titled Comic Favorites, Inc. in collaboration with three newspaper syndicates: the McNaught Syndicate, the Frank J. Markey Syndicate and Iowa's Register and Tribune Syndicate (Comic Favorites later became an imprint of Arnold's Quality Comics, established in 1939).

Hiring cartoonist Rube Goldberg and Goldberg's assistant, Johnny Devlin,[2] Arnold in mid-1937 began publishing Feature Funnies from his office as at 389 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

[3] Other newspaper comic strip characters in Feature Funnies included the constantly bickering Bungle Family and girl reporter Jane Arden.