Comic book fans always want to know who, or what, is the best. The number one. The champion. Who'd win in a fight: Green Lantern or Raphael the Ninja Turtle? Who was the better penciller for Uncanny X-Men: Dave Cockrum or John Romita Jr.? What's the longest running comic series?
Well, that last one, like everything in this crazy world, is full of nuance. What counts as "longest running"? Is it simply which title held on the longest? Or which one got there first and is still going? Or is it the series that has the most number of issues? Or the most issues with the same character? Oh man — it could be all of them! It's a fascinating topic, so let's unpack it!
If we're going with pure longevity, the all-time endurance leader for comic books is actually an Italian comic, Il Giornalino. It launched in 1924 as a Catholic edutainment publication by someone — and I'm not making this up — on the road to sainthood. Father Giacomo Alberione founded the Catholic Society of Saint Paul in 1914 as an avenue to spread Catholicism in the 20th Century through mass media. Printing, baby! The venture was so successful that Alberione was beatified by the Pope in 2003, over 30 years after his passing. All he needs now is some miracles and he can be declared a saint!
Il Giornalino was just one of the publications that the Society of Saint Paul issued, but it's of interest to us because it ran comics, and continues to run comics to this day. And not just religious comics like Jack Chick or Treasure Chest. Il Giornalino ran original works like cowboy Larry Yuma, fun-loving teen Nicoletta, and humorous rabbit Pinky. A ton of Western comics showed up as well, with Italian reprintings of Popeye, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Smurfs, Looney Tunes, The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, and Winx Club.
So yeah, Il Giornalino is, by this measure at least, the longest running comic magazine. It publishes weekly, and has published weekly for 101 years, which is just melting my mind. BUT, as it's an anthology comic, it hasn't had a continuous story running for 101 years, or the same character going the distance for that whole time. Pick up Il Giornalino one week and you're reading Asterix, pick it up a little later and you've got Lucky Luke. No continuity!
The same can be said for the longest-running British publication, The Beano, currently celebrating its 87th year in print. Launched in July of 1938, Beano is a standard of British fiction and humor, giving us similarly named characters like Roger the Dodger, Minnie the Minx, and Dennis the Menace, who is not the same one you're thinking of, my American friend. (Fun fact, both the British and American versions of Dennis the Menace first appeared on the same day, March 12, 1951, across the Atlantic, with neither creator having any clue about the other.)
Like Il Giornalino, Beano is also a weekly anthology, packing tons of gags, action, and drama into its limited page count. (The action and adventure stories fell by the wayside by the '70s; now it's all humor.) And it's had characters who have stood the test of time! Dennis the Menace has been published consistently for 74 years! Insane! But 74 years doesn't crack even the top ten of longest-running characters …
Superhero-wise, the leader is Superman, launching in June of 1938 (a month before The Beano!) from DC Comics (then called National Allied Publications) and running consistently in Action Comics up until the present day. There have been some gaps in the publication where Superman wasn't the main character, like the 25-issue run that focused on Lex Luthor, Nightwing, and Flamebird, but as everyone is Superman-adjacent in some way, I think it counts as continuous. Action Comics, as a comic book, is still published today, with issue #1089 releasing in September of 2025.
BUT there's trickery afoot! DC Comics also publishes Detective Comics, the Batman-launching title which is hitting its 1100th issue the same month that Action Comics is only hitting 1089. Detective Comics began publication before Action, by over a year (March of 1937). The catch is that for 26 issues, there was no Batman. He didn't show up until May of 1939, making Superman a longer-running superhero character, but Batman's Detective Comics is the longer-running superhero book (that only introduced superheroes in 1939 and continued to run with them for 87 years). And while Detective was an anthology for much of its history, with Martian Manhunter and Elongated Man backup stories, it continued the ongoing Bat-family saga in every issue since 1939.
Both these books have janky publication schedules too, with both Action and Detective going weekly for stretches. Don't get me started.
BUT neither Superman nor Batman is the longest continually running comic character! That distinction goes to a newspaper comic that dates all the way back to February 1901! The St. Louis Post Dispatch has been featuring a little dapper bird known as the Weatherbird for the past 124 years! He initially accompanied the weather report but now he pops up to comment on news, sports, whatever is interesting. The St. Louis Field House Museum is running an exhibit on Weatherbird until February 2026 if you're nearby!
OR if you want to be technical about it, the newspaper strip The Katzenjammer Kids has been running consistently since 1897, BUT new strips stopped in 2006, making the run of original content only 109 years. It's currently still in syndication, running old strips, meaning that there's been Katzenjammer Kids running around comic pages for 128 years — and counting! But that's a comic strip and not a book.
"But Ethan," you say, "What about manga? Surely there are some long-lasting manga out there." And yep, there are, but none of them really beat the champs like Il Giornalino or Action Comics. Nakayoshi is the longest-running manga anthology, featuring hits like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Pretty Cure, but that's been running on a weekly schedule since only 1954. That's over 3500 issues! But compared to the over 5000 volumes of Il Giornalino, it's a spring chicken.
Individual titles are a little different because of the stories' length. Saito Takao's Golgo 13 is still publishing, and has been since 1968. 216 volumes so far! But unlike some others, Golgo 13's individual chapters are longer, only reprinting two to four chapters per book. Chapter-wise, it has about 650 installments, less collectively than Action or Detective, and far less than some other manga that feature shorter chapters (Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōenmae Hashutsujo ended with over 1900 individual chapters, while Cooking Papa has over 1700 and is still ongoing). And 1900 chapters overshadow Detective's 1100, but they're meant to be significantly shorter than a floppy DC comic issue.
Like everything else in the world, each of these stats has an asterisk next to it. One comic book has been publishing for 101 years, but without consistent characters. Another has 1089 issues with one hero, but hasn't been running as long. Another is a superhero book with more than 1089 issues, but not all of them with the same superhero. There's a manga with 1900 chapters but each can't stand on its own like a comic book can. And then there's this newspaper bird that's outlasted them all!
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