Scans
High Resolution - More Added Weekly
All scans offered here are sourced from materials published in 1930 or earlier and are in the public domain in the United States, requiring no rights clearance for US-based projects. This makes them ideal for book illustration, product design including t-shirts, posters, and merchandise, editorial use, and personal projects.
The scans you receive are crystal clear, original size, and at least 400 dpi (see individual listings for details) — suitable for print publication. Images are color corrected but otherwise unrestored, giving you full control over adjustments to suit your project and system calibration.
By purchasing, you agree that it is your sole responsibility to verify copyright status and clearance requirements for your specific use case and jurisdiction. Erratic Press makes no warranties regarding copyright status outside the United States or for any post-1930 materials. Redistribution or resale of scan files is prohibited.
Bulk discounts available — we maintain a large archive of scarce printed materials. Inquiries welcome.
Glorious example of early fantasy art!
Digital download — available instantly upon purchase
A crystal clear, large and detailed scan of a gorgeous color cover of a fetching young lady framed by a full moon, riding the back of a dragonfly and encircled by butterflies. The example shown is purposefully low-res. Scanned from an original copy. Unrestored - with digital tools, this image can become quite spectacular and used for any manner of product or publication.
Artist: Dan Smith
Source:Judge Quarterly, April 1896
Dimensions: 4242 × 5643 pixels
Resolution: 400 dpi
Format: .tiff
File Size: 59.5 MB
Digital download - available instantly upon purchase
1912, rare, unreprinted, surreal street car ride as only Winsor McCay could envision!
Not one of his Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend comics, but very much in the same vein. This scan is from a scrapbook which has preserved the clarity of the strip, even as it was necessary to clip into two parts to fit on the page. In this case, the comic strip was printed on colored paper - a practice some papers briefly experimented with. The linework is bold and clear and it would be an easy matter with today’s tools to drop out the background and reassemble this appealing standout by a comic art master.
Artist: Winsor McCay
Source: Scrapbook page - original strip published October 8, 1912
Resolution: 300 dpi
Dimensions: 2830 × 3448
Format: .tiff
File Size: 28.8 MB
Brilliant and historical 1895 Statue of Liberty Cartoon, skewering advertising culture
Digital download — available instantly upon purchase
This cartoon is about the effort to raise funds to build the 89-foot high pedestal necessary to mount France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty, published a year-and-a-half before the Statue was dedicated. Extremely historical and insightful, reflecting that the fundraising effort was not an easy one, even though the statue soon became one of the country’s greatest iconic symbols.
Puck, a satirical humor magazine, devoted one of the four coveted chromolithograph pages in the issue to Frederick Opper’s (Happy Hooligan) satirical solution to raise money through advertising. The Puck office can be seen in the background, and Liberty holds a magnum of champagne labeled, “Katzenjammer” — a joke in itself, since this was German slang for “hangover” (and was later used as the title for the famous comic strip, The Katzenjammer Kids).
The cartoon brilliantly foreshadows a land drenched in — and reduced by — the forces of advertising. It is interesting to see the shades on Liberty’s eyes.
As with all scans on this site, the image shown is low-resolution. The scan you will receive is sharp and clear, and unrestored.
Artist: Frederick Opper
Source: Puck magazine, April 1, 1885
Resolution: 600 dpi
Dimensions: 5640 × 7957 pixels
Format: .tif
File Size: 128 MB
Screwball comic verse and mayhem around 1900s labor unions
“Pork chops and lard increase in price and cheese increases, too
If things keep on this way, poor men, what can you say or do?”
Digital download - available instantly upon purchase
A splendid example of the hilarious, somewhat subversive forgotten comic strip Jingling Johnson by W.R. Bradford. In this episode, Dr. Domehead, acting as Johnson’s agent, gains him a speaking engagement before a group of labor organizers. Johnson, who is insane, begins well enough — but soon he has turned his poetic ire at the audience and all heck breaks loose. There is a chapter on Bradford in Paul Tumey’s book, Screwball! The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny. Bradford’s poet character’s appearance is modeled on the cartoonist himself.
Artist: W.R. Bradford
Source: The Memphis News-Scimitar newspaper Sunday comic supplement, August 29, 1909
Resolution: 600 dpi
Dimensions: 9475 × 6850 pixels (15.8 × 11.4 inches)
Format: .tiff
File Size: 178 MB
The clearest, best-printed example of early Herriman art in existence
Digital download - available instantly upon purchase
In his lean early years trying to make it as a cartoonist in New York City, George Herriman worked at The New World, where he took over a two-year old color Sunday comic western series called Lariat Pete. Herriman drew the last couple of months of the strip before it ended mid-November, 1903. This was in-between his work on Two Jolly Jackies and Major Ozone’s Fresh Air Crusade. This western comic, perhaps a leftover from the World — or a tryout for a series that never happened — appeared in Judge in the October 3, 1903 issue. It’s very similar to the Lariat Pete strips, but the character is shorter and sports a handlebar mustache instead of stubble. This page was given the coveted back cover, always a color lithograph. Earlier, in 1901, Herriman had sold a few black and white cartoons to Judge, but this was by far the most elaborate comic he ever published in the magazine. The lithographic process resulted in far greater clarity and detail in printing than the newspaper presses provided at the time, making this very likely the sharpest example of Herriman’s early style available.
Artist: George Herriman
Source: Judge magazine - October 10, 1903
Resolution: 400 dpi
Dimensions: 3511 × 5182 pixels
Format: .tiff
File Size: 30.2 MB
Extremely rare example of perhaps the first superhero comic!
Digital download — Available instantly upon purchase
If you would like to see the entire page from here, simply right-click and open in a new window.
I am not big on declaring “firsts” of anything in popular culture history — there always seems to be an earlier example that crops up. While Hugo Hercules doesn’t exactly wear a colorful costume or fight crime, he does posses superhuman strength and so could qualify as comics’ first superhero — appearing more or less at the dawn of the American comic strip. In this beautifully printed episode, he lifts an elephant off the ground with ease! The treatment was always comic, lampooning stage heroics. Note in this case, the elephant talks!
The strip ran for just five months, from September 7, 1902 to January 11, 1903. This is episode six of nineteen from October 12, 1902.
W.H.D. Koerner, the strip’s creator, went on to become an important western artist. His staging and graphic treatments of western scenes became iconic and influenced generations of artists and especially filmmakers.
Artist: W.H.D. Koerner (Körner)
Source: Newspaper Sunday supplement, originally published October 12, 1902
Resolution: 600 DPI
Dimensions: 6228 × 4418 pixels (10.4 × 7.4 inches)
Format: .tiff
File Size: 131 MB