I’ve just reviewed that story. In it, Clark describes the plot of the “first cartoon release” fairly accurately (“Superman sent a mad scientist to prison – but he first had to battle a heat ray…”) and the cartoon featured in the comic is a sequel, showing the same unnamed mad scientist character escaping, menacing Metropolis and being defeated again.
There are a few references to Paramount (who produces the cartoons) but none to the Fleischers. The Superman in the comic’s cartoon is far more verbal than he ever was in the actual cartoons (probably because it’s hard to express the dramatic theme music into the comic) and while comic-Clark repeatedly distracts comic-Lois from noticing the cartoon-Clark and cartoon-Superman are the same, he’s entirely unconcerned about the rest the audience. At the end, comic-Clark and cartoon-Superman share a wink.
During Peter David’s run on The Incredible Hulk, Rick Jones would trade knowing looks with the reader quite a bit. He never broke the forth wall outright that I know.
I remember a post on RACM (Get off my lawn!), where Peter David confirmed that Rick Jones and Miguel O’Hara (Spider-Man 2099) both knew they were comic book characters.
occasionally? After the first couple of appearances, this was his regular schtick – he was the one comic book character who knew he was in a comic book.
It’s a wild story, and it also made me think about how much comic-book self-reflexiveness explicitly derives from animated cartoons. References to Bugs Bunny cartoons are Legion in Ambush Bug, and Bugs (like a lot of Warner cartoon characters) is “aware” that he’s a cartoon character.
This is an interesting subject. Starting with early comics, the characters broke the 4th in terms of addressing the readers. Comic book characters were always talking and thinking in a manner intended to communicate with the audience. One revival of Plastic Man from back in the 60’s or 70’s took this very close to the level you speak of, with Plasty cracking wise about his ability viewed from the so called real* world we live in. Mad Magazine, and other comics parodies used the theme. In the late 70’s Howard the Duck crossed the line a view times, though I don’t recall a particular reference to the world as a comic. I think there must be a specific reference somewhere that pre-dates the modern examples listed so far.
*actually the comics world is the real one, we are just a television show being viewed there.
The sit-com Til Death, recently cancelled (what took them so long), played an in series 4th break with a character in the last season (don’t know how it got past the first). The character of the son-in-law had delusions that he was just a character on a TV show, noting the fact that his wife seemed to be a completely different person in different episodes. Roseanne also had some jokes relating to the change of actresses playing her daughter.
Among recent works, there’s also Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s Dr. 13: Architecture and Mortality. It’s sort of like Ambush Bug gene-spliced with Alan Moore and Don Simpson’s “Pictopia.”
While it may not be a comic per se, I always liked this clip from the CGI animated cartoon Reboot
Dot and Enzo are playing a game called “Malicious Corpses” (Evil Dead), the User’s character is a thinly veiled homage to Ash from the ED/AOD series (chainsaw on his right hand, carries a shotgun (pump action, not a Remington SxS though…) and only says “Groovy!”)
Really early. The Yellow Kid (even though he didn’t talk) was often clearly directly addressing the reader with the writing on his shirt, usually looking out from the page. Looking through my strip reprint books, addressing the reader is pretty common, even in the dramatic strips. I think a lot of this arises from the conventions set earlier in political cartooning, where the need for advocacy meant that addressing the reader directly was expected. It also seems pretty common in golden age comics (which is pretty normal, considering their roots in newspaper comics), and I swear to God that every damn issue of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen in the silver age has “Supes” winking at the reader and making a lame joke.
Will Eisner constantly broke the fourth wall in The Spirit; as mentioned before, narrator characters obviously break it all the time (I’d put Marvel’s Watchers in this category, who operate in the normal Marvel Universe, as well as the 1970’s era Warren mascots like Vampirella, who both narrated and had their own stories). DC’s Lobo in the 1990s was quite aware that he was in a comic, and was aware of comic marketing and such… he was being written by Keith Giffen, the man behind Ambush Bug, who obviously has fun playing with this idea. Matt Feazell breaks convention a lot in his mini-comics… and I think the ultimate expression of all of it is Scott McCloud’s self-caricature in Understanding Comics; he directly addresses the reader, plays with the conventions with comics, explains the conventions of comics, theorizes about the medium he’s in, etc.
Oh… maybe of interest to a few folks… The book Anything Can Happen in a Comic is a history of breaking the fourth wall and self-reflexiveness in newspaper comics; She-Hulk’s playing around with comic conventions and the physical medium itself is really similar to what George McManus was doing in the 1930s… the book talks about an incident where McManus had a character show up Rosie’s Beau, a topper strip to Bringing Up Father. The character was in the wrong strip (he was arriving for a date with the daughter in Bringing Up Father), so he climbed down from the topper to the regular strip, and continued having difficulty: " […] he trips and nearly falls out of another panel and finally wanders into what he thinks is the library–only to find himself completely lost and out of the comic strip entirely." The book is pretty neat.
Oops. Wanted to add to the previous post: the Yellow Kid was addressing the reader in the late 1800s, and political cartoons directly addressing the reader are from even earlier.
It’s almost a necessity in the art form. It’s rare to see a story that isn’t designed to directly engage the reader. The OP was looking for the full break, where the characters acknowledge their existence on ink and paper. I can’t think of a specific reference outside of the satirical pieces (I think Walt Kelly did it in Pogo, and IIRC Al Capp would do it with pictures of his own and others comic strips in Lil Abner).
In a related thread about animated shorts, Duck Amuck was widely noted, a ground breaker in wall breaking.
Wasn’t that when John Byrne was writing and drawing her? And she’d have a plan stymied, or get her top torn and yell “Byrrrne! What do you think you’re doing?”
The most famous Walt Kelly example, Pogo gives a tour of the strip. He has a stick for a pointer, and points to (and explains) the copyright symbol, talks about how nice the lines surrounding each panel are, and points to the Artist’s signature (which ISN’T “Walt Kelly” in this strip but is “O’Tempore O’Mores”, IIRC)
Walt Kelly also did many different gags with voice balloons, including a whole many-day sequence where trained fleas were spelling out the words in the voice balloon (saving the character’s from having to think up droll things to say)…
Good stuff in the article, with links to his friends Kelly and Caniff. Kelly had the brilliant satire, Capp the darkest, Caniff was out of place in that group. Kelly apparently did mountains of comic book work, though not all satirical. Somewhere in that body might be the reference the OP is looking for.