The 3D comic book began as a brief fad slightly after the start of the 3-D Movie fad, in 1953. The first 3D comic book was Three Dimension Comics and starred Mighty Mouse. After that, many different comics came out, but they only lasted one or a few issues; the comics were expensive (25 cents when others were 10 cents) and sold mostly as novelties, which got old quickly. By the end of the year, the fad was dead.
Note that 3D comics of this era didn't star superheroes (except for Superman and Batman) because the fad happened during The Interregnum, when The Golden Age of Comic Books had died down but The Silver Age of Comic Books hadn't started.
The next 3D comic book fad was in the late 1980s, a few years after the next 3D movie fad. Three-dimensional comic books were generally limited to independent publishers such as Eclipse Comics and Blackthorne — not Marvel, or DC. They were released as specials, not ongoing series. This fad lasted longer than the 1953 fad, but eventually 3D comics faded away again.
Examples:
- Captain 3-D was a comic book Super Hero created in 1953 by Simon and Kirby (the creators of Captain America). It was printed in anaglyphs and used the 3-D as a theme for the hero, he lived as a drawing in a book and sprang to life when someone looked at him trough red/blue glasses. It lasted one single issue.
- Superman: In 1953, editor Mort Weisinger put out a 3-D Superman book called Three-Dimension Adventures Superman
, drawn by Wayne Boring, Al Plastino and Curt Swan.
- Regular characters who had 3D comic books included Miracleman, Ms. Tree, and the The DNAgents, and the Transformers. (While Marvel Comics were running their The Transformers series; Hasbro apparently felt that 3D comics were separate enough that Marvel's rights weren't violated).
- Batman 3-D by John Byrne came out in 1990, without any 3D fad accompanying it. It also reprinted one of the four stories in the 1953 3D Batman comic.
- In some volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, scenes taking place within the Blazing World were presented in 3D, with red-green glasses included with the book.
- An issue of the Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare Comic-Book Adaptation was 3D.
- There was a small 3-D comic book included with the Infocom Interactive Fiction game Leather Goddesses of Phobos. It contained several clues to puzzles within the game.
- Much of Final Crisis: Superman Beyond.
- The Beano 3D Summer Annual 2011 was as the name suggests a 3D Beano annual with a number of 3D comic strips.
- The 3-D Man was a retcon 1950s Marvel Comics superhero who was created in the 1970s in Marvel Premiere. The 3D Man was a combination of a man and his missing brother, who transformed using a pair of glasses (by focusing on the image of Chuck on each len, his brother Hal could project him into reality) and had a red and green costume. He had three times the abilities of a normal man. In modern times, an Affirmative-Action Legacy character was originally known as Triathalon, before also taking the name of 3-D Man.
- MAD: In the Fifties this fad was (naturally) mocked in a segment by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood where the Fourth Wall was utterly demolished that the characters ended up falling out of the comic, leaving the last page of the story completely blank.
- "Max's Comic Adventure" from Dragon Tales involves Max having a 3D comic about a mouse superhero named Mondo Mouse. In Dragon Land, using the 3D glasses reveals symbols which leads the group to Mondo Mouse, who has become real through the magic of Dragon Land, and participating in an adventure to rescue him from being trapped like in the comic.
- When Private Eye first switched to full-colour printing, one of the letters suggesting the technology wasn't quite there yet was a mock complaint that the sender's subscription copy hadn't included the special glasses.
