Topi Vikstedt, book ad comic strip 1, 1925

In 1925 and 1926 popular Finnish cartoonist / illustrator Topi Vikstedt (1891-1930) drew a whole series of ads for Pieni Tietosanakirja, "the little encyclopedia", that featured this cartoon character called Tohtori Tietovalta. The name comes from the slogan for the book, "tieto on valtaa" - "knowledge is power". These ads ran in the magazine Suomen Kuvalehti (this one in the end of the year issue 51-52 / 1925) and several of them took the shape of a comic strip. It is interesting to note that these appeared in this magazine before it had a regular comic strip of its own - so in other words, in this particular publication sequential art was FIRST used for advertizing, before it ever got to be entertainment!