Toby (Comic)

Toby is an American comic book series created by Japanese-born expatriate cartoonist Oswald Tez, about a Japanese-American street orphan in New York who has a second chance at life when he joins the gym of struggling trainer Robert, the comic debuted in New Fun Comics Issue #3 (April, 1935) before eventually getting it's own comic magazine in 1936.

Notable for being the first mainstream comic book with a protagonist of Asian decent, Toby broke racial barriers and endured a mostly female readership, Oswald Tez himself has said in later years that he wanted to make a comic book that women could enjoy, and it worked.

Toby has since appeared in various DC comics, mainly as a cameo or supporting character, he eventually got rebooted in the critically acclaimed 2018 graphic novel Toby: Heart to Win, reshuffling it in the 1980s and with more emphasis on Toby and Hannah's relationship.

Paramount Pictures adapted the series into 5 live-action movies released between 1937 to 1944, all 5 films are now owned by Universal Pictures via [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMKA,_Ltd. EMKA, Ltd.] as per the ownership of the pre-December 1949 Paramount sound library.