 During the late 1950s and early 1960s a number of American painters began to adapt the imagery and motifs of comic strips . Roy Lichtenstein made drawings of comic strip characters in 1958 . Andy Warhol produced his earliest paintings in the style in 1960 . Lichtenstein , unaware of Warhol 's work , produced Look Mickey and Popeye in 1961 . Although Warhol had produced silkscreens of comic strips and of other pop art subjects , he supposedly relegated himself to Campbell 's Soup Cans as a subject at the time to avoid competing with the more finished style of comics by Lichtenstein . He once said " I 've got to do something that really will have a lot of impact that will be different enough from Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist , that will be very personal , that won 't look like I 'm doing exactly what they 're doing . " 
