Jim,
Trying to address your concerns. I do not take comic book sourced information seriously when it comes from marginal publishers. You people do, and it leads you down endless rabbit holes. Many of these publishing entities you are concerned about were simple bookkeeping fabrications designed to avoid tax implications, supply distributors with fodder, or move quantities of cheap paper.
The money sources were intentionally concealed. You will never know who put up what and for how long. The IRS had trouble penetrating these mazes even back then. Jack Adams once told me how a mysterious company, what was it? – Lafayette? – came to be. He was one of the investors. Donenfeld, Gaines, Liebowitz, and a couple regional wholesalers put up some money for a news-educational title idea floating around. I think there was a GUMPS newspaper strip title as well.
In the flood of new product 1946-7, the titles failed. A failed venture. Nothing in the printed material indicates the real back story.
SPARKLING STARS from what I recall was someone in publishing who decided to take a flyer on a comic title or two. They likely cut a deal with Bowles on a line of credit. Who knows who the guarantors were or if they assumed control at some point.
The position of distributor, paper supplier, printer, content provider we will never know on these small scale projects. And I don't see how it matters all that much. This obsession with separating companies and their product works with majors like DC, Fawcett, Dell, etc. But breaks down as you approach the fringes. A group of investors, which could be a couple lawyers, guys at the racetrack trying to launder profits, a hungry paper broker. They might put some money in and pull out when they lost.
For Post Office regulations and the IRS publisher information had to be supplied. But it didn’t necessarily reflect the true nature of the virtual operation. Many companies were just a packager delivering material to a printer and the distributor handling the profit dispersement.
My best guess is that in many cases a comic book started out with a distributor providing initial paper-printing credit, a group of wholesalers sharing the risk and the nominal publisher having a small stake which could grow if the thing flew.
It is 2010. Most of the long-term company histories have been tracked in laborious detail. Some titles will remain a mystery with only tantalizing published info as leads. That is were the trail will end in most cases.
More intriguing would be investigation of the distribution and wholesaler network, a sorely neglected area of research. In the 1940-54 period, Irwin Molasky, a large wholesaler in St Louis, who helped put DC on the map, occasionally bankrolled a title or two as a side venture. He made sure his name never appeared in a publication, except maybe as a DC silent partner on a couple occasions. He was behind many of these loosey goosey operations you guys seem fixated on. But I never see him mentioned anywhere.
I’m sorry if I sound supercilious but I’ve done a lot of primary research in to comics and ephemeral American publishing. I provided a lot of inside dope when I participated in GCD boards. Most of it ignored it seems.
I see the same comics researchers running around on the same loop they were 20 years ago without much kn owledge of the bigger picture. Expand your horizons and move beyond those indicias if you want deeper answers.
Mike
