General Category > General Discussion
Pictures of old Comic stands
Yoc:
Thanks for the link John, fun stuff!
Drusilla lives!:
--- Quote from: Yoc on July 22, 2010, 01:18:11 PM ---... George B. Davis, President of Kable News Co. (EC's distributer) also quotes some numbers for his own company -
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/davis.html
--- End quote ---
Kable News Co. was EC's distributer? I wasn't aware of that.
Ya know, after reading his testimony (the Davis testimony, that is) and considering the things discussed here... specifically, the number of titles going out to the newsstands and the possible burden that all those comics could have had on the average news dealer (particularly considering such absurd things as "alpha-sorted" racks)... as well as what I've read over the years about Gaines' efforts to "ensure" that his comics reached the stands (encouraging the readers to ask the news dealer for them if they couldn't find them, his own written requests to the distributer and wholesalers, etc, etc...) I sorta get the feeling that something doesn't completely add up with him (Gaines, that is)... I mean, how could he be that myopic?
If we find it odd, and could see that there was a real problem with the comic industry as a whole back then... some sixty years after the fact... and that an inevitable collapse was coming, why couldn't he? He couldn't realize that maybe news dealers weren't just turning away his comics, but that they were turning away everyone else's as well, that it was becoming an impossible situation? How could he have been that out of the loop?
Btw, I should mention that there is an editorial that ran at one point in the various letters pages of the EC comics, speaking of "boom and bust" cycles in the industry (and then subsequently cajoling the reader to "buy EC") but it now somehow seems to come off rather oddly. I mean, it's almost like Gaines didn't see himself as part of the comics industry somehow... that they were somehow "above the fray" so to speak. Which they were (at least in my opinion), but I can't help think that that mindset on the part of Gaines was symptomatic of a deeper personal issue with him that ultimately led to the ghastly outcome of the 54 hearings.
I guess what I'm driving at is that it seems more and more (to me anyway) that Gaines was his own worst enemy... perhaps intentionally so, or perhaps only on some subconscious level.
Yoc:
Hi D,
Have you read 'Mad World of William M Gaines' by Frank Jacobs? I recommend it.
A very good read telling the odd world that Gaines created around himself. To say he was a character is an understatement.
:)
Drusilla lives!:
I've read various excerpts from it Yoc... bits and pieces of it were used in the notes to Russ Cochran's Weird Fantasy volumes (part of his EC Library collection). I would love to get a hold of a copy though... that, and a copy of that big Wood bio that came out just a few years back.
I searched Amazon a while back for it (that Gaines bio) and couldn't find it at all... is it still in publication?
Drusilla lives!:
I guess in some ways we should consider the comic book "boom" of the late 40s-early 50s as yet another classic example of greed and self delusion running amuck... much like the "tulip mania" and unfortunately our more recent experiences with real estate.
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