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The Martin Luther King "Montgomery story" comic book

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JVJ (RIP):
I should have checked the earlier ownership statements, Eddie,
and answered that question for you. Yes, the OS that was notarized on 9/23/1953 for Great Lover Romances shows the owners of Toby Press as Elliott A. Caplin, Jerome B. Capp, and Alfred G. Capp (who is better known as Al Capp). I believe that he was not active in the day to day running of the corporation (cf. Mel Lazarus' hilarious concoction, The Boss is Crazy,Too), but, as you speculate with regard to Graphic Information Services, Al is probably helping to fund and to jump start the company with strong-selling titles early on.

It was Elliot Caplin's Toby Press. As usual with much of comics history, surface impressions often hide the facts. A year after that OS in GLR, Elliot is the sole owner in the 1954 owner's statements and the company is fading away -another victim of the general attacks on comic books and the comics code and the changing spending and viewing habits of the U.S. public. A year or so after THAT, Elliot is struggling to produce overly-padded (one enlarged panel per page!) packages like the Survival 16-pager - again with a push from his famous brother. I believe that Al is a doting (or harried, take your pick) brother trying to get his sibling's newest company off the ground. I would IMAGINE that by this point Al knew better than to invest in Elliot's ventures.

If I own a copy of the KSP Schmoo reprint, alas I don't know where to find it. Denis would be a great source. Try him at denis@deniskitchen.com.

Keep whittling away those assumptions and sooner or later you're bound to strike truth.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

EddieCampbell:
I haven't read the Mell Lazarus piece. But funny that you mention him. While checking the Toby indicias, i noticed his name as art director at the company. later as you know, but for the benefit of anyone who needs the benefit,  he produced the syndicated daily, Miss Peach (1957-2002). And thus does another guy survive in the comics biz.

from Wikipedia:
A native of Brooklyn, Lazarus began as a professional cartoonist when he was a teenager. During his twenties, he worked for Al Capp and his brother Elliott Caplin at the Capp family-owned Toby Press, which published Al Capp's Shmoo Comics, among other titles.

JVJ (RIP):
We had a review of "The boss is crazy, too" in Promethean Enterprises #2 back in 1970, Eddie.
It's a great read, especially for comic book fans. Mel draws (ha ha) heavily on his experience at Toby to flesh out this sarcastically funny novel of the lower end of the publishing biz in the 50s. Search out a copy.

And don't forget "Momma"!

Peace, Jim (|:{>

EddieCampbell:
this is rich: (wikipdia)

His novel The Boss Is Crazy, Too (Dial, 1954) was inspired in part by his experiences as an editor at Toby Press. mike weber described the storyline:
Mel Lazarus' great novel of the early days of the Silver Age, The Boss Is Crazy Too, features a production manager who literally knows nothing about his job; he's the publisher's wife's unemployable cousin, and giving him a job is part of the price of getting family money to keep the company afloat. The artists hate him, and the inker has a habit of lettering obscenities in areas that are going to be solid black, just to honk him off. He's positive that, one day, the black isn't going to cover it up. So one week, the bullpen crew grab one of the sample bundles of comics coming into the office, and, with a rubber stamp and dark grey ink, stamp an obscene word in the same place in a black doorway the hero has just emerged from, gun blazing. And then they tie the bundle back up and leave him to find it.

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