As promised in a "New Uploads" thread, these are some random thoughts to go along with the issues of Catholic Comics I posted the other day.
First of all, I want to express my deepest gratitude to the incomparably generous JVJ for sharing not only these rare comics but also the results of his years of research (with Hames Ware), as contained in the index cards included with many of the posted scans. Much of the information below actually comes from JVJ, except for any mistakes of fact or inference, which are mine.
Catholic Comics (1946-1949) is a series known to comics historians, if at all, primarily for being one of the first venues for the work of the young Joe Orlando. Sometimes confused with the long-running Catholic comics series Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact, which was published in Dayton, Ohio by the Catechetical Guild, Catholic Comics was ostensibly put out by Catholic Comics, Inc., a group of businessmen and public figures from the south-central Connecticut area. (The confusion of Catholic Comics with Treasure Chest is especially easy to make because the primary content packager for Catholic Comics, the Lloyd Jacquet Studio, also supplied similar material by the same artists to Treasure Chest during 1947-1948, and because the college-sports feature which anchored every issue of Catholic Comics, “Bill Brown of Notre Dame,” is obviously a thinly disguised knockoff of Treasure Chest’s “Chuck White.”)
Whatever the nature of “Catholic Comics, Inc.” as an actual business concern, the internal evidence of the comics themselves—including overlapping content, a shared roster of artists, and the indicia addresses for the editorial office and place of publication—strongly suggests that most or all of the contents of the series were supplied by the comics shop of Lloyd Jacquet, (formerly known as Funnies, Inc, now doing business under the name of the Lloyd Jacquet Studio), and the series was de facto published and distributed by Charlton Publications.
Although Charlton has become famous in comics history for its in-house control of every aspect of publishing and distribution, its earliest comics titles in the mid-1940s were actually packaged by Jacquet and probably some other (at this point unknown) comics shops. In fact in the period from 1944-1950, Charlton actually published very few comic books—generally a single title a month, and hiatuses of several months with no comics published at all were not uncommon. The link between Catholic Comics and Charlton is particularly intriguing in considering the perennially cost-conscious company’s penny-pinching business practices in regard to second-class mailing licenses. Since (according to the National Postal Museum) a new 2nd-class license for a periodical cost $100 but a simple change of title cost $10, Charlton’s six earliest series used a total of two such licenses: as their issue numbering indicates, Zoo Funnies (1945 series) became Tim McCoy in 1948, which in turn became Pictorial Love Stories in 1949. 1944’s Yellowjacket became Jack in the Box in 1946 which then transformed in 1948 into Cowboy Western.
The only ongoing series which appears to break this pattern of re-purposed mailing licenses is the four-issue true-fact title Marvels of Science, which was the first comic to appear under the classic Charlton Publications, Inc. rubric. However, the last issue of Marvels of Science is cover-dated June 1946, and the first known issue of Catholic Comics is #5, dated October 1946. (The Overstreet Guide lists issues #1-4, but I have never seen any evidence that they exist.) Coupled with the fact that the early issues of Catholic Comics consistently included features obviously derived from existing Marvels of Science inventory and that later issues reprinted nearly a dozen features which had previously appeared in Marvels of Science, I believe it is likely that the numbering of Catholic Comics continues from Marvels of Science, further suggesting a very close link between Catholic Comics, Inc. and Charlton Publications, Inc.
These issues of Catholic Comics (like the contemporary Charlton and Jacquet-supplied Holyoke comics which they in many ways resemble) contain work by some very competent veteran artists and promising newcomers, including Tex Blaisdell, Harold DeLay, Ellis Chambers, Howard Larsen, and the 21-year-old Joe Orlando, along with some work by artists whose output could vary from being quite respectable to at-best mediocre, such as Ken Battefield and Fred Bell, and they also include a substantial amount of work by some of the shoddiest craftsmen ever to work in the commercial illustration industry, including Herman C. Browner, George and Allen Mandel, and the massively incompetent Lee Sherman, arguably the worst artist ever to be paid money (one assumes) for making comics and the person who is one of the main subjects of my ongoing research project.
There are two pieces of art-identification information to add to the body of knowledge about Golden Age comics. First, as you will see from the index cards in the scans, the identity of the primary artist on the “Father O’Malley” stories (which, along with “Bill Brown,” was one of the most consistently appearing features of the series) was elusive for many years; JVJ and Hames Ware came up with the working alias of “Fox Elkan,” since (if I understand correctly) the artist’s style somewhat resembled that of Max Elkan and they had first seen it in comics produced by Fox. (Somehow this tag has crept into some entries in the GCD, but be assured that “Fox Elkan” is not a real person.) Recently JVJ has determined that the “Father O’Malley” artist is probably Pierre Charpentier. I do not know Charpentier’s work myself, but I do know that when JVJ identifies an artist, it’s best to listen up.
Second, the later issues of Catholic Comics include a feature entitled “Betty and Bob.” Piecing together a signed cover (vol. 3 #9), and some stories with initials in some out-of-the-way places, I feel confident in saying that most of the “Betty & Bob” stories are the work of Eleanore Claire, so a few more bits and pieces can be added to story of the women of Golden Age comic books.
In conclusion, I have had an enormous amount of fun trying to puzzle out how some of the worst (yet still somehow charming) comics ever made came into existence, and it has all been made possible by JVJ, one of the most awesome people I have ever had the good fortune to know.
