Hi everyone
If you own any David Mc Kay comics and don’t have much time you can jump to (Part 5)
(Part 1)
I am currently researching an Artist called Sir Eduardo Paolozzi who is credited as being one of the founders of the British Pop Art Movement. One of most famous works is a collage entitled ‘Evadne in Green Dimension’ which is currently owned by the Tate Museum in London. Although the date of its creation is not exactly known it is believed to be around 1951. If you follow this link
https://postimg.cc/image/ie5fsz9cf/you will see a copy of it (Fig. 1)
(Part 2)
The main figure in the art work was taken from an advert for Charles Atlas bodybuilding correspondence course. There were a lot of different ads about 50 some shown in (Fig.2). Adverts were taken out in many forms of publishing media from pulp books, magazines and comics from the Early 1940’s. The thing that is common to all the adverts is a return coupon to subscribe to the course. Within this return form was a Dept number that was unique to the publisher of the advert. One presumes this acted as an early market research tool so Atlas could tell which publishers titles prompted the most amount of enquires.
(Part 3)
An example of the advert Paolozzi cut out from is shown in (Fig.3) in this case the one shown comes from a comic called “Gunsmoke” published by Youthful Magazine who were assigned the number 264 as highlighted in the (Fig. 3 Detail) Along side the 264 is the letter ‘A’ , this was used as a reference mainly for the month of publication (so A being the first letter of the alphabet this should refer to January) This is true in a lot cases but sometimes the month system seems to have been unsuccessful like in the example Figure 3 this was actually published in April. To confuse matters even more some Dept letters were outside the twelve letters of the alphabet like ‘W’ or ‘X’, these sometimes referred to the season of publication. Along side this system Atlas also used just pure numbers for example 26411, these can be broken down to 264 and 11 where 11 is the 11th month ie November. Unfortunately this seems to be all the information that can be gained from the Dept. Number. However I have flipped through a few thousand publications of the time and the earliest year that this particular advert was used was between 1948 and 1951. (There are earlier publications that did contain the same photograph of Charles but the word ‘Bunk’ is in a different font and the photograph is not as cropped (Fig. 4)
(Part 4) NEW INFORMATION
The Tate Museum were very helpful in supplying me with a close up photograph taken from the original art work which shows the Dept. number what they believe may be 307H. (Fig.1 Detail) I would be interested in other peoples view on this as the Dept number seems to have been cropped in printing ?
With measurements supplied by the Tate and comparison to various publication sizes I believe this was cut from a ‘Golden Age Comic’ possibly in August between 1948 and 1951. I have compiled a on going list of publishers (Shortened to contain sub publishers) and their Dept numbers I have found as shown at the bottom of this post none of which come close to the reference on the artwork. 370
(Part 5)
One of the publishers I’m really interested in is David McKay I was hoping some one out there in comic world might be able to help. So to recap i’m looking for the Dept No. on any Charles Atlas adverts in any of David McKay publications. If your collection is to large to look through any comics dated around August 1948 and 1949. You may think some children titles wouldn’t contain an advert for body building but It surprised me what type of publications contained an advert.
Thanks for reading
Here’s my on-going list of Publisher numbers minus date ref
Ace:255,360
American Comics Group:2,29,122,218
Archie:36,63,64,132,259,266,273,290,299,302,365
Argo Publishing:4,19
Avon:132
Better/Nedor/Standard/Pines:77,208,226,342,348
Centaur Publishing:169
Charlton:62,135,166,325,378
Chesler:118,345
Columbia:36,157,169,188,236,293,314,329,350
Comic Media:402
Consilidated Magazines:69
Cross Publications:208
Crown Publishers:75,134
Croydon-Nothing found so far
D.S. Publishing:160
DC:215,240,280,315,321,324,326,349,354
Dearfield Publishing Co-Nothing found so far
Dell-Nothing found so far
Eastern Color:72,73,203
EC Educational Comics:22,164
Fago Magazines-Nothing found so far
Farrell:224,324,341
Fawcett:82,149,165,290,293,294
Fiction House:236
Fox:224,304,305,306,338
Gilberton-Needs Work
Great Comics Publishing-Nothing found so far
Green/Universal/Norlen-Nothing found so far
Harvey:303
Hillman:225
Holyoke:107,249,319,338,363,368
Lafayette-Nothing found so far
Leader Enterprises:132
Lev Gleason:254,282
Magazine Enterprises:36,40,67,85,190,196,313,326,377
Magazine Village-Nothing found so far
Marvel:60,257
Master Comics:407
McCombs:134
Nation Wide-Nothing found so far
New Age Publishers-Nothing found so far
Novelty/Premium/Curtis:107
Orbit-Wanted:240
Parents' Magazine:323
PL Publising-Nothing found so far
Premier Magazines-Nothing found so far
Prize:243,332,340
Quality Comics:330
R.B Leffingwell-Nothing found so far
Rural Home:180,163
Spark Publications:162
St. John:388
Stanhall:189
Stanley Morse:54,95,194
Star Publications:107,200,202,296
Story Comics:292,294,295,407
Street and Smith:99,308
Toby:236,374
Trojan Magazines:189,265
U. S. Camera Pub:9
United Feature:356
Vital Jim Rays Aviation-Nothing found so far
W.M H. Wise & Co:115
Youthful:176,189,264
Ziff-Davis:376
