Digital Comic Museum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Geo (RIP) on July 12, 2010, 09:58:56 PM
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Here's a picture I found on the net and I had to just share.
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5856/kidsncomix.jpg) (http://img19.imageshack.us/i/kidsncomix.jpg/)
Enjoy folks. And please add your shares if you find them.
Geo
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Let's see, I think I can identify some of these covers. :)
So far I've got...
Tip Top Comics #47 (March, 1940)
Superman #3 (Winter, 1939)
Blue Beetle #2 (May-June, 1940)
... I was looking for that first "Ella" cover, but it doesn't seem to match any of the covers in the GCD so far (that have series start dates around that period).
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Ha ha!!!
Looks like there are TWO copies of Super Comics #20 from January, 1940!
So, it seems rather true IMO... those old syndicated comic strip character's popularity did translate into comic book sales.
EDIT: Or perhaps now that I think about it... maybe not. If this is indeed an actual photo from the period (and these books were taken off the racks for the purpose of staging it), then perhaps there are duplicate copies of Super Comics #20 simply because there were more issues laying around unsold at the newsstand.
Guess I can't draw any conclusions on one piece of circumstantial evidence.
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Some more...
Adventure Comics #40 (July, 1939)
Adventure Comics #49 (April, 1940)
Science Comics #3 (April, 1940)
WonderWorld Comics #9 (January, 1940)
... and I think Marvel Comics #1 (Nov, 1939). It was the only title from Marvel that fit, but I'm not completely convinced. :)
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Thanks DL.
I actually posted a LOT of such photos back on GAC before the split.
You can see them all at this link -
http://tinyurl.com/36km8ta
-Yoc
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Thanks DL.
I actually posted a LOT of such photos back on GAC before the split.
You can see them all at this link -
http://tinyurl.com/36km8ta
-Yoc
Remember it well and fondly
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Thanks for the link Yoc, for whatever reason I hadn't ever stumbled across that thread on the other site... great stuff. :)
And I see you identified most of those covers in the photo already... I'm glad to have someone else confirm them independently, I wasn't really sure of some of them.
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Glad you saw the topic DL.
I spent a few hours on some of those photos trying to pic out what covers where what.
And I got a fair number of photos up too.
I've always meant to try and mirror the topic over here on DCM but never figured out how to do it.
-Yoc
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They say ever picture tells a story, well these certainly speak to the interchanged fortunes of the pulp and comic book formats...
(http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4091/193811omahanebraskaot6.jpg)(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/7500/1948comicracklr8.jpg)... where in the first there were only a handful of comic books, in the second there were dozens (by 1948).
And in this one...
(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/9374/195104oldnewsstand.jpg)... we see there are only a handful of pulps left by the 50s!
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Hi DL,
I believe all but the first pic were in that GAC topic.
You're right about the decline in pulps.
The fifties were a huge time of change in popular media. From everything I've been reading not only did the birth of free TV nearly kill comics and movies it brought baseball attendance to it's knees as well. There was also the boon in pocket novels that took a big bite out of pulps and comics and around that time there was a jump in the cost of newsprint.
Altogether, people suddenly had a lot more ways to choose how to spend their extra dimes so suddenly once profitable companies were going out of business.
And for comics we can't forget Wertham and the Seduction of the Innocent made being a comics publisher even more unattractive. Today we've got even more choices for our entertainment dollars. I'm sure Marvel and DC would KILL for the kind of sales numbers that got you cancelled back in the 70s and 80s.
-Yoc
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On the subject of the mid-50s and Wertham here's a short article from The New Yorker (March 31, 2008) which reviews the era while talking about David Hajdu's “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America”
http://tinyurl.com/2b6c7az
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DOES ANYBODY HAVE SOME MORE "Fawcett' FUNNY ANIMAL" COMICS TO UPLOAD?
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JC,
Everything that has been scanned is on the site already. Until someone scans something new you'll have to be patient.
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On the subject of the mid-50s and Wertham here's a short article from The New Yorker (March 31, 2008) which reviews the era while talking about David Hajdu's “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America”
http://tinyurl.com/2b6c7az
Yuck... more Wertham nonsense. >:(
Just kidding Yoc... thanks for the link. I'll check it out... eventually. :)
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Getting back to those pictures.
You know, that second one with the kid standing in front of all those racks of comics brings back many a memory. It reminded me of my own experiences back in the mid-70s at the local corner candy/smoke/convenience stores back in NY... in fact, just looking at that picture I kinda got dizzy. Which oddly was what happened to me on many an occasion when I confronted those types of displays back then... funny how I had completely forgot about that... now that I think about it, I never liked them much, for some reason they gave me a headache.
That's why I find it rather amusing that anyone would find "alpha-sorting" the titles in a rack like that helpful in some way... I actually think it makes matters worse. I would think that grouping the titles by publisher would be more effective, a least you could turn to one area in search of a particular comic, and if it's not there, it's not there... end of story.
You know, in the old EC comics there were a lot of comments by the editors (Gaines, Feldstein, et al.) in the letters pages in response to fans complaining that they couldn't find their titles on the stands... now that I think about it, if they were using such a setup, I could understand why. Not only is it confusing (and perhaps even dizzying), but it grouped similarly named titles together (for example, all the "Weird" titles would presumably be in the same rack column) IMO adding to the confusion. And remember, by the early 50s there were at least 200 titles being published monthly (at least that's what I remember hearing somewhere).
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Depending on the date of those EC letters, another likely explanation was EC was public enemy #1 to distributors and retailers by the end. Many bundles were never sent out or were returned unopened. Gaines' testimony financially shot himself in the foot. It was extremely lucky that he was convinced to turn Mad into a magazine thus avoiding the comics code entirely while remaining a successful publisher.
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Sorry to disagree with you here Yoc, but I think this was a problem for EC way before Wertham started targeting them. In fact, just recently... about two months ago... I started reading through the entire HofF run, and this stuff starts to pop up in the letters page as early as the 7th issue (the May-June 1951 issue). I suspect it had nothing really to do with news dealers or Wertham at this time... just the squeeze of a huge number of imitators flooding the market with similarly named titles. It's this last interesting tidbit that brings me back to the significance of those "alpha" racks.
As far as being public enemy #1... look at those pictures, particularly of the one with the child in front of those racks... keep in mind that there were over 200 titles being published EACH month. Now consider EC, they had perhaps ten titles, which were published bimonthly... that is, in any given month there were only five EC comics on the rack among 195 others... and yes, they were successful titles, but they weren't high profile ones like Superman or Batman. It truly astonishes me that they were considered such a threat to the public, when you probably couldn't even FIND them in all that mess. :)
Remember, the newsstand dealers were complaining about comics in general... and in particular, the number of comics they felt they HAD to handle or else... that was the whole "tie-in" issue that lengthened the 54 hearings. It's my opinion that what these news dealers and distributers disliked was having to handle 200+ titles a month... and looking at those photos could you blame them? They were angry, and they conflated the issue for there own reasons IMO... and yes, there were too many horror titles, but to them (IMO) there were too many titles period, regardless of genre or publisher. And from the hearing transcripts, I don't recall anyone asking them which publisher was the most troublesome... it was the industry as a whole that they (the news dealers) had a problem with.
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Does anybody have dreams related to old comics stores? Sometimes I dream of a second-hand place in my old hometown that sold comics for a nickel. Other times, I dream of finding great comics stores in Dallas with old friends, and upon waking, I'm left wondering if those places existed or not.
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Yeah, now that I think about it... yes.
As a kid I use to have a fear of being accused of loitering around the comic racks simply to ogle the adult mags... I should add that in several candy/smoke shops they were usually placed in the racks, or facing upward on a bottom shelf just under the racks, near the comics. The ones in the racks would be separated from the comic books by a "buffer zone" of magazines like National Lampoon, Heavy Metal and of course, the Warren mags. But they were always (uncomfortably) close IMO and I was always aware and wary of them, the adults that came by to look at them, and of how long I spent looking for a particular book... comic book, that is.
I think as a result of these early experiences, for awhile (in my teens) I think I recall having a recurring dream of being tossed out of a candy store in front of everybody (strangers) for looking at the adult magazines while all I really was looking for was a comic book.
Btw, this never really happened in real life.
And now that I think about it, it's also why I never bought a Vampirella either. :P
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Btw, I just came across this interesting site on POP, SOTI and lots more!
LostSOTI.org (http://www.LostSOTI.org/)
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You make some good points there DL.
And thanks for the fun SOTI link! :D
You might also add that not all distributors were equally good at their jobs. And I'm sure some places in the US must have gotten better service than others.
I hear Atlas/Marvel were common in one area, none in another. And Charlton would be everywhere in some... etc etc.
I've read several fun reminisces from collectors on the Timely-Atlas Yahoo group of having to bicycle around town hitting different stores trying to find certain titles. Or having to travel to a different state to find a certain publisher while visiting grandma.
I believe the poor profit margin on a 10cent comic was the biggest reason newstands didn't like comics. They made a lot more cash on magazines and pocket books than they ever did on a comic.
'Follow the money' will often show you the main reasons for business decisions of all eras.
-Yoc
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.. You might also add that not all distributors were equally good at their jobs. And I'm sure some places in the US must have gotten better service than others.
I hear Atlas/Marvel were common in one area, none in another. And Charlton would be everywhere in some... etc etc.
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I believe the poor profit margin on a 10cent comic was the biggest reason newstands didn't like comics. They made a lot more cash on magazines and pocket books than they ever did on a comic.
'Follow the money' will often show you the main reasons for business decisions of all eras.
-Yoc
Yes, I agree. And your point on "following the money" supports my feeling that the news dealers didn't want to deal with comic books... especially in the big cities where distribution was probably good and they had 200+ comics to contend with.
This oddly enough reflects back on my own childhood experience of fearing being accused of loitering around to peek at the adult mags... every newsstand/candy store that I've ever went into back then wanted a quick sale... they didn't want people (and particularly children) standing around (obviously, to prevent theft and other mischief). They wanted you "in and out" as quickly as possible... and I doubt it was much different back in the 40s and 50s. I can't see how racks and racks of comics, and lots of kids asking "where is the latest issue of Tales From the Crypt... I don't see it out here" as formulating a particularly endearing association in their minds eye.
Perhaps that's one reason why dedicated comic shops (and the direct market) arose in the late 70s, early 80s. I know, at least by my own experience, that I was already going to a newly opened comic shop a few blocks from my home by 78... and I was glad to... by then the newsstands were flooded with adult mags (the situation much like that of pulps and comics repeating itself), many candy stores were closing up shop in NY due to economic reasons (and perhaps consolidation), and besides, the comic shop had back issues and everything else comic related. Although I should add that the selection of new comics (and back issues) was somewhat limited to Marvel. I guess now that I think about it, this was a reflection of the owners own personal preference, although at the time I never noticed, since I was mostly interested in Marvel and Marvel back issues anyway.
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I remember having to go to different places/stores to find a particular book more then once during the mid to late '50's and mid '60's. Sometimes not even finding it then, after doing that. And we are talking about any of the major players books at the time, (DC, Atlas, Timely, (now Marvel), Charlton books). You could find an issue you were looking for one month and then the next not at all. Distribution wasn't the best it seems, spotty at best, it seems during that time. At least it was that way in the area I was raised in.
Geo
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The other thing you have to realize, guys, is that by 1955, a dime was worth about a nickel in 1935 money, so the profits from carrying comic books had effectively been halved (both at the distributor AND newsstand levels), while they continued to take up more and more space. Perhaps the post-code "implosion" is what saved comics after all. The distributors and newsstands certainly would have reacted poorly had they continued their unchecked expansion.
FWIW.
Peace, Jim (|:{>
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Jim, you wouldn't know off-hand how many titles were being published at the height of the 1950-1955 (pre-implosion) period? I keep thinking it was around 200+ but I don't recall where I heard that... and in fact, I think it might be a rather conservative estimate... even when discounting titles that lasted only two or three issues.
Unfortunately it's almost useless trying to use the GCD for a quick search and compilation of such info, even with their recent improvements. :(
Again, from this photo...
(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/7500/1948comicracklr8.jpg)... it looks like at least 160 titles (but this was in 1948).
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Distribution wasn't the best it seems, spotty at best, it seems during that time. At least it was that way in the area I was raised in.
It occasionally seems to have taken nosedives, too. I can remember books--even semi-major titles, like Green Lantern and the like--failing to make it to the shelves as late as the mid-80s.
I also had a peculiar run-in with clerks, by the way. In my case, a magazine shop that was selling used comics, over the course of a month, somehow metamorphosized into an adult bookshop. In itself, that might have been mildly awkward, but they hadn't changed the signs, so I wandered the store for a good ten minutes (I couldn't have been more than fifteen at the time) before asking for help and getting panicked shouting answers from clerks who apparently didn't notice me walk in. They also denied having ever sold comics...
Interestingly, that shop is still open (and selling adult videos) after...hmm...more years than I care to think about. No, I don't shop there. I pass it daily on my commute.
Oh, right. Counting titles. If it seems like I'm teaching a lecture, it's not condescension, but rather me not ever wanting to do this again...
You'll need a few ingredients. The GCD is a big one. You'll also need Firefox with the Table2Clipboard add-on (a favorite toy of mine). Lastly, Microsoft Excel will be very, very handy. (Or, if you're just happy with a single number of titles printed in 1952, jump to the end and save yourself some fairly dry reading.)
I hit the GCD's advanced search, and asked for Issues (rather than Stories, the default), Starting with 1/1/1952 and Ending 12/31/1952, published in the United States and in English.
If anybody with influence over the searching mechanism happens to be reading, I'd really prefer the issues to be the default, a more obvious way to use the date (even a single example to show that "1952" only turns up a dozen or so books), and maybe a checkmark to say, "yes, I want everything at once instead of chopping into result pages." But those are minor nitpicks in the grand scheme.
Anyway, click "Search" and start harvesting. On each page, right-click the table. If you installed Table2Clipboard, you'll see it in the context menu that pops up, and from there, you can "Copy Whole Table." Do so, then paste it into Excel, then (with Ctrl-End and some minor arrowing) get ready for the next page. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Now I have an awkward spreadsheet with every book published in 1952 in Excel. First thing, select all the data (Ctrl-A) and if you're an old fogey like me that still uses menus (i.e., I can't help you if you're using Office 2007 or something, with the "ribbon" up top), Edit, Clear, Formats, gets you something more readable.
Then for some minor magic tricks. Thankfully, I don't care about the Date column, because it's about to get trashed. Select the Issue column (C in mine), and click Tools, Text to Columns. Delimited text, split on "Other," an open parenthesis. Since the GCD names the books as "Title (year series) #nn," this gives us a clean series title. Try to ignore the little flags on the left. I have no idea how to select them en masse to delete them, but they're harmless...
Now, sort (Data, Sort) on the column that has the titles. And then run down the list and delete all those headers you copied in--they'll sort together, to make it easy to nuke the rows at once.
We're almost there, I promise, and here's the neat part. Select your data again, plus one more column to the right. Now hit the menus for Data, Subtotals, which I want to know why nobody told me about it! At each change in your (sorted) title name column, tell it to Count (not that it really makes a difference) and put the subtotal into (at least) the empty column. Excel will then busily insert bolded rows with your title and...well, the number of things in the empty column for that title, so zero.
But that's OK, because we don't care how many issues of Frogman Comics we have for the year (if you did, put the subtotal in an otherwise-used column), but rather how many titles. Which means we need to count those zeroes. So...go down to the lower-right of your data (Ctrl-End), and type something LIKE the following:
=COUNT(F2:F2153)
(The equals sign tells Excel to get to work. Count is self-explanatory. F is the column where I put the subtotals. I start at row #2, because the headers are in the first row, and end at row #2153, because that's the row where the final subtotal (for Young Romance) is sitting.
If all went well, it should only take a few minutes (it took me more time to explain this than do it), and you'll get an answer.
For 1952, I got a fairly large-sounding 418 titles. On the other hand, I know that, today, companies track the top-300 in sales, so that means the market must be far more crowded.
(Trickier would be to have the spreadsheet screen out books that only got an issue or two out, but I'm waaay too lazy to deal with that. One approach would be to take a recent GCD dump, load it into a database system, and write some SQL, which would get that answer in one step. But I also realize that's not exactly appealing to the average home user.)
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I also had a peculiar run-in with clerks, by the way. In my case, a magazine shop that was selling used comics, over the course of a month, somehow metamorphosized into an adult bookshop. In itself, that might have been mildly awkward, but they hadn't changed the signs, so I wandered the store for a good ten minutes (I couldn't have been more than fifteen at the time) before asking for help and getting panicked shouting answers from clerks who apparently didn't notice me walk in. They also denied having ever sold comics...
The horror, the HORROR! :)
... If all went well, it should only take a few minutes (it took me more time to explain this than do it), and you'll get an answer.
For 1952, I got a fairly large-sounding 418 titles. On the other hand, I know that, today, companies track the top-300 in sales, so that means the market must be far more crowded. ...
Or I could have just read that New Yorker piece recommended by Yoc (which I just got around to doing)...
...more than twenty publishers were putting out close to six hundred and fifty titles a month. Eighty to a hundred million comic books were sold every week; according to contemporary reports, the average issue was passed along to six or more readers. ...
... but seriously, I know how difficult it is working with that GCD search and you did a great job of it, thanks John. :)
Btw, that quoted 650 number is reported in David Hajdu's "The Ten-Cent Plague."
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...more than twenty publishers were putting out close to six hundred and fifty titles a month. Eighty to a hundred million comic books were sold every week; according to contemporary reports, the average issue was passed along to six or more readers. ...
Wait a second... that's 80 to 100 MILLION comics sold each WEEK?!? That's 320 to 400 MILLION comics sold a MONTH!
But according to the census records for 1950, the population of the United States was approximately 151 million? Either that's a lot of comics going over to Europe or that number is rather funky IMO... and what's with the "the average issue was passed along to six or more readers" stuff, I know that was the spiel you would find on the cover to Crime Does Not Pay, but I thought that was discounted long ago by comic scholars as a sales gimmick on Gleason's part.
EDIT: Dug out my old copy of Nicky Wright's "The Classic Era of American Comics" and according to him Gleason's CDNP, BOY and Daredevil had combined sales of almost a million copies in 1943, with CDNP accounting for the biggest percentage of that... by 1947 he states that circulation of Gleason's titles had topped two million copies a month, again with CDNP (by then one of the best selling titles of the era) accounting for a large portion of that total. I recall him mentioning similar numbers somewhere in that book for Superman in the early-to-mid 40s... that is, a little over a million copies sold each month being typical for Superman (at the height of his popularity).
Just for the record... he also states that by 1940 there were 168 various comic book titles (from 24 publishers) with combined monthly sales between 12 and 15 million copies.
So it appears that for a comic to be considered "a huge success" back then it would have to break at least a million copies a month (or per issue), on a consistent basis.
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My experiences were obviously not in N. America but in Scotland, a country of only 5 million people. And from distribution of American comics starting in 1959, there seemed to be comics everywhere. Any wee corner shop and newsagent had bundles on the counter and later spinners appeared. (There were also bundles of Australian comics, which also came in as ballast) Many newsagents also sold American mens mags (Blue Book? etc.) on the same spinners and it was very embarrasing going in with your mother and/or sister for a comic and having that other stuff adjacent. In the cities (in my experience, Glasgow and Edinburgh) there were a number of 2nd hand bookshops which sold comics and adult mags and books and some of those shops were quite seedy - but cheap. As to readership, when I worked on newspapers, the readership to sales ratio was considered to be about 3 or 4 to 1.
Love these pics of newsstands and wish I could contribute some local ones but I can find nothing. I'll kep looking.
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what's with the "the average issue was passed along to six or more readers" stuff, I know that was the spiel you would find on the cover to Crime Does Not Pay, but I thought that was discounted long ago by comic scholars as a sales gimmick on Gleason's part.
It had better be. If it's not, then...well, four million books per month, read by "an average" of six people sharing, means that, globally, nearly two and a half billion comics were read during each month. By pure coincidence (I hope...), that happens to also be the global population (estimated) in 1950 to a fairly good tolerance.
If we assume that each reader read every title, just to drive the numbers down, that means that one in every six hundred humans would have read comics. And somehow, I don't think we can assume that's the case. More likely, we're talking about typical consumers reading only a dozen or so books, meaning that one in every ten to twenty people would have to read.
That's globally, mind you. If we further assume that the Iron Curtain didn't have strong sales in Commie-bashing heroes and mutilation of half-naked women, the rest of us would have needed to pick up the slack. Oh, right. And the unindustrialized and less literate parts of the world at the time, like the majority of the South Pacific, Africa, and South America. They probably didn't read many comics, either.
So there's still something seriously off with the numbers. Let's face it, if there were half a billion sales per month (rounding up the hundred million per week), that's HUGE business and a lot of infrastructure for a penny or two revenue (not profit) per sale. I feel that, if that were the case, the Victor Foxes would have tried to add value and raise prices to get a bigger piece of the few millions of dollars per month we're talking about.
It almost calls the author's other numbers into question, seeing as how his title count is half bigger than my count from the GCD. I realize the GCD isn't authoritative, but for them to be missing a third of the books published during a year seems improbable.
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Well here's some more comments (and numbers) from that Nicky Wright book...
... Sales of the 143 titles on the newsstands in 1942 were rising at an unprecedented rate with 15 million comics being sold every month. With sales to a captive market overseas (hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen), circulation rates kept going up, up and up.
Fiction House good girl comics were just the thing our boys needed over there. The company's "Big Six of the Comics," as Fiction House promoted itself, had combined sales totaling 737,000 a month by September 1942. Just like movie star actresses such as Betty Grable, Sheena was lording it in the barrack rooms across Britian and the Far East. Senorita Rio traveled in many a soldier's kit...
Compared to Superman's 1,100,000 bi-monthly sale, Fiction House's 737,000 for six titles is quite small. This figure was to nearly double in the next couple of years, thanks partly to the vastly increased number of U.S. forces stationed around the globe. At the time these figures were issued, Parents Magazine's "True Comics," "Real Hero Comics" and "Calling All Girls" were chalking up 750,000 a month, Quality's nine titles, including "Police Comics," sold 1,100,000 monthly, Marvel's ten comics sold 1,250,000 while Street & Smith who published "The Shadow," "Doc Savage" and "Supersnipe," and five other comic books, chalked up monthly sales of 1,285,000. Nevertheless, Harry Donenfeld's National Comics outsold everybody else with sales of 1,375,000. Except Fawcett. By July 1943, Fawcett's 14 comics had a combined circulation of over 7,400,000. And "Captain Marvel Adventures" passed Superman to become the biggest selling comic of all time. ...
... the bold highlights on that Fawcett data was my touch, just incredible numbers IMO. Now you know why DC wanted to crush Fawcett and in particular Captain Marvel... what a shocking phenom that Captain Marvel character was IMO. And yet today he is mostly forgotten... SHAZAM!!!!!
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I wouldn't call it overly shocking DL.
Crime Does Not Pay becoming a number 1 book after years of Superman/Capt Marvel and Dell books being #1 is more of a shock to me. Capt Marvel was another of the hero books started by Superman.
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You might not be a fan of the SOTI book but the 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency talked a lot about comic distribution, numbers and methods that I would think you might find interesting. I sure did even if it does take time to read all of it.
Here is the main link which gives a short synopsis of each person's testimony:
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/1954senatetranscripts.html
You can find some circulation numbers in the testimony of Monroe Froehlich, Jr., Business Manager of Magazine Management Co. (Marvel Comics). Here's the link:
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/froehlich.html
You will also see some distribution numbers in the testimony of Mrs. Helen Meyer, Vice president of Dell here:
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/meyermurphy.html
Harold Chamberlain, Circulation director the Independent News Co. (DC) where he talks about killing off specific titles like "Frankenstein," "Out of the Night," "Forbidden Worlds," and "Clutching Hand". He takes credit for forcing Prize into making Frankenstein a humour comic.
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/chamberlain.html
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
-Yoc
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And now that I think about it (after reviewing that Nicky Wright book), it was WWII that briefly spurred the growth of comic sales to unrealistic/unsustainable levels.
Anyway, my (very brief) current take on the early history of comics (at least from a financial/distribution/demographic POV) is...
(1930-1940)
- Pulp magazine publishers in the mid-to-late 1930s needed to find a new print medium to expand into... one which would be more "visual" based to counter the coming age of electronic media. Don't forget, radio was big, but prototype televisions were being developed in the 30s, and their potential was clear... what they (as well as the movies) offered the public was a new (visual) way of consuming/telling stories (the sequential visual narrative). Thus, with this in mind and seeing the success of funny page reprint titles such as Eastern's "Famous Funnies," many of them began producing comic books... if not as a replacement to their pulps, at least as a supplement to them. And in my opinion, this is reflected in the style and tone of many of these early comics... in concept, at his core, Superman was a (science fiction) pulp character really... as was the early Batman (in essence a crime pulp character).
- This new format caught on with children (for various reasons) instead of what (IMO) its original intended audience was... adults. And by 1940 the vast majority of comic books purchased seem to be purchased by children and not adults... which raised concerns in various circles about content... hence, the birth of the Werthams of the world.
(1941-45)
- The U.S. enters WWII. There is a further surge in sales... this time among adults (military service personnel)... which, btw, was never to be seen again.
(1945-50)
- By late 1945, with the war over, sales (at least among adults) declined to pre-war levels... wanting to keep that audience the comic industry reinvented itself somewhat (as did the movie industry before it)... by introducing new titles and genres that they hoped would interest them. In particular, romance and later horror. Crime comics (which always paid... despite what Lev Gleason stated on his comic) were also re-imagined (to be more like their pulp predecessors... although, Gleason's book was always so IMO), as were the jungle comics. Unfortunately, this usually meant they became more violent and sexualized... particularly in the hands of such people as Victor Fox.
- As early as 1948 you already had too many comics... some of which of questionable content for their real audience (children). Unfortunately, these very same titles were "high profile" ones... and hence, were easy targets for crusaders of various stripes.
(1950-56)
- In the early 50s, with another boom in comics due to the horror genre (and a larger population of children, and both older adolescents and college bound twenty somethings who might have read comics in their earlier youth), the stands were eventually glutted with titles that many newsstand retailers had no interest or time in contending with.
- Unfortunately, it seems the majority of adults of that era didn't embrace the comic book medium and (IMO) at best, viewed it as a novelty of the war years (or of their youth). Which is very unfortunate, for (again IMO) some of these comics were extremely well done... consisting of superb art and very well written, creative stories. Which I think would have held (and appealed to) the imagination of a large number of these older readers. There was also unfortunately a lot of pandering "copy-cat" trash being published as well... more than the market could bear... and which gave further fuel to the self-appointed "do-gooders" of the world.
Thus IMO...
-The "implosion" of the mid 50s was inevitable.
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I wouldn't call it overly shocking DL.
Crime Does Not Pay becoming a number 1 book after years of Superman/Capt Marvel and Dell books being #1 is more of a shock to me. Capt Marvel was another of the hero books started by Superman.
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You might not be a fan of the SOTI book but the 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency talked a lot about comic distribution, numbers and methods that I would think you might find interesting. I sure did even if it does take time to read all of it.
Here is the main link which gives a short synopsis of each person's testimony:
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/1954senatetranscripts.html
You can find some circulation numbers in the testimony of Monroe Froehlich, Jr., Business Manager of Magazine Management Co. (Marvel Comics). Here's the link:
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/froehlich.html
You will also see some distribution numbers in the testimony of Mrs. Helen Meyer, Vice president of Dell here:
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/meyermurphy.html
Harold Chamberlain, Circulation director the Independent News Co. (DC) where he talks about killing off specific titles like "Frankenstein," "Out of the Night," "Forbidden Worlds," and "Clutching Hand". He takes credit for forcing Prize into making Frankenstein a humour comic.
http://www.thecomicbooks.com/chamberlain.html
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
-Yoc
Thanks for these links Yoc, I'll take a look at them when I get a chance. I actually think I remember reading that hearing info awhile back when we were discussing EC and Wertham on the other site.
Yes, if I recall correctly, at the 1954 hearing Dell was said to have been the largest comics publisher of the era... with success coming from the Disney characters like Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. Now how that fits with Wright's comments I'm not sure... perhaps that was in the post-war (late 40s) period.
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There are no magazines or magazine racks in the picture, but some of you might (ahem) vaguely recognize the subject matter as having something of an (cough, cough) influence on certain comic books of the day:
http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j270/JohnnyGunn/GSI_NY_Worlds_Fair_Perisphere.jpg
This is from a series of pictures produced, well, at the end of the '30s, by the Farm Security Administration, armed with spankin' brand-new Kodachrome film. So that's a real color image of what seems to be the Golden Age's most famous landmark. (Heh--not that I'd probably recognize it as such, had Roy Thomas not used it so prominently and slightly-but-intentionally-anachronistically in All-Star Squadron.)
This picture surfaced with many others here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/12/7/04913/9030
which someone passed on to me after I brought up the earlier Albert Kahn pictures using the first industrial color, rather than commercial, film (http://citynoise.org/article/10598) and the still earlier Prokudin-Gorskii multiple-plate color exposures (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/), though they aren't quite as relevant to the topic at hand, so forget I mentioned them...
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Thanks for the link John, fun stuff!
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... 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
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.
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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.
:)
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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?
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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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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?
Get as many copies as you want here, DL. http://www.abebooks.com (http://www.abebooks.com)
Click advance search and enter mad world of William Gaines in the title and Jacobs in the author fields. You're home free.
Peace, Jim (|:{>
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Thanks Jim.
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Abe's does seem to have almost anything. My wife is a huge fan of the movie GLORY. She likes civil war history and especially the 54th. We found several copies of "Lay this Laurel" at Abe's and I got her one for her birthday.
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On a somewhat related note, I found this (http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/08/papers-of-fredric-wertham-open-at-library-of-congress/) news rather interesting. The Wertham papers have been opened to the public at the Library of Congress (here's (http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/08/papers-of-comic-book-villain-open-at-library/) also a direct link to a LofC blog with more info).
Seems that those of you who are interested in finding out exactly which comics Wertham used in his "research" (and what he thought of them) will get the chance to finally find out. :)
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Very interesting!
I'm sure the sellers will be listing any comics not already flagged and doubling their prices (more?) on them.
*sigh*
Still, it's something I'd love to spend a day looking around at.
-Yoc
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I must say Yoc, he seems to have been quite a comics fan... even reading them well into the late 60s... he must have amassed quite a collection.
And he had titles I'd never have considered reading, like Kid Colt... definitely a sign of a disturbed mind if you ask me. :P
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Came across this one on bleedingcool (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/09/07/1936-an-industry-on-the-brink/)...
(http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads//2010/09/lifenews1.jpg)... someone over there claims it's one of the earliest "comics in the wild" photos he's seen. That is, one of the earliest photos of comic books on the newsstands (this one being from Nov, 1936) before their explosion in popularity.
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Very nice find DL!
I've got a few more to add myself when I get time to organize them.
And if you click on the thumbnail below you can see a breakdown of which comics were in your photo.
(Not my picture.)
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There's also the Funnies #3 in there; I wonder if it's my copy...
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New photo to view:
(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/8894/comicsw.jpg) (http://img135.imageshack.us/i/comicsw.jpg/)
Yum, 1950's goodness!!!
Geo
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Thanks Geo, that was also part of the original postings in this vein over on GAC.
A long conversation about just what the sign says just behind the left shoulder of the right boy came after.
I can't recall the conclusion.
-Yoc
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This post hasn't been updated for a while so here's a couple more pics I've found.
(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/59/2fcv.jpg) (https://imageshack.com/i/1n2fcvj)
Those two above are awfully hard on comic books.
(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/21/28a7.jpg) (https://imageshack.com/i/0l28a7j)
See, even girls like comic books.
Enjoy..
Geo
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Thanks Geo!
Anyone figure out exactly which comics are being read. That's always fun to nail down a date on the pictures.
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Thanks Geo!
Anyone figure out exactly which comics are being read. That's always fun to nail down a date on the pictures.
One of the boys is clearly got a Terry Toons. In the picture of the girls, the back of one comic says "Hedy" so I assume it's a Marvel/Atlas of Patsy & Hedy or the like. The sign reads that the President has requested prices be cut so I'd guess this is from the immediately post WWII inflationary period.
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Thanks Jon. It's always fun playing detective with these old pictures.
:)
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Here's another pix that I found.
(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/841/buurk.jpg) (https://imageshack.com/i/ndbuurkj)
or here: https://imageshack.com/i/ndbuurkj
Geo
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Ol Doc Wirtham would have loved that selection of crime books!
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That picture was taken in 1948.
Looking at the GCD I was able to identify some covers.
Pay-Off #1 (the visible checkerboard ceiling made that easy)
Witness #1 (only issue)
True Crime #2 & 3 (only issues with those logos)
Desperado #1 & 2 (visible cover elements)
Target Comics v9 #7 & 8 (8 was easy as you can see a guy's head under the logo, 7's a guess)
Lawbreakers Always Lose #4 (comes closest to the picture & the time period)
These I was uncertain of, but are my best guesses.
All-Star Crime #27
Criminals On The Run #1 & 2
Famous Crimes #3
Guns Against Gangsters #1
Human Torch #31 & 32
I could not find Violent Crimes or Seven Dead Men at the GCD. Anyone know those books?
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Violent may have been a pulp that got put on the comic rack. Seven looks like an Avon title.
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Great detective work SS!
Violent had an eye catching logo. I was wondering about that one as I'd never heard of it either.
:)
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The more I looks at that "Read 'em for fun!" image the more I smell a rat. What first bothered me was the inclusion of non-comics in the mix. I don't know if there was a pulp magazine titled "Violent [something or other]"--the word is much too common to Google successfully. I'm pretty sure there was no comic by that name. Ditto "Guns," which could easily have been a mainstream hunting mag along the lines of "Gun Digest." But not a comic. Then there's the "Read 'em for fun!" slogan. I'm in no position to swear there was never a comic rack with a "Read 'em for fun" badge. It doesn't look manufactured. But the combination of all the titles stressing crime and violence, plus the slogan, plus the date--1948--leads me to suspect this is a fake photo set up as anti-comics propaganda.
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Thanks Yoc!
Maybe Crash, while most of the comics have cover dates from June to October 1948, True Crime #2 comes from 1947.
BTW Seven Dead Men was actually Complete Mystery #1 (August 1948)
Also looking closer I noticed there was a comic behind All-True Crimes. The typeface for the E resembles that of True Comics, possibly #73 as that issue had the word Comics centered and there was a box below the E which is what appears to be below it in the picture.
Was unable to find anything resembling those Violent/Violent Crimes magazines.
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The Guns title is Guns Against Gangsters. Violent Crimes seems to be a non-comic mag. Never heard of it before.
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The Guns title is Guns Against Gangsters. Violent Crimes seems to be a non-comic mag. Never heard of it before.
"Violent Crimes" is a fake title, from the site The Artist Den.net (http://theartistden.net/zeus-comics-with-mort-todd), about the fake publisher Zig Zoosman and his "Zeus Comics" line. Geo's picture appears to be from that site.
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Thanks B.
This Zeus is pretty good with his fakes!
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The Guns title is Guns Against Gangsters. Violent Crimes seems to be a non-comic mag. Never heard of it before.
"Violent Crimes" is a fake title, from the site The Artist Den.net (http://theartistden.net/zeus-comics-with-mort-todd), about the fake publisher Zig Zoosman and his "Zeus Comics" line. Geo's picture appears to be from that site.
It could be, I don't remember where I got it from as I didn't post it up right away.
Geo
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"Violent Crimes" is a fake title, from the site The Artist Den.net (http://theartistden.net/zeus-comics-with-mort-todd), about the fake publisher Zig Zoosman and his "Zeus Comics" line.
Nice to have that mystery solved. Thanks!
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I was perusing eBay for one of the last few missing Famous Funnies books and found this photo for sale. It shows a single Famous Funnies in a box on the right. I can't ID it from what's showing, but maybe if the pulp beside it could be ID'd you could narrow it down. Unfortunately, although Thrilling Adventures (the pulp) ran for almost 15 years only a single issue has been scanned so I doubt that issue could be easily ID'd.
(http://i58.tinypic.com/2mchwsm.jpg)
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Actually there are relatively few Famous Funnies covers with the 10 cents under the S and given the cover's light colored I would say it's probably #131 (June 1945).
I could not find any list of covers for Thrilling Adventures from 1945, (just random covers in no special order) so I couldn't really compare.
I thought that magazine with the Co on the cover might have been Colliers, but they had a smaller logo in a box.
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Thrilling Adventures is cover date November 1936 http://www.philsp.com/data/images/t/thrilling_adventures_193611.jpg (http://www.philsp.com/data/images/t/thrilling_adventures_193611.jpg)
Courtesy of Phil Stephensen-Payne of Galactic Central http://www.philsp.com/ (http://www.philsp.com/) Great site for a rummage!
The Colliers is October 3 http://www.amazon.com/Colliers-October-3-Mexicos-Communists-Farnsworth/dp/B008DS82RO (http://www.amazon.com/Colliers-October-3-Mexicos-Communists-Farnsworth/dp/B008DS82RO)
And the Famous Funnies is #27 Cover Oct 1936. You can see the guy's dark square shoulder, a blurry tree and a blurry speech bubble :)
O and behind is a Liberty Oct 3 with a cover ... um ... very much of its time!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Liberty-Magazine-October-3-1936-/231201703736 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Liberty-Magazine-October-3-1936-/231201703736)
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Actually there are relatively few Famous Funnies covers with the 10 cents under the S and given the cover's light colored I would say it's probably #131 (June 1945).
I could not find any list of covers for Thrilling Adventures from 1945, (just random covers in no special order) so I couldn't really compare.
I thought that magazine with the Co on the cover might have been Colliers, but they had a smaller logo in a box.
Thanks, I didn't actually feel like clicking through the issues to track down exactly which one it was lol :-\
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Thrilling Adventures is cover date November 1936 http://www.philsp.com/data/images/t/thrilling_adventures_193611.jpg (http://www.philsp.com/data/images/t/thrilling_adventures_193611.jpg)
Courtesy of Phil Stephensen-Payne of Galactic Central http://www.philsp.com/ (http://www.philsp.com/) Great site for a rummage!
The Colliers is October 3 http://www.amazon.com/Colliers-October-3-Mexicos-Communists-Farnsworth/dp/B008DS82RO (http://www.amazon.com/Colliers-October-3-Mexicos-Communists-Farnsworth/dp/B008DS82RO)
And the Famous Funnies is #27 Cover Oct 1936. You can see the guy's dark square shoulder, a blurry tree and a blurry speech bubble :)
O and behind is a Liberty Oct 3 with a cover ... um ... very much of its time!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Liberty-Magazine-October-3-1936-/231201703736 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Liberty-Magazine-October-3-1936-/231201703736)
I forgot about that website with the pulp covers. I was going by the spreadsheet floating around with the issues listed according to what's been scanned and it only shows a single issue for that series which I thought was weird because it ran for something like 15 years.
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Mysteries ALWAYS need to be solved ... and only took about 10-15 minutes ... but then I went back to work out what the book in front of them all is ... white frame with a greyish interior rectangle and spent way too long and failed .... :(
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Wonderful detective work Mark.
:)
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Good job, Mark!
Thanks, I didn't actually feel like clicking through the issues to track down exactly which one it was lol :-\
The Grand Comics Database gallery feature shows 50 thumbnails to a page, so it's not like I was going through each issue.
Not a perfect system, obviously, as I dismissed #27 because I didn't see a circle around the 10 in the photo, but looking the bigger scan at the GCD I see it was a light blue circle - d'oh! Ah, well.
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Assuming I do this right, you should see two stills from, I'm guessing, an episode of Naked City. But look what's in the background.
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Great catch Jon!! I do the same thing while watching old movies and TV shows.... looking at the background for interesting items from the past :o Thanks for the posting, really neat pictures.
Ed
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Interesting series of postings. Pictures of this sort are so intriguing. Don't know if any of you have already seen this one.
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Hard to make some of those out but it looks like:
Upper Left of picture
Top row (reading left to right)
(2nd book) Detective Comics #32 (October 1939) - (4th book) Mutt & Jeff (Summer 1939)
Second Row
(2nd book) All-American Comics #8 (November 1939) - (3rd book) More Fun Comics #48 (October 1939)
Eerie must have been a magazine since I couldn't find any comics of that time period with that name.
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Hi gang,
I believe this photo was part of an old topic from back in the GAC days.
You can still read it at this link -
http://comicbookplus.com/forum/index.php/topic,1170.0.html
I've always wanted to resurrect that topic here but it would take a LOT of work!
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Eerie must have been a magazine since I couldn't find any comics of that time period with that name.
Eerie Mysteries
The fourth book in the second row is Marvel Science Stories.
Oddly enough, internet searches list those both as being August 1938, which is a year earlier than the comics. Did newsstands keep magazines on the racks for over a year?
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Assuming I do this right, you should see two stills from, I'm guessing, an episode of Naked City. But look what's in the background.
I believe those maybe from the old Twilight Zone series if I remember right. The mind is the first thing to go when you start getting old, and mine is.
Geo
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I posted those pics Geo. It was Naked City.
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Just 50 seconds in: http://strangerintown.podcastpeople.com/posts/30445
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Yep. I picked that episode to watch completely at random and was blown away when the newstand scene happens. Not a bad episode either.
-Yoc
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They've been rerunning that old 50s Superman TV show lately and I happened to just catch the last half of "The Birthday Letter" episode last weekend. There's a scene at the end where the little girl is reading a Superman comic in front of Superman. Didn't get a chance to snap a photo though.
Those first B&W episodes are pretty good by the way.
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Hey gang,
I always enjoyed this topic. Here's a new one I've never seen and the incredible colouring job done by Avi A. Katz
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c-nQJpRbbEQ/VEw2feSKbLI/AAAAAAAAB8I/7KuA2xdwLqc/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2014-10-25%2Bat%2B7.43.33%2BPM.png)Painted Black Blog (http://paintedback.blogspot.ca/2014/10/may-23-30-1942-southington-connecticut.html)
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I got the same email Yoc, very nice work done on that picture from 1942 and being B&W.
Geo
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I received a link to that picture, as well.
Take a look on the lower left hand side. There is a floor rack with eight comics facing the camera. I recognized two of the partially visible covers. That included a Simon & Kirby Sandman cover on an issue of Adventure Comics.
I am fairly certain that at least six of those covers can be identified using the Grand Comics Database. One or more of them could already be available here at DCM. (Sorry, not the Sub-Mariner issue… ??? )
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Hi Bob,
That link I shared shows how hard Ari worked at tracking down the books in the picture. It's truly a herculean job he's done on it.
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Happen to snap a photo of that little girl reading a comic on that old Superman TV show... not exactly a newsstand shot (there is an episode with a faux newsstand btw), but interesting anyway imo.
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Thanks DL.
I've got quite a collection of such pictures that I really want to start sharing again in a new topic like my old one back in the GAC days.
When I get caught up on my duties for the site I'll get to it. It might be quite a while though.
-Yoc
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Yes Yoc, I think I recall that old thread! Please do! :)
I also recall a similar topic taken up on another old (and now "rebooted and lost") forum, CB something (not CB+ though)... I think they had a "comic books in movies and television shows" themed one there. :-\
Anyhow, there were (probably still are) quite a few of them out there, way too many to keep straight, sorry for the mix up.
But rarely do I notice something like that AND get another opportunity to snap a quick photo. I just had to post it anyway.
My enthusiasm got the better of me. :-[ :)