Digital Comic Museum
General Category => Comic Related Discussion => Topic started by: Poztron on November 14, 2012, 06:48:36 PM
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I realize this is slightly out of left field, but I credit DCM with getting me thinking about it!
The more that I've become acquainted with some of the smaller GA comic publishers (like H. Chesler or Star or Columbia or D.S. or even Nedor/Standard), the more I've wondered whether these were largely distributed in the NY area, particularly in Manhattan with its tradition of giant newsstands on the street. I wonder, for instance, which publishers' comics made it out to California or various points in between. I'm familiar with the Cleveland area comics distribution in the late 50's and there were certainly some publishers' books (Atlas, for instance) that were not to be found, at least in the drugstores and cornerstores that I frequented. Obviously, NYC was the publishing hub for most of the publishers (or Connecticut, in the case of Charlton), but was it also the distribution hub for many of them?
Does anyone have a take on this?
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I've heard some talking about this area but frankly it's was so complicated it flew over my head. I believe I posted a link to the SOTI hearings that talked about publishers numbers but that's as far as I can go and that's next to nothing.
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Don't know if these help, but they talk a bit about distributor ANC:
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php/topic,2441.0.html
http://comicbookplus.com/forum/index.php/topic,2871.msg31305.html#msg31305
I realize this is slightly out of left field, but I credit DCM with getting me thinking about it!
The more that I've become acquainted with some of the smaller GA comic publishers (like H. Chesler or Star or Columbia or D.S. or even Nedor/Standard), the more I've wondered whether these were largely distributed in the NY area, particularly in Manhattan with its tradition of giant newsstands on the street. I wonder, for instance, which publishers' comics made it out to California or various points in between. I'm familiar with the Cleveland area comics distribution in the late 50's and there were certainly some publishers' books (Atlas, for instance) that were not to be found, at least in the drugstores and cornerstores that I frequented. Obviously, NYC was the publishing hub for most of the publishers (or Connecticut, in the case of Charlton), but was it also the distribution hub for many of them?
Does anyone have a take on this?
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I'm familiar with the Cleveland area comics distribution in the late 50's and there were certainly some publishers' books (Atlas, for instance) that were not to be found, at least in the drugstores and cornerstores that I frequented.
I can't tell you about the late 50s but in the early-mid 60s Marvels could be found in the Cleveland area, though the distribution was very spotty relative to DC, Dell/Gold Key, Archie, and Harvey. I seem to thikn that even Charltons might have been easier to find, but to be honest I really didn't look for those until later. By the late 60s I had no problem find them. Tower, King and Milson could be found as well with little problem, but I suspect comics generally got much better distribution due to the Batman TV show craze then
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Thanks for the links Roygbiv666 and for the comments Yoc and Jon.
I guess my ultimate hunch is that comics from various publishers, due to their varying distributors and their varying local arrangements, may have turned up in (or been absent from) significant sections of the American continent. My guess would be that smaller publishers, who were distributed by smaller distributors, would have their comics absent from much of the country. I was just curious whether some publishers were able to get by, for awhile at least, with just regional NE U.S. distribution. Just idle curiosity.
As for Marvel comics in the Cleveland area in the 60's, it was my impression (which would support Jon's observations) that Marvel's distribution kicked up a notch within a year or two of launching the Fantastic Four and rejuvenating the super hero genre. I was in the Chicago suburbs by then and suddenly Marvel comics were available, while they'd been absent during the late 'stupid monster' period (or whatever one might call it) that immediately preceded Stan Lee's super hero re-boot.
I guess part of my curiosity is generated by wondering whether Dr. Wertham's anti-comics book was largely motivated by his access to smaller publishers' comics (which were sometimes more extreme) in the NY area, that never made it into major distribution in the rest of the country. In other words, was Seduction of the Innocent possibly a tempest in a Manhattan teapot? This is all conjecture and guesswork, so I have no serious evidence of any of this. Just an interesting question to pursue.
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I am a German of 48 years and can’t possibly contribute ANYTHING concerning distribution problems in the United States 60 years ago.
But I’ve been following your thread, poz, with interest.
And as a pre-code horror expert, I can assure you that EC books alone were much too mind-blowing for the 1950s.
Have a look at Reed Crandall’s “Only Skin Deep” in TALES FROM THE CRYPT #38 (Oct-Nov 1953) – which Wertham MISSED. Maybe thankfully.
The story is about sex, nothing else, and in the end the woman gets her face torn off!
That alone would have been enough to bring down nationwide censorship.
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And as a pre-code horror expert, I can assure you that EC books alone were much too mind-blowing for the 1950s.
Have a look at Reed Crandall’s “Only Skin Deep” in TALES FROM THE CRYPT #38 (Oct-Nov 1953) – which Wertham MISSED. Maybe thankfully.
The story is about sex, nothing else, and in the end the woman gets her face torn off!
That alone would have been enough to bring down nationwide censorship.
You are, of course, right that EC published some strong stuff that would have flipped out much of the country in the '50s. And, if I am not mistaken, they were not particularly well-distributed to much of the U.S. Their art and writing were among the best of all GA comics, but the gore got them gored, so to speak, and the rest is history.
I guess it struck me, in going through numerous GA scans from DCM, that at least two of the notorious panels shown by Wertham in the graphic image pages of Seduction of the Innocent were from Chesler comics - certainly my idea of a relatively obscure comic publisher. Chesler was, of course, in the middle of things in NYC, packaging comics for other publishers as well as publishing his own, but I didn't get the impression that Chesler titles were well-distributed nor that they had big print-runs.
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I would LOVE to know which pictures Wertham actually used in SOTI.
I have read the book online - but with panels added by the site's admin.
So I do not know WHAT were the original examples he used.
If anyone out there can tell me where to find them, I'd be grateful.
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Hi T,
I see a couple of his examples on this link about the man -
http://art-bin.com/art/awertham.html (http://art-bin.com/art/awertham.html)
More with pictures taken of an some examples in the book in this new link to me -
http://www.mycomicart.com/seduction.htm (http://www.mycomicart.com/seduction.htm)
If I find more I'll let you know. Anyone else have links?
-Yoc
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Found a famous one -
(http://arflovers.com/images/content/05_02_06_seduction.jpg)And this blog has a few more -
http://my-retrospace.blogspot.ca/2010/02/pre-code-nastiness-3.html
and another famous one -
http://comic_book_heaven.blogspot.ca/2005/04/curious-about-seduction.html#comments
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Hi T,
You really gotta check out this blog.
Seems they've got a documentary in production about SOTI and document many things in their multi-part blog on it all and the book.
Here's the link,
Diagram for Delinquents -
http://sequart.org/magazine/951/diagram-for-delinquents-update-1/
Enjoy!
-Yoc
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Pappy has featured several blog posts on SOTI including entire stories where a panel was featured in SOTI as well as the SOTI pages themselves.
http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.ca/search/label/Seduction%20Of%20The%20Innocent
Enjoy,
-Yoc
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Pappy has featured several blog posts on SOTI including entire stories where a panel was featured in SOTI as well as the SOTI pages themselves.
http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.ca/search/label/Seduction%20Of%20The%20Innocent
Enjoy,
-Yoc
Great resource, Yoc. Thanks for the tip.
I could, if it would be of any value to anyone, either post a list of SOTI's illustrations (though not with a source for every one of them) or I could scan the image pages themselves and post them to DCM (though I am not sure where they would go, and they aren't comics per se.)
What do you think?
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Hi P,
Sure, feel free to scan those pages. I'll talk with the staff to see if it's safe to share them here.
A list here would be wonderful as well though I think the SOTI site has already done that job for you.
This site lists both 'lost' and 'found' source material - http://www.lostsoti.org/FoundSOTI.htm
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That would be heaven.
If someone who owns the book could scan those illustration pages - and Yoc will put them somewhere to look at!
Thanks for your help.
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That would be heaven.
If someone who owns the book could scan those illustration pages - and Yoc will put them somewhere to look at!
Thanks for your help.
OK. I'll try to scan them over the extended Thanksgiving (U.S.) weekend and upload them. There will no doubt be some shadows in the 'gutter' and I don't want to crack the binding of my copy, so they will be mostly for reference. But if they aren't solidly available online, I suppose this should be done. I'll assume that they either fall into public domain or fair use law.
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Well, a lot of the books are obviously in the public domain and it was Fair Use (when they were covered under copyright) when Wertham used them. But, the book is under copyright, and Fair Use generally involves some sort of significant transformation.
So, collecting the images he used all in one place, right from his book with no creative input? That gets into what the courts call (I think) "sufficient similarity." To give an extreme example, imagine filming your own shot-for-shot remake of Star Wars, but where every word in the script is translated into Esperanto. Assuming you do your own production design, too, such a film wouldn't use any single element covered by copyright, but it's pretty obvious that (now that the property is theirs) Disney's lawyers would have a pretty good case when they try to crush you like a bug. Nobody would question that it'd be an infringement.
This wouldn't be as cut and dried, but I'd still be a little suspicious of just collecting the images to present them as being the images from "Seduction of the Innocent." Every one of the words he used is, individually, in the public domain, and using any arbitrary passage would be Fair Use, but extracting all the text would be problematic, as well...
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Hot tamale!!!
(whatever that my mean...)
My thanks go out to YOC.
He mailed me the SOTI illustration pages via personal mail.
For my own "fair use", hehe.
You will have seen them all here or there, but it's still shocking to see how crude the man (Wertham) thought.
And simple. And one-track-minded.
And with NO sense for entertainment...
:D
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This wouldn't be as cut and dried, but I'd still be a little suspicious of just collecting the images to present them as being the images from "Seduction of the Innocent." Every one of the words he used is, individually, in the public domain, and using any arbitrary passage would be Fair Use, but extracting all the text would be problematic, as well...
Hmm. OK. If YOC already has the images scanned and putting them up online would be problematic (which I can respect), then I'll save myself the trouble of scanning them. My copy's binding is close to shot, as it is.
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Thanks for the offer Poz. The book is still under copyright so we can't share those pages here.
Someone else sent it to me in an email and I just pulled the pages Tilliban wanted.
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The thing with SOTI is that the reproduction of the Reform School Girls cover made me really really want to get my hands on a copy when I was a kid, and I just hope that before I die someone can scan a whole copy and put it up here. I realize that it will be totally anti-climactic, judging from the one story I've found online, but still....