Pictures of old Comic stands

[Geo (RIP)]

Here's a picture I found on the net and I had to just share.

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5856/kidsncomix.jpg

Enjoy folks. And please add your shares if you find them.

Geo

[Drusilla lives!]

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).

[Drusilla lives!]

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.  

 

[Drusilla lives!]

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. 

[Yoc]

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

[narfstar]

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

[Drusilla lives!]

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.

[Yoc]

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

[Drusilla lives!]

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!

[Yoc]

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

[Yoc]

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

[jcalamil]

DOES ANYBODY HAVE SOME MORE "Fawcett' FUNNY ANIMAL" COMICS TO UPLOAD?

[Yoc]

JC,
Everything that has been scanned is on the site already.  Until someone scans something new you'll have to be patient.

[Drusilla lives!]

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. 

[Drusilla lives!]

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).