markseifert

It would be interesting to try to identify the other covers, as the implication here is that he was photographing several women at the time who would later become well-known models or actresses.

Great sleuthing, I'd never heard of her being on a cover either. So, the implication of the Vanity Fair article is that there is more than one photo cover of her in this series...? None of the others quite look like the same woman.

Awesome! Well done and congrats, sir.

Sci Fi, Pulp & Comic Illustrator Alex Schomburg by Lloyd N Phillips (formerly Green Lantern2008), on Flickr Some of his pulp and magazine covers are around, I think (Timely might have one...?).

The Mahon/Cook Comics Magazine Company "Centaurs" are a recent interest of mine also. This book is part of a small burst of titles that began in Nov '36 as they tried to turn their single debut title (The Comics Magazine) into a line -- and they became the second publisher to have a line of original-material titles, after DC. Comics Magazine Co. editor William H. Cook filed for bankruptcy the month after Western Picture Stories #1 hit the stands. The precise chain of events isn't clear (there are a few people trying to piece this together, fwiw), but due to the timing it's hard to escape the conclusion that the line expansion didn't do as well as they'd hope and for some reason he was personally on the hook for some of the bills. Just a few months later in late summer '37, the titles would be in the hands of Ultem.

Some great stuff in this thread. Thanks to all for posting.

Great info So... if the 3.5 cent per unit cost from the printer was about the same the previous decade, then yeah, Centaur's 48,000 unpaid print bill amounted to 1.4 million comics. But you know... I think GCD tells the tale, here. Looks like they started about 5 titles in the late Summer / early Fall of 1940 (so, this would have been titles launched very shortly before bankruptcy): Arrow, Detective Eye, Fantoman, Masked Marvel, Super Spy. They rolled the dice on doing a big expansion and lost. When the print bills started coming in on those books, they were sunk. I think PreHero made a good point earlier re the rapid expansion of other publishers plus not having a big hit superhero title. It's pretty clear in hindsight that Jacquet leaving them to form Funnies Inc in 1939, and taking Bill Everett and Carl Burgos (among others) with him, hurt Centaur's prospects in this regard, as their talents were then employed on the behalf of many other publishers as well.

Mt. Morris IL is very near Rockford (and is the closest city of any size nearby, in fact), so presumably they had excellent availability of Kable-distributed titles. I've always wondered if that had any connection to the Rockford collection. As a lifelong IL resident, there has always been local lore that dealers scoured the Sparta (where World Color moved it's comic printing in the Silver Age) area for potential Silver Age caches (perhaps from employees or the like) in the 70s and 80s, but I've never heard the same thing about Mt Morris There is apparently a museum of Kable company history still there, which I'd love to take a look at some day.

Thanks so much for posting this! I've always heard Geppi purchased the bulk of this find, which seems to be confirmed by the photos of the museum exhibits I've seen here and there over the years. I've been amazed by this find since it was first described in Overstreet Advanced Collector back in '93.

I've seen the poor distro factor mentioned in various places too, but imo there's a problem with that line of reasoning. We can partially confirm the Kable News connection (at least so far as distribution is concerned) wondered about in Stroup's linked research, because that comic book promotional flyer drugstore find that surfaced in the early 90s contained a Kable News flyer featuring Man of War #2 and Amazing Man 26 (see Overstreet's Advanced Collector #1). So, we know for sure they (or CCoA at that point, I guess) were using Kable at the end. I also think it's likely that they were using Kable before that as well. It makes sense that they (and many other comic publishers) who were printing out of World Color's St Louis location were likely using Kable because of the close proximity of St Louis and Kable's original Mt Morris IL location. Anything's possible, but the geography just makes a ton of sense. By all appearances Kable was (and is) a solid outfit. Their first foray into distro was Hugo Gernsback's "Radio Craft" in 1932, we know they were a major distributor of comics from the beginning at least up through the early 60s (and likely beyond) and they are a major presence in newsstand distribution to this day. Anyway, another interesting little tidbit.

I was just thinking about that angle too. A $48,000 print bill is a lot of comics. So, it's 10 cents split 4 ways: publisher, printer, distributor, newsdealer -- and the pub and distro have to factor in returns. That's a pretty tiny unit cost (for the publisher buying from the printer). 3 or 4 cents per unit, plus or minus? Could be around 1.5 million comics, maybe more. Roughly how many titles per month was Centaur doing throughout 1940?

That part is from research done by Tim Stroup, co-founder of the Grand Comic Book Database: http://www.mindmeister.com/123768009/centaur-publications-comics-mar-1938-dec-1940 http://todayincomics.blogspot.com/2011/11/centaur-publications-demise.html As you can see there he dug up the NYT notices. Very interesting stuff indeed.

Yeah, I think it's interesting also. I've only started getting interested in the business aspects of this, so it's possible someone like Jon Berk has already worked out how all this fits together throughout... in any case, it's not too hard to see how the various early threads (Ultem, Comic Magazine Company) gathered together into Centaur, but at first glance it's not so clear what happened after the Oct 1940 Centaur Publications bankruptcy. The indicias show that Centaur and Comic Corporation of America for a time shared the same 215 4th Avenue NY, NY editorial office address, so that clearly ties it in even after the bankruptcy of Centaur Publications (and as you say, there was some overlap of the name use for awhile there, according to indicias) Googling the publishing address in the 1941-42 CCoA era indicias (which during this era usually means where the comic was printed), it looks like they switched from World Color to Phelps Publishing Co. for printing -- who was also the printer for Fox Publications at this time (and incidentally, Phelps was the publisher of Good Housekeeping magazine). According to the Fox article by Jon Berk on comicartville.com, Phelps helped force Fox into bankruptcy in early 1942. So... it wouldn't be too hard to imagine that they kept Comic Corporation of America on a short leash as well, possibly explaining their end (and the ultimate end of the Centaur-related line) around the same time.

At a glance, it's easy to imagine them (just "Comic Corporation of America" at this point) taking existing inventory and throwing stuff against the wall to see what worked in '41 and '42. Centaur itself declared bankruptcy in Oct. 1940, owing World Color $48k and Funnies Inc $4800. So, they couldn't print with World Color anymore even operating under the other corp name because the industry wasn't so big that that wouldn't have been obvious, and you can see from indicias that they did change printers. And they couldn't use Jacquet anymore for the same reason, and Jacquet had taken most of the Centaur creative stable with him when he formed Funnies in the first place, so they probably weren't in a great position to generate new material. In any case, interesting discovery. (thumbs u

This is about a dozen different kinds of awesome.

ok, I see... so Jeske worked for World Color Printing. I hadn't realized World Color was originally located in St Louis (that 420 De Soto address is also listed for ACG, Rural Home, and other early comic publishers), or that DC had briefly used them during the Golden Age. Of course, they are famously known for the Sparta IL location during the Silver Age. It seems that the St Louis Star started World Color to handle World's Fair printing in 1904, and subsequently found themselves looking for other uses (much in the way that Eastern Color had via Gaines). In any case, interesting. Apparently the De Soto building still has World Color in concrete above the entrance. http://www.nostalgiazone.com/doc/zine/06_V2N2/pilgrimage.htm#

Huh... I don't think I've noticed that the "publishing office" was in St Louis at this point. I've never noticed business manager Fred B. Jeske's name associated with the company either. Aha --a little ancestry.com sleuthing reveals that the Jeske family worked in the printing business. Looks like his brother ran or supervised the printer itself, his sister was a secretary, and he was a business manager. Interestingly, there is a Jeske park in St Louis county in the town of his birth, Ferguson, MO. Looking at the timing, the Jeske family would probably have been one of the "founding" families of the town. Anyway, thanks for the scan. Very interesting. edited to add -- so this was with Donenfeld/Liebowitz distributing, but not yet actually Nicholson's business partners. Was having trouble with the timeline, but it fits... there's a quick series of business events there between the launch of vol 2 of More Fun and the actual launch of Detective. Good stuff.

I just realized Primer 2 is 30 years old now.

Wolverton I've got the Fantagraphics collection from several years back of a bunch of Powerhouse material and it is some fantastic stuff.

Yeah, that's a great book, love the Golden Age origin issues.

Nice!

Nice! You have a fantastic late 40s / early 50s DC collection.

Fwiw, that sure does look familiar. I bet somebody here is going to be able to help you, because I think I've seen that around within the past few years. Maybe on CAF?

BOOT -- thanks for posting that pamphlet. That is great stuff.

Man. Those books are the goods. Among the coolest books I've seen posted here recently for sure. Holy crud, Mr. B, that book is amazing. Thanks! It will look good with Speed 18...