PLEASE HELP BEERBOHM OBTAIN HIP JOINT REPLACEMENT OPERATIONS

[BLBcomics-migration]

I know this is technically not the right forum, am feeling a bit desperate as a deadline approaches. Some of you may know me, some of you may not. Started doing comics thru the mail back in 1966, first comicon in 1967, opened my first comic book store in 1972, more recently began working on an in-depth book on the history of the comic book business in America starting in 1842 up thru the origins of the Direct Sales Market, something I was there for since the beginning of it.

 

I am in dire need of hip joint replacement operations slated now for Oct 15 in LA - and can use your help buying a book if you find something which interests you. Am taking reasonable offers on a wealth of vintage comic books, original art, pulps and assorted related material in my eBay store

 

http://stores.shop.ebay.com/BLB-COMICS

 

Thanks for looking - a lot of fun varied stuff in there - and, again, am accepting any and all reasonable offers on anything listed. I have to finish raising a few thousand more dollars to pay for this myself. Was canceled by HMO Aetna them citing "undisclosed pre-existing condition" BS when asked by the surgeon if i had ever been in a vehicle accident and i related the story of being a passenger in a van accident coming out of Houstoncon 1973, written up as "On The Road" in the Dark Horse book Between The Panels.

 

can you help me by buying a book? piece of art? something. deadline approaches

 

I WANT TO BE ABLE TO WALK AGAIN, to get back into my comics research

 

Robert Beerbohm

http://stores.shop.ebay.com/BLB-COMICS

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[The Troll King]

Sorry to hear about your troubles Bob!

 

You still going to make OAFCON in a couple weeks?

I'll take a look at your store and see if I can help you out.

[Cimm]

Sorry to hear about that, Bob! I truly hope it all works out for ya!

[CheezyWhiz]

Very sorry to hear about your difficulties. I hope everything works out, Bob. PM sent.

[BLBcomics-migration]

Dunno if i am going to be able to make OAF con - I've known those guys down in Oklahoma since the 67 Houstoncon, 1968 Dallascon, then their own 1970 & 72 Multicon.

 

This surgery is slated Oct 15 in LA a Thursday, so will be difficult to transition from Oklahoma City Sunday the 10th out for that - there is pre-op stuff a day or two before to consider as well

 

All I can say is I am asking people to look thru my ebay store, as that is about all I can handle putting stuff into easily - nicely described, large scans, speedy secure shipping, etc -

 

been talking with Bart off & on whether i will be able to make it to Oafcon - one of the nicest bunch of people on the planet

[BLBcomics-migration]

 

thanks a bunch - and if you could spread a word or two that i need to deal - and deal fairly - that i truly need to reach this goal, need to do it thru this week, otherwise a window of opportunity I had handed to me to get both sides replaced for just $18,000 might evaporate.

 

Dunno if my presence in the comics world will be missed, but until I get these hip joints repaired via being replaced with metal ones, I have pretty much dropped out of the comics world - after being inside comics fandom for 43 years now doing the comics thing.

 

The bone on bone pain has grown too intense for me to handle any more. Its been a downward spiral these last years - and like many other aspects of life, the world of dealing comics involves having to be able to pick them up, sort em, et al, which gets exponentially that much more difficult the more one accumulates.

 

I still remember the oh gee whiz rush when i first handled the original art to The Superman cover as Russ Cochran explained to me how i needed to trade him $100 worth of Golden Age comics cuz he was not interested in Superman, being more so an EC Frazetta Foster ERB type- buff

 

me, i like it all -

 

[/img]

 

if you get this print I have for sale in my ebay store at THE SUPERMAN #1 1933 COVER

 

- there is just about a dozen left now, and then they will be gone.

 

It provides the best opportunity to study what went into Jerry Siegel and joe Shuster to invent what they did - in many aspects is what brought us all here in the first place.

 

 

- look at Superman's head on the print - you can see where the rip mark was

 

- i could not bring myself to red opaque over Shuster Art. I did opaque where all the open areas were which did not contain Joe's art.

 

All i knew is i needed to preserve this, so in 1970 I had a couple hundred twice up poster prints made up - to make more people aware before the last remnant disappeared. The 1928 date is still a puzzlement.

 

- so much of our comics heritage was "lost" and dug out by fans of the art form. Now we know so much more about Humor Publishing,

 

I hope those who have read some of my comics research into our collective earliest origins, and if you feel you learned something from what i have seen in print now, can see their way clear to at least scroll thru my eBay store, and buy a book from me.

 

I want to finish my comics business history book. There is a bit more in the way of archival holdings of stuff i need to take a gander thru, and sift thru many paper documents here of the research I accumulated from the mid 90s to the mid 00s before my hip joint sockets broke at the Aug 2006 Chicago Wizard show,

 

when my son Will & I had to move my two tons of stuff i was bringing to shows four times in five hours because some a$s hole very skinny Chicago dealer stole 4 feet of my booth space, and the inept Wizard staff took 6 hours to come over to clean that mess up, long story short, the cartilage in my hip joints broke thru,

 

exposing bone on bone i found out once i got back home, began the tests, got right up on the surgery in Sept 20066, then HMO Aetna cancels the policy citing "pre-existing undisclosed condition" because i said yes when asked by the surgeon if i had ever been in a vehicle accident before,

 

as my cartilage was evidently crushed in the accident with me riding as a passenger out of Houstcon 1973, we were headed to New Orleans between Houston and Dallas that year, we all being like 21 years old & all, we were going to check out Bourbon Street, as well as check out Roger Nelson and Jack Diamond's store in NO as well.

 

They had invited Bud Plant, Terry Stroud, Swan and myself to spend a couple days in their city, (or spend it in Dallas waiting around for the Dallas comicon which was scheduled the very next week end)

 

- those Texas boys wuz feuding for a few years there. Kinda like Chicago vs Detroit in some aspect these days.

 

Anyways, tomorrow i am going to post a few letters i posted to the comics scholars list out of U-Florida i belong to - it is all about peak circulation times of the early 50s - you might find it fun - the person's question had been what year was the highest circulation of comic books ever.

 

and if, after reading this stuff, please order a book from me - make me a reasonable offer on something you like in my eBay store. I would truly appreciate it. I have about $5K to go to reach my goal.

 

best

robert

 

www.BLBcomics.com

http://stores.shop.ebay.com/BLB-COMICS

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[BR-migration]

Good luck Bob! You are one of the true comics historians.

 

-Brad

 

[Theagenes]

Bob, I really hope this works out for you.

You know how much I've enjoyed our discussions in the past and I really look forward to you getting more involved and finishing that book. I will definately check out the store and see if I can find something. (thumbs u

Best,

Jeff

[BLBcomics-migration]

Here we jump into a thread from comics scholars list which will tell part of the story from an earlier era:

 

Hi,

I'm trying to find some approximation on what was the highest annual number of comics sold, I saw a figure of 1,2 billion cited in "The 10 cent Plague" (actually 100 million a month is cited so I just did the math - clever huh). I'm also wondering if the quoted stat of a high of 750 titles a month is accurate. Anyone know also what the numbers/titles were just before the Wertham et al fallout was and after? - Jeff

 

Hi Jeff,

I saw your query in facebook, then spaced it out, my apologies

 

Without being able to check my records until I get my hip joints replaced, i have reports of upwards of 3 billion comic books published the summer of 1952 thru the summer of 1953 - the supposed high water mark for comic books being printed and out for sale - a veritable glut

 

with the USA awash in funny books then, the time became ripe for Wertham's SOTI, then a bunch of state attorney generals to begin seeking them to be banned, the Senate held those hearings April 1954, etc

 

>>> Dear Jeff, dear Robert,

 

I know of three different estimates for the industry all-time high in

the early-to-mid 50s:

 

- 60 million copies per month (Roger Sabin, Adult comics, 1993)

- 70-150 million copies per month (Les Daniels, DC Comics, 2004)

- 840 million copies per year (Edward Berridge citing a Wall Street

Journal estimate, Judge Dredd Megazine #259, 2007)

 

Best regards,

 

Martin de la Iglesia

 

 

BOB: Those are estimated sales - Roger's book was way too conservative - depends on where one looks

 

the glut was so huge, they were losing track of being able to track it all

 

the numbers i have seen and researched say 3 billion comic books printed in America that time span - roughly the summer of 1952 into the summer of 1953 -

 

with my broken hip joints in dire need of replacement, i simply cannot access the boxes of data i have gathered once i launched my serious research project circa 1994

 

For instance, i have a near complete run of Newsdealer beginning in 1946 when it was launched, changing its name to Best Seller circa 1964 or so - and i have most thru 1970 or so which takes us thru the Batman TV craze and its ensuing glut. each year they had an annual comics special issue

 

a complete run of American News Trade Journal 1919-till its demise in 1957

plus broken runs of other distributor trade journals - ALL the distributors had them

- just like, fer instance, Diamond, Capital City, etc had their propaganda mags, etc

 

One has to add all their numbers together - one comes up with 3 billion during that high water mark

 

1954 saw the back lash

 

best

 

robert

[BLBcomics-migration]

 

"the numbers i have seen and researched say 3 billion comic books printed in America that time span - roughly the summer of 1952 into the summer of 1953 ..."

 

- So of the number that were printed, what do you think would have been the number sold?

Thanks, Danny

 

Leonard Rifas sent me this quote,

Thanks for the circulation statistic. I’d like to use it in my revised thesis, maybe in contrast to this quote from Matthew J. Costello’s _Secret Identity Crisis_: “The [comic book] industry went into the doldrums in the 1950s, but emerged again in the 1960s [….]” p.4.

 

BOB: Trip is, as i think i have ascertained from decades of research into the retailing, publishing & distribution business side of the comics world, as that is the aspect to which i devoted much of my life till culminating in crazy aspects around the time of the "death" of Superman, for me, more so, the tragic death of world class artist Rick Griffin back in Aug 1991 forcing the eventual closure of my last brick & mortar outlet after 22 years helping to build the comics world in the Bay Area, made me never want to contemplate a "new" comic book order form ever again -

 

there was something like 3 billion comic books printed during mid 1952-mid 1953

 

How many got "sold" becomes a somewhat more nebulous creature which I will get to a bit later here

 

Now take a gander at these pics of vintage comic book scenarios via this URL

 

http://www.detective27.com/comicsonsteps.htm

 

especially the first photo of the young man set up as a comic book dealer out front his house circa what looks to be mid to early late 40s based on the covers i can make out

 

Replicate this in 100s of 1000s of comic book "lemon-aide" stands all over the country of the youth of America obsessed with comic books - there was an entire sub-culture of young entrepenours wheeling & dealing, block after block, neighborhood after neighborhood, city after city,

 

- in older eyes, this was an epidemic in need of a "healing"

 

Now scroll down to where you see a pickup truck

- being made ready for comic book bonfires in 1954

 

Church group crazies made it a cause to burn the evils to which children had turned during and coming out of World War Two

 

Comics sold very well during WW2 - this is an established statistic

 

- and with the mustering out of 12 million USA Armed Forces beginning late 1945, huge numbers of these people wanted to make a new business for themselves

 

- witness the dramatic increase in brand new start ups in addition to the "established" comics publishers beginning with this mustering out of the troops - all wanting to get married and provide a living for their growing families

 

the publisher & distributor trade journals of the day, of which i have been an avid accumulator archeologist for decades now, having a complete run of the American News Trade Journal 1919-1957, most of Newsdealer 1946-late 1960s, etc, are full of research studies pointing out that 95% of all young males, coupled with 90% of all young females,

 

coupled with over 80% of the older population in general profess being avid readers of comics whether in the magazines most of us call "comic books," and just as much in the newspaper supplement venue,

 

there is a reason Hearst, Pulitzer, Bennett, et al fought the comic strip wars back in the day - before TV began killing print media for a while in the 50s, similar in concept to what is going on with the internet supplanting "normal" TV as well as much of the paper publishing world

 

- and the comics became shriller to attract attention just as TV began absorbing the attention span of Americans

 

- and more & more "publishers" entered the business in the late 40s thru the early 50s - all wanting a piece of the American "Dream"

 

The sales estimates i put together involving the 3 billion printed in the time span i mentioned are something like 1.3 billion sold

 

That left a huge glut of comic book magazines flooding the landscape, and facilitated the rise of the young comic book dealer which you see in that first pic in the URL above

 

the concept of "landfill" not there in the public consciousness quite yet, the country saw an exorcism of sorts in he form of bonfires ala what one would have seen in Nazi Germany in the 30s

 

- replicated all over the country - some of the bonfires had their pictures taken, showing up in newspapers - there is a famous one from 1954 out of the Omaha World Herald,

 

- rock & roll would be named the main subversive just a few short years later - then video games, et al -

 

I think many of the comic book and strip history books have merely a piece of the puzzle - like a bunch of blind people each feeling a piece of the elephant

 

- well-meaning, yet missing the boat on so many aspects of what evolved

 

- the comics business in America evolves so differently over the decades beginning in 1842 with America's first "real" comic book magazine. As methods of reproduction and distribution grew, so did the formats which brought the comics to the public.

 

In 1998 I got side-tracked from the Famous Funnies format comics magazines with exploring the world of 1800s comics as well as the expanding comic book business of the first few decades of the 20th century - documenting & indexing 1000s of strips in 100s of publications - the fruits of which can be seen in Overstreet Comic Book Price Guides in a steady expansion since I compiled my first one in Oct 1996 for OPG #27

 

- they came up with the best scenarios they thought they could based on limited data, convoluted data, rose-colored lenses looking at the data,

 

 

This is an epic tale i labored on for some 15 years following the death of Rick Griffin. I want to finish my book, present to the academic and comics world the sum of all the parts I analyzed in depth as a form of catharsis. The death of my friend and business partner took a lot out of me. Rick did not leave a will and the legal wrangles became very ugly - his probate lasted 6.5 years, the lawyers won.

 

But i can not complete this project and move on - have been laboring instead these past few years with broken hip joints with zero protective cartilage, now in dire need of replacement, a gift which keeps on giving written up in Dark Horse's Between the Panels as On The Road. The hip joint cartilage absorbed the main aspect of the impact, wearing off at a faster rate, leaving bone on bone - me, I am a victim of HMO Aetna canceling the policy,

 

further correlating of the data accumulated placed on forced hiatus until i can get these hip joints replaced - after a long struggle getting "there," now slated for Oct 15 in LA - something i have to pay for myself - hopefully not a bridge too far, a carrot dangling on a string at the end of a stick i never quite get to.

 

I have a few thousand dollars yet to go to reach my goal - am asking comics community people to buy a book from me, make a reasonable offer, if you see something in my eBay store you might fancy. It is getting to be crunch time for me now.

 

best

robert

 

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[BLBcomics-migration]

My friend Tim Stroup wrote this in:

"Some numbers previously given out by Bob and others with refs:

 

1937 - Audit Bureau of Circulation figures for the last six months of 1937

show comics sales of some 5,000,000 copies. This represented 3.5% of the

total magazine newsstand sales. (5 million divided by 6 = 833,000 per

month). [Newsdealer, July. 1954, from Beerbohm].

1948 - 50 million copies sold each month. [1954 Senate Interim Report on

Comic Books and Juvenile Deliquency, pg 22]

1951 - ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) estimates 345,000,000 comic books

sold the last 6 months of the year. 32 % of the total magazine newsstand

sales. [Newsdealer, July. 1954, from Beerbohm].

1952 - 50 million comics sold each month. [Newsdealer, July. 1959, from

Beerbohm].

1953 - 30 million comics sold each month. [Newsdealer, Nov. 1953, from

Beerbohm. May only be Audit Bureau of Circulation titles.].

1954 - Between 50 and 60 million copies of comic books sold per month.

[Newsdealer, July. 1954, from Beerbohm].

1954 - 80 million comic books sold each month. (Time Magazine, Sep. 27,

1954, "Horror On the Newstands" article also May 3, 1954, "Horror

Comics").

1958 - 30 million comics sold each month during the first few months of

1958. [Newsdealer, July, 1959, from Beerbohm].

 

Hope this helps. - Tim

 

to which i replied:

 

Hi Tim

 

Thanks for digging some of this out of previous earlier emails on my research, i reckon some of that came thru GCD-channels back when i was heavily involved with this type of research, before i got off into the 1800s comics consciousness expansion i thought became more important to me in the late 90s.

 

Yup, that be the "independent" distributors

- does not include American news Company

- which was another whole part of the ball game -

 

remember, the 3 billion give or take is what i figure got printed

 

- NOT sales - just to be clear

 

there was a HUGE glut leading up to the intro of the Code, triggering bonfires across the country

 

Newsdealer was not including American News Company numbers - whom the Indies considered the enemy,

 

bob

 

and Leonard Rifas chimed in:

 

Yup, that be the "independent" distributors

- does not include American news Company

- which was another whole part of the ball game –

 

Just a “part”? Amy Kiste Nyberg’s _Seal of Approval_ says “… the distribution problems the industry experienced in the mid-1950s were due not to retailers’ resistance to carrying the ‘controversial’ comics but rather to the decision by American News Company, which distributed more than half of all comic books published at the time [emphasis added] to pull out of magazine distribution following federal antitrust action. The demise of American News Company left many publishers without a way to distribute their titles.” (pp. x-xi; see also pp. 125-6. Rather than digging out my copy, I’m relying on books.google.com, which does not include p. 125 in its preview.)

 

Has it only been 11 years since this provocative observation found print? I expected that this would lead to a major reevaluation of the comics collapse (or to some kind of refutation), but I have not yet encountered a study that focuses on this angle.

 

there was a HUGE glut leading up to the intro of the Code, triggering bonfires across the country

 

I had never heard this attractive theory for explaining the comics bonfires before.

 

In my forthcoming article on funny animal comics, I repeat the claim (maybe it’s not too late to correct it, if you have better information) that:

 

In addition to the newsstand sales that Dell handled, Western Publishing distributed giveaway premium comics, featuring many of the same funny animal stars, through chain stores and other clients with press runs reported as high as five million or more, without Dell’s involvement.

 

This matters more to those trying to get a picture of the history of comics as an industry than to those focused on the evolution of comics as a medium of artistic expression. Again, it’s hard to get the big picture of how comics were distributed.

 

I have long wanted to see a simple, reliable graph summarizing in continuous lines the aggregate circulation of American comic books from their start to the present.

 

It took me a while to catch up with reading the highly interesting discussions that happened on the list during those weeks when I was away from all keyboards. I missed you.

 

Regards,

 

Leonard Rifas

 

to which i replied:

 

hey, i wrote "another whole part of the ball game" in haste, this stuff coming stream of consciousness, with just a modicum of edit before send mode.

 

Let me explain that phrase - "whole part" being the key phrase

 

As in by the early 1950s, the Independent movement away from ANC had grown to be roughly half of the comics market - the ex-bootleggers starting in late 1932 into 1933 went to war with American News Company, started during the Civil War, by the 1880s defacto monopoly in America. Frank Munsey tried a "Direct Sales" underground method to try to break away from ANC back in the 1890s to little avail.

 

One statistic i read states there were some 135,000 outlets for periodicals in America by the time the Feds began investigating ANC for monopoly organized crime stuff circa 1953-54

 

ANC outright owned 115,000 of the buildings housing said outlets

 

When ANC as a distribution business went under in 1957 from all the pressure brought to bear, they merely changed names and went into the real estate business. very abrupt, caught major publishers like Delacorte, Goodman, etc at al unawares.

 

They had to go hat in hand to Sampliner & Donenfeld to work out deals - both damn near went under. I have all the Newsdealer articles talking about these powerhouse publishers finally becoming "independent"

 

best

 

bob

[BLBcomics-migration]

I need your help Buying a Book from Bob this week into next week as I approach the surgery date of Oct 15

 

- I still have some thousands of dollars to go as I need to finish building the amount for the actual surgeries

 

plus a bit to get thru the post-op rehab recovery time which is predicated by the operations themselves.

 

 

[BaltimoreLauren]

I've spread the word via Twitter and Facebook! For those of you who have never bought from BLB, I can assure you, he is one of the nicest dealers my dad and I have ever come across. He is a real gem in this hobby!

[VintageComics]

PM sent

[Sardo Numspar]

Pm sent

[thehumantorch]

Offer made, good luck Bob.

 

Dave

[HGComics-migration]

My friend Tim Stroup wrote this in:

"Some numbers previously given out by Bob and others with refs:

 

1937 - Audit Bureau of Circulation figures for the last six months of 1937

show comics sales of some 5,000,000 copies. This represented 3.5% of the

total magazine newsstand sales. (5 million divided by 6 = 833,000 per

month). [Newsdealer, July. 1954, from Beerbohm].

1948 - 50 million copies sold each month. [1954 Senate Interim Report on

Comic Books and Juvenile Deliquency, pg 22]

1951 - ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) estimates 345,000,000 comic books

sold the last 6 months of the year. 32 % of the total magazine newsstand

sales. [Newsdealer, July. 1954, from Beerbohm].

1952 - 50 million comics sold each month. [Newsdealer, July. 1959, from

Beerbohm].

1953 - 30 million comics sold each month. [Newsdealer, Nov. 1953, from

Beerbohm. May only be Audit Bureau of Circulation titles.].

1954 - Between 50 and 60 million copies of comic books sold per month.

[Newsdealer, July. 1954, from Beerbohm].

1954 - 80 million comic books sold each month. (Time Magazine, Sep. 27,

1954, "Horror On the Newstands" article also May 3, 1954, "Horror

Comics").

1958 - 30 million comics sold each month during the first few months of

1958. [Newsdealer, July, 1959, from Beerbohm].

 

Hope this helps. - Tim

 

to which i replied:

 

Hi Tim

 

Thanks for digging some of this out of previous earlier emails on my research, i reckon some of that came thru GCD-channels back when i was heavily involved with this type of research, before i got off into the 1800s comics consciousness expansion i thought became more important to me in the late 90s.

 

Yup, that be the "independent" distributors

- does not include American news Company

- which was another whole part of the ball game -

 

remember, the 3 billion give or take is what i figure got printed

 

- NOT sales - just to be clear

 

there was a HUGE glut leading up to the intro of the Code, triggering bonfires across the country

 

Newsdealer was not including American News Company numbers - whom the Indies considered the enemy,

 

bob

 

and Leonard Rifas chimed in:

 

Yup, that be the "independent" distributors

- does not include American news Company

- which was another whole part of the ball game –

 

Just a “part”? Amy Kiste Nyberg’s _Seal of Approval_ says “… the distribution problems the industry experienced in the mid-1950s were due not to retailers’ resistance to carrying the ‘controversial’ comics but rather to the decision by American News Company, which distributed more than half of all comic books published at the time [emphasis added] to pull out of magazine distribution following federal antitrust action. The demise of American News Company left many publishers without a way to distribute their titles.” (pp. x-xi; see also pp. 125-6. Rather than digging out my copy, I’m relying on books.google.com, which does not include p. 125 in its preview.)

 

Has it only been 11 years since this provocative observation found print? I expected that this would lead to a major reevaluation of the comics collapse (or to some kind of refutation), but I have not yet encountered a study that focuses on this angle.

 

there was a HUGE glut leading up to the intro of the Code, triggering bonfires across the country

 

I had never heard this attractive theory for explaining the comics bonfires before.

 

In my forthcoming article on funny animal comics, I repeat the claim (maybe it’s not too late to correct it, if you have better information) that:

 

In addition to the newsstand sales that Dell handled, Western Publishing distributed giveaway premium comics, featuring many of the same funny animal stars, through chain stores and other clients with press runs reported as high as five million or more, without Dell’s involvement.

 

This matters more to those trying to get a picture of the history of comics as an industry than to those focused on the evolution of comics as a medium of artistic expression. Again, it’s hard to get the big picture of how comics were distributed.

 

I have long wanted to see a simple, reliable graph summarizing in continuous lines the aggregate circulation of American comic books from their start to the present.

 

It took me a while to catch up with reading the highly interesting discussions that happened on the list during those weeks when I was away from all keyboards. I missed you.

 

Regards,

 

Leonard Rifas

 

to which i replied:

 

hey, i wrote "another whole part of the ball game" in haste, this stuff coming stream of consciousness, with just a modicum of edit before send mode.

 

Let me explain that phrase - "whole part" being the key phrase

 

As in by the early 1950s, the Independent movement away from ANC had grown to be roughly half of the comics market - the ex-bootleggers starting in late 1932 into 1933 went to war with American News Company, started during the Civil War, by the 1880s defacto monopoly in America. Frank Munsey tried a "Direct Sales" underground method to try to break away from ANC back in the 1890s to little avail.

 

One statistic i read states there were some 135,000 outlets for periodicals in America by the time the Feds began investigating ANC for monopoly organized crime stuff circa 1953-54

 

ANC outright owned 115,000 of the buildings housing said outlets

 

When ANC as a distribution business went under in 1957 from all the pressure brought to bear, they merely changed names and went into the real estate business. very abrupt, caught major publishers like Delacorte, Goodman, etc at al unawares.

 

They had to go hat in hand to Sampliner & Donenfeld to work out deals - both damn near went under. I have all the Newsdealer articles talking about these powerhouse publishers finally becoming "independent"

 

best

 

bob

 

back in the 50's our census was probably 200 million, so that being said 3 billion seems quite a stretch for comics.

[Speedy-D]

back in the 50's our census was probably 200 million, so that being said 3 billion seems quite a stretch for comics.

 

That's about a comic a week for every third person, I think.

[BLBcomics-migration]

 

back in the 50's our census was probably 200 million, so that being said 3 billion seems quite a stretch for comics.

 

The number is what was printed i state - and believe rather strongly

 

sales same time span were give or take 1.3 billion, is what i figure -

 

what i discuss was the huge GLUT of printed comic books - many of which found their way out back doors into secondary market

 

- and THAT was the glut which swept America by the summer of 1953 when the kids of America went comics nuts in a huge way

 

and the bonfires began - stuff the ACLU tried to fight

 

and reasons why so many books disappeared

 

you gots to go back in and read the text,

even though it is written off the top of my head

- tis explained therein, please believe

 

http://stores.shop.ebay.com/BLB-COMICS

http://www.facebook.com/robert.beerbohm

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