No more Foxing around: Complete run of WEIRD COMICS, 1940-1942! 1 1

[Point Five]

Weird Comics #14, May 1941. Super war cover with The Eagle (now shirted), still a full 6+ months before Pearl Harbor. Sadly the spine is brittle on this copy, but oh well. It's such a tough book, I doubt I'll ever find a nicer one.

 

 

 

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

Weird Comics #7, October 1940. Looks like the Dart and Ace changed hair color since last issue ...eh, blond, red-haired, whatever. I imagine the colorist had to knock these things out pretty quickly.

 

Issues #6 and 7, and later #9, all came from Sharon. Thanks again Sha!

 

 

 

Thought I had a scan of my only issue #7 on the computer but I don't. Damn, now I have to crack out one of my Golden Age boxes this weekend and find it!!

 

Love the sorceress story in this book. What a great series and thanks for posting the run.

[comicjack]

The 14 has all the colors to attract one's interest

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

And now a break from our sponsor, "Kooba Cola!"

 

Have a cold refreshing KOOBA COLA!

September 12, 2012

 

Some things never change. Just as youngsters today do, kids in the 1940’s loved soda pop. Many modern cola drinks flourished during the Depression and war years: Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, and Royal Crown Cola were all big during the Forties. Other brands were big sellers during the war years but are minor players today; although Moxie was popular enough to become a slang term in the American lexicon during the pre-war period, that soft drink is largely forgotten these days (although it’s still available in the Northeastern U.S.).

 

And then there was Kooba Cola. Good ol’ Kooba! Cold, refreshing, tasty, and good for you, packed full of Vitamin B! The company was so sure their product would be a hit with kids that they even gave away free samples, as this ad from Weird Comics #1 (April 1940) illustrates:

 

Vintage Kooba Cola ad - 1940's

 

What’s that you say? You never heard of Kooba Cola? Come on! There were ads for it in lots of comic books: Weird Comics, Mystery Man Comics, Wonderworld Comics…Kooba even sponsored the Blue Beetle radio show!

 

And that’s where you might start to smell a rat if you’re fairly knowledgeable on the subject of Golden Age Comics. All of the titles I mentioned were published by Fox Publications, one of the more controversial publishers of the era — and The Blue Beetle was a Fox character.

 

Victor Fox had, at one time, kept the books for Detective Comics which, at that time, was Superman’s publishing company. Fox saw the early sales numbers after Supes was first introduced and realized there might be some serious money to be made in the “costumed hero” business. So he quit his job at DC and started his own publishing company. He didn’t keep “in house” artists, but instead farmed out the work to studios. Fox asked Will Eisner (of The Spirit fame) to create a Superman-type character, and Eisner’s studio obliged with Wonder Man:

 

Wonder Comics #1, May 1939

 

…who debuted in Wonder Comics #1 (May, 1939). Wonder Man didn’t look much like Superman, but he was, for all intents and purposes, the same character, endowed with super-strength, invulnerability, the ability to leap great distances. And in a market which wasn’t yet hip-deep in costumed adventurer characters, DC definitely noticed the resemblance. So they sent their ex-employee Victor Fox a “cease and desist” letter, and Wonder Man was gone after just a single appearance.

 

That little tale will give you a glimpse into who Victor Fox was at his core: a guy who was great at coming up with ideas to make money – unfortunately, they were usually somebody else’s ideas.

 

In the 1940’s comics and soda pop went hand in hand together. We need to remember that “comics shops” didn’t exist back then – hell, there weren’t even 7-11s! Comics were sold at newsstands and “mom and pop” soda shops. As late as the 1970’s you could still buy comics at “soda fountains”. In my hometown we had a downtown soda shop called Cromer’s, which had a huge comics selection — Mom and Pop Cromer never sent comics back to the distributor, so a comic would potentially stay on the rack forever until somebody bought it. So, for example, when I started reading Marvel’s Doctor Strange in early 1976 and came into the story somewhere in the middle, I pedaled my bike down to Cromer’s in a successful hunt for back issues so I could get a “running start” into the story. Cromers’ was jam-packed with every small item you could think of, very cramped and crowded, but they still kept a small four stool counter and soda fountain. The mirror behind the fountain was festooned with scores of class photos of neighborhood kids, including yellowed photos going the whole way back to the 1950’s. In fact, the store still had merchandise which went back that far – I once saw a plastic pack of girls’ bobby socks hanging on a peg, twenty years after they’d gone out of style.

 

I miss places like Cromer’s; you could always find lots of cool stuff (and great back issues of comics) in them…

 

Victor Fox was well aware of the comics/cola connection, so he decided to go into the soda pop business. He created a product called Kooba Cola and began marketing it in the comics his company published. Kooba even became the major sponsor of the short-lived Blue Beetle radio program. Comic book ads promised a free 12 oz. bottle of Kooba (“Enough for two!”) if you cut out the coupon and presented it to the owner of the soda shop where you bought your copy of Fantastic or Science. But there was one problem…

 

Not a single bottle of Kooba Cola was actually produced. Ever.

 

Fox was no fool. He realized that he could sink a ton of cash into this project and easily never see a dime in profit. So he figured he’d go about it in reverse – drum up the demand and then create the supply. There was no “secret formula” for Kooba, either – there was no formula at all. Fox’s “free Kooba” coupons were good for a “free prize” if your local shop didn’t have the soda (which they didn’t) – just mail your coupon in to Fox Publications to claim your free prize. Fox figured he’d just show up at a major soft drink bottler (like Coke or Pepsi) with a truckload of clipped coupons and scores of letters from soda shop owners demanding Kooba, and any bottler worth his salt would jump at the chance to make some bucks by creating and bottling Kooba. Fox and the bottler would split the profits and everything would be jake.

 

But nobody cared. In a market positively saturated with cola soft drinks, Kooba was just one among many, many choices. Not only did Fox never see a truckload of clipped coupons and letters, it didn’t even amount to a decent boxload. The Blue Beetle radio program never had an actual sponsor, since Kooba was nothing but smoke and mirrors, and the show died quickly. Kooba had a label design but Fox never settled on a color – the ads seldom show the label as the same color twice. In fact. all Fox really accomplished was to take valuable ad space away from legitimate advertisers in order to hawk his non-existent product.

 

It was a gutsy move on the part of Victor Fox, but he lost on this particular roll of the dice. Kooba Cola fizzled (if you’ll pardon the pun) and ultimately became just another wild story from the weird and wonderful Golden Age of Comics.

 

Have fun! — Steve

 

Copyright 2012, Steven A. Lopez. All rights reserved

[Point Five]

I've always loved that story about Kooba Cola. Funny though, I posted a version of that in the main Fox Comics thread many years ago and a poster here gave me quite a bit of pushback on it, saying that there was never any proof that the whole thing was a hoax. I guess they do have a point in that all these years later there's no way to be 100% certain, but from all the stories that have swirled around Victor Fox, it certainly sounds like something he would have done.

 

 

[Point Five]

Love the sorceress story in this book.

Some of the Sorceress of Zoom stories are pretty wild. This is a page from her story in Weird #12.

(It's not every splash page that features a woman whipping a half-naked man and stabbing him through the chest... even in a Fox book.)

 

 

 

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

Love the sorceress story in this book.

Some of the Sorceress of Zoom stories are pretty wild. This is a page from her story in Weird #12.

(It's not every splash page that features a woman whipping a half-naked man and stabbing him through the chest... even in a Fox book.)

 

 

 

Wow! Don't anger the Sorceress! Love it!

Edited November 5, 2014 by 40YrsCollctngCmcs

[Point Five]

Weird Comics #15, June 1941. Another Dart and Ace cover edging towards war themes. And it's another post-Eisner/Iger Fox cover that looks like it was knocked out in a hurry, but I love the loud colors and the big cheesy grins on the heroes' faces. Every early golden age superhero book should look this cheerful and stupid.

 

 

 

[Point Five]

Weird Comics #16, July 1941. Cool flag cover, and it's all war covers from here on in. "The Eagle swoops down to fight Nazi fiends!"

 

(Yet another issue that came from Sharon...thanks once again!)

 

 

 

[cheetah]

Weird Comics #16, July 1941. Cool flag cover, and it's all war covers from here on in. "The Eagle swoops down to fight Nazi fiends!"

 

(Yet another issue that came from Sharon...thanks once again!)

 

 

 

This one might be my favorite.

[Point Five]

This one might be my favorite.

(thumbs u

 

 

[Point Five]

Weird Comics #17, August 1941. Another great anti-Nazi cover, still well in advance of Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war.

 

While it's hard to know for sure, IMO this is most likely the rarest issue of the run, even beating out #20. With just about all of the other issues I'm aware of at least one copy that was up for sale years ago or is currently in someone's collection, but I've never seen another #17 anywhere. (That said, if you're reading this and you've got one, please post it!) The print runs of all of the Fox titles were dwindling towards the end, making the late 1941/early 1942 issues the hardest to find. Verrry tough book.

 

 

 

[piper]

Jon, any idea what print runs were like at this point in time?

[telerites]

That 17 is great, Jon. I don't ever remember seeing a copy.

 

I have a couple of raw issues of Weird and these two slabbed. So many tough books in the run. Again, great achievement.

 

 

[Point Five]

That 17 is great, Jon. I don't ever remember seeing a copy.

 

I have a couple of raw issues of Weird and these two slabbed. So many tough books in the run. Again, great achievement.

Sweet books, Jeff! (thumbs u Would love to see the raws as well when time allows.

 

 

[Point Five]

Jon, any idea what print runs were like at this point in time?

That is a great question. No idea and I can only speculate.

 

I'm always intrigued by the robust print runs of the early GA in general. Superman #1 is said to have sold 900,000 copies... an unthinkably high number by today's standards. And a line from Gerard Jones' Men of Tomorrow book has stayed with me: "Pap that hardly anyone in the industry noticed was selling 100,000 to 200,000 copies a month." So I'd have to guess it was in the high tens of thousands, at the very least?

 

Not sure why there would be fewer of these existing today than of other superhero issues from the same time period, except (perhaps) that this title didn't feature any iconic superheroes, so maybe on top of low print runs/distribution issues, it was among the first to go when the WWII paper drives started up. But again, I'm just throwing out some guesses.

 

 

[Speedy-D]

Weird Comics #15, June 1941. Another Dart and Ace cover edging towards war themes. And it's another post-Eisner/Iger Fox cover that looks like it was knocked out in a hurry, but I love the loud colors and the big cheesy grins on the heroes' faces. Every early golden age superhero book should look this cheerful and stupid.

 

 

Can these guys fly, or do they spend all their time jumping out of planes without parachutes?

[AJD]

Weird Comics #17, August 1941. Another great anti-Nazi cover, still well in advance of Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war.

 

While it's hard to know for sure, IMO this is most likely the rarest issue of the run, even beating out #20. With just about all of the other issues I'm aware of at least one copy that was up for sale years ago or is currently in someone's collection, but I've never seen another #17 anywhere. (That said, if you're reading this and you've got one, please post it!) The print runs of all of the Fox titles were dwindling towards the end, making the late 1941/early 1942 issues the hardest to find. Verrry tough book.

 

 

 

Very much like this one! Might have to pick one up.

[jpepx78]

Jon, any idea what print runs were like at this point in time?

That is a great question. No idea and I can only speculate.

 

I'm always intrigued by the robust print runs of the early GA in general. Superman #1 is said to have sold 900,000 copies... an unthinkably high number by today's standards. And a line from Gerard Jones' Men of Tomorrow book has stayed with me: "Pap that hardly anyone in the industry noticed was selling 100,000 to 200,000 copies a month." So I'd have to guess it was in the high tens of thousands, at the very least?

 

Not sure why there would be fewer of these existing today than of other superhero issues from the same time period, except (perhaps) that this title didn't feature any iconic superheroes, so maybe on top of low print runs/distribution issues, it was among the first to go when the WWII paper drives started up. But again, I'm just throwing out some guesses.

I believe the same question was asked several years on the boards and someone mentioned this message on Russ Maheras' research on circulation data from the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

http://www.hoboes.com/pub/Comics/About%20Comics/Business/Top%20Comics%20and%20Publishers/Comic%20Book%20Circulation%20Data/

 

Here is a relevant excerpt for Fox Comics from that message:

 

Below is comic book circulation data I gleaned from the Audit Bureau of

Circulations microfilm covering the period of 1937-'43, '44, and '49-50. The

only ABC location that has data more than 15 years or so years old is the main

branch in Schaumburg, Ill. (a suburb just west of Chicago).

 

Fox Comics Group. Consists of the following three titles: Fantastic Comics,

Mystery Comics, and Wonderworld Comics. To find average monthly circulation

of a single title in the group, divide the monthly amount by three.

 

Jul 1939 - 227,533

Aug 1939 - 418,597

Sep 1939 - 628,529

Oct 1939 - 683,698

Nov 1939 - 657,364

Dec 1939 - 890,701

 

Fox Comics Group: During the reporting period, the Fox group

consisted of the following 11 titles - Fantastic Comics, Mystery Men

Comics, Wonderworld Comics, Science Comics, Weird Comics, The Blue

Beetle, The Flame, The Green Mask, Samson, Rex Darter, and Big 3. To

calculate the average monthly circulation of any one title in the

group, divide the numbers below by 11. Sorry, that's the best that

can be done under ABC's lump sum format.

 

Jan 1940 - 990,171

Feb 1940 - 1,372,230

Mar 1940 - 1,123,279

Apr 1940 - 1,136,476

May 1940 - 1,412,872

Jun 1940 - 862,878

Jul 1940 - 1,164,251

Aug 1940 - 965,441

Sep 1940 - 1,121,828

Oct 1940 - 959,991

Nov 1940 - 1,008,529

Dec 1940 - 1,077,887

 

[comicjack]

Hard to believe that only a hand full exist today on some of those books.Thanks for all your work love that stuff