Marvel Overhang -When did it dissappear?

[Aman619]

Stans on 60 Minutes Wednesday tomorrow night. Just saw a promo..... maybe theyll ask him!

[nochips]

I thought Sparta was in Illinois

 

There's probably a Sparta in half the states in America; the names of famous European cities get used over and over here in the States. Are you sure the Sparta in Illinois (if there is one) is where the printing occurred?

 

Sprata, Illinois is the place. I have been there and I was fortunate to have bought the Head of productions collection in 1998. Nice books, wish I had them today.

 

In the 1950s, both Marvel and DC were printed in Sparta, Illinois (name changed to World Color in later years). In late 50s or early very 60s Marvel took the contract away from these people and started using Eastern Color on the East Coast. You have heard of the Eastern File Copies.

 

I have one uncut cover sheet from the early 80s. It has Archie, Harvey, Gold Key, and Marvel covers on it. So, they msut have done some printing for them again in later years. The collection was 99% DC comics, the seller explained the reason was what I described above. I still have some of his File Copies with notes on the splash pages describing run dates and what press was used. Cool Stuff.

 

Either way, in the mid 1990s, World Color totally lost the Contract from DC. They printed Teen magazine in the 70s. I think I have a David Cassidy mag from the collection. The plant was closed and subsequently sold off(BK) formally.

 

They had a sale in the mid 1990s. I missed it, they were dumping hundreds of thousands of books in dumpsters. The auction was not a great success. Today, if they had one, it would raise more money that you can imagine.