At what point did the Comic Book overtake the Pulps? 1 1

[Surfing Alien]

On 12/26/2021 at 7:40 PM, Sarg said:

They were viewed by them as old fashioned.

It would be good to know what slick magazines' circulations were at during the same period. 

I know for sure Argosy went slick at this time. And i've also read, but i'd have to dig it up, that the enormous success of the Armed Services Editions of paperbacks sent to the forces overseas throughout the war hooked this huge swath of American male readers to the small format paperback that could fit in a pocket. Wiki says 122 miliion were distributed from 1943 to 1947 and I'd have no reason to doubt it.

[rjpb]

On 12/26/2021 at 4:40 PM, Sarg said:

That's a fascinating graph. Contrary to my expectation, 1942 was the peak year for S&S. Presumably all other publishers peaked at that time, as well?

 

I don't doubt that millions of young men finding themselves sequestered in barracks every evening with nothing to do but read contributed mightily to the sales spike of all periodicals starting in 1942.

[waaaghboss]

On 12/26/2021 at 4:56 PM, rjpb said:

I don't doubt that millions of young men finding themselves sequestered in barracks every evening with nothing to do but read contributed mightily to the sales spike of all periodicals starting in 1942.

I'm curious if there was a brief slowdown in movie attendance or production out during the early part of the war that also might have pushed the entertainment dimes towards books for those still stateside.  

[rjpb]

On 12/27/2021 at 11:58 AM, waaaghboss said:

I'm curious if there was a brief slowdown in movie attendance or production out during the early part of the war that also might have pushed the entertainment dimes towards books for those still stateside.  

Weekly film attendance rose steadily from the early 30s (after a decline that can be attributed the depression and the popularity of radio as a free alternative) until 1944, and didn't start a sharp decline until the late 40s thanks to television.

[Cat-Man_America]

On 12/26/2021 at 8:45 AM, Bookery said:

@Catman76 is correct.  I don't see any correlation between pulp and comic book sales.  They are two different types of entertainment mediums.   And I'm never really comfortable with the idea of something "killing the pulps" or that they "died out".  It would be like saying comics died out when they abandoned the platinum-age hardcover format for stapled monthly publications.  "Pulp" as a specific published format died out.  But pulpish stories continued unabated in paperback and magazine formats, often with the same authors and artists.  I think, over time, the public began to favor novel-length stories (or even trilogies, etc.) over the short story format.  Though short stories are published to this day, they are certainly nowhere near as popular as they once were.  Paperbacks were simply a more handy format... novel all in one place (not serialized), no flaking, better quality paper, and they could be conveniently aligned on a bookshelf.

The major science fiction authors continued to be published in paperbacks, many of the crime and mystery authors as well, and westerns and romance thrived in paperback format.  James Bond simply modernizes stories like Nick Carter and the Continental Op, John D. MacDonald continues the Chandler tradition, Louis L'Amour replaced Max Brand and Zane Grey, Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) followed in the police-crime tradition, etc., etc.  

(I will add a caveat... I guess it's possible comic books helped replace the hero pulp line (which was aimed at a younger audience than most pulps anyway), but despite their reverence among today's collectors, hero pulps really only amount to a small number of titles and were never a dominant genre in the overall pulp market.  And most hero pulps can just as easily be classified as detective-genre or aviation-genre pulps anyway.  Doc Savage is the one hero pulp that crosses more securely into the science-fiction adventure genre, but there were other sf adventure heroes concurrently by authors such as E.E. Smith, Neil R. Jones, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc., -- they just didn't have their own exclusive magazine title).

I'm completely comfortable standing behind what I said the other day about death by a thousand paper cuts. The Street & Smith circulation chart provides some relevant clues, but only for S&S.  They were also at the forefront of experimentation with format sizes and never as lurid as some of the competition, so this data doesn't reflect a complete picture of pulp popularity based on a cross-section of publishers and content.  

In that respect, pulps are like vaudeville.  While one can say in ernest that the "variety show" format continued ...in burlesque as men's entertainment or on television as family entertainment, etc., it was never the same touring theatrical variety presentation as before.  So, in essence, as Bones would say to Captain Kirk "...she's dead, Jim."

On 12/27/2021 at 1:58 PM, waaaghboss said:

I'm curious if there was a brief slowdown in movie attendance or production out during the early part of the war that also might have pushed the entertainment dimes towards books for those still stateside.  

Movies only grew in popularity during this period.  Film showings were cheaper than buying pulps and comics, frequently 5 cents per showing at the "local Bijous" depending on venue location.  The big profit from movies was alway vending, ...even with today's inflated prices (Covid notwithstanding).  The war actually saw an increase in some kinds of consumerism as ...ironically... the war helped pull the U.S. economy out of the Depression.  There was a structured conservation of commodities used in the war effort, including paper products, but the limitations didn't constrain readership on the home front or abroad.  

My long winded two cents.

[buttock]

On 12/26/2021 at 8:58 AM, bronze johnny said:

Thanks Catman I was hoping you would add your intellectual and well studied insight into this period. Looking at my initial post and I can see that it’s as if my top is is exclusively based on a comic book v. Pulp premise. It’s not exclusive but there is a cross-over population that I believe may have contributed to the demise of the pulps by shifting to the comic books. The young adults who likely read pulps and/or comic books. The population of male adolescents aged 15-19 from 1900s to the 1950s exceeded that of adults 20-24. Include the 10-14 years along with the 15-19 years olds and the overall combined numbers can point to a larger readership potentially interested in comic books:

Unfortunately, the census data isn’t broken down by decade but one medium also contributing to the potential shift of adolescents (and even 10-14 year olds and adults in the 20-24 age group) prior to 1950 to comics and away from pulps is the influence that the comic strips had during the period preceding the Second World War. This is especially true of immigrants who learned to read and understand the English language by studying the comic strips in newspapers. English as a Second Language Course was not an omnipresent option for most immigrants migrating from countries with little or no familiarity with the English Language. The evolution of the comic strip to comic book also drew these readers to the new medium. I don’t have the immigration data for the period between 1900-1950 but much of the growth of America’s population during this time was attributed to immigration. The comic book had help in becoming the primary medium for newsstand entertainment and the question worth exploring is how much did the adolescents and the growing immigrant population contribute to the growth of the American Comic Book and goes back to my original question. I also want to point out that the comic book surpassing the Pulps did not mean an end to the latter simply by the former’s ascendancy. My original question is at what point did the comic book surpass the Pulps?

Can someone explain the A/PI graph for 1900?  Were only men immigrating?  Were women not included in the census? 

- edit -- reading up on the Page act... 

Edited December 27, 2021 by buttock