Weird Worlds v1 #10

Weird Worlds v1 #10 (December 1970) [Eerie Publications Inc.]

Today we celebrate Myron Fass published comic books.  I'm not sure when this issue of Weird Worlds was actually on sale, but since it has a cover date of Dec., I am using it to talk about our friend Myron.  It is actually the first issue of this 6 issue series, though it is numbered 10.

Fass was a comic book artist who later teamed up with Stanley Harris in the late 1950s until mid 1977 to publish thousands of magazines as well as hundreds of comic books. He was known as the king of the one-shot for putting out so many single-focus, single-issue titles like the John Lennon Memorial Issue.  Though the majority of his comic books were published under the Eerie Publications company name, he tried to brand his magazines/comics using the Countrywide Publications name as seen by the CWP logo on many of the publications.

Operating on the fringe of publishing, Fass & Harris used over 30 company names, but just mainly two for their comic books; Eerie for mag size b/w comics and MF Enterprises (ie Myron Fass enterprises)  for their standard color comics.  MF was also used on other magazines, while Eerie never was.  After they acrimoniously split in 1977, Fass used Stories, Layouts & Press Inc. and S.J. Publications Inc. for Gasm and Rump respectively.   Harris kept the Modern Day Periodicals Inc. imprint and put out his b/w comics  mags with it.  They both used these company names on other non-comics magazines as well.

With the short lived adult title Gasm, Fass used artists that also worked in regular comic books like Marshall Rogers, Frank Cirocco, Gene Day, Mark Wheatley, John Workman and Chuck Dixion.  Some of them also did comic strips and illustrations for his men's mags and other titles. Most Fass magazines were full of reprinted or pirated material, so Gasm is bit different as most of the comics in it were commissioned for the comic title.  Of course, that material was reprinted later in various Fass mags.  Rump was the last of Fass comics in 1980 and was just reprints from Gasm and his other magazines.

Harris kept the "Eerie" type comic magazines going until 1982, with but only a few issues each year.  Harris went on to become a very successful magazine publisher with Harris Publications continuing to this day, even though Stanley left a few years ago.  He even reentered mainstream comics as Harris Comics in 1991.

For more on all the Eerie titles like Horror Tales, Tales From The Tomb, Terror Tales, and Weird, visit the Eerie Publications Index which has tons of info.

An excellent book that covers Eerie and even more of Myron's publishing history is The Weird World of Eerie Publications by Mike Howlett, well worth the price.  For more on Myron than you ever wanted to know, check out the two From The Tomb magazine issues with Frank Motler articles on him (#24 & #25).

River On Fire 1969

Justice League Of America #78 (February 1970) [National Periodical Publications]

On the Newsstands today in 1969 was this issue of the JLA.  According to Mike's Amazing World of Comics (www.dcindexes.com), this issue shipped on Dec. 11, 1969.

So, what's interesting about this issue?  It actually is a great issue showcasing superhero comics and comic book fandom of the time.

First, the JLA story begins with the river running near Star City accidentally catching fire because of its polluted state and the superheroes needing to put it out.  The whole story by Denny O'Neil is one of the many of "relevant" comics that were the vogue at this time. 

This story also is the introduction and first use of the JLA satellite headquarters that lasted for years and was even in the cartoons.  Of course, 1969 is the year of the first Apollo moon landing, so men in space were on every one's mind.

Second, its letters pages contain fine examples of fandom at the time.  The first letter is from Mike Tiefenbacher who (along with Jerry Sinkovec) a few years later in 1973 took over The Comic Reader and greatly expanded its coverage and pages making it the the premiere comics newszine of the time.  As Street Enterprises, they also published the The Menomonee Falls Gazette and The Menomonee Falls Guardian which reprinted newspaper comic strips; and published their own b/w comic books.

Other letter writers in this issue were several well know letterhacks Dornbaum, Henley, and Lillian.  Letterhacks were fans who tried to get as many letters published in comic books as possible.  Guy Lillian III claimed to have more than 62 published letters by 1967 and he's still writing them in 1969.

Henley's letter is especially interesting since he lived in North Canton, Ohio at that time, which is just south of the Cuyahoga River watershed.  That river is the one which caught fire on June 22, 1969 that Time magazine featured and probably lead to the JLA story in the first place.  It wasn't the first time the river had burned, but it was the first time it got national attention.

Box Score 1949 prt 2

Here are the two interior pages from the S-M News Box Score that I started in a previous post.  It covers circulation for the last 6 months of 1948 & 1947.

A few things to point out on the Magazine Groups listing which is where most of the comics are listed.  Looking at 1948,  If you change the focus of the ranking to Avg Sale Per Issue for each company, it changes the list quite a bit.  Here's the companies ranking by Avg Sale Per Issue with their Total Sales Ranking after it in brackets:

- Lev Gleason Comic Group  [6]
- Archie Comic Group  [8]
- United Feature Comic Group  [11]
- National Comics Group  (DC)   [1]
- Harvey Comics Group  [7]
- Fawcett Comics Group  [3]
- Hillman Comic Group  [10]
- The Thrilling Comics Group   (Standard/Better)  [5]
- Quality Comic Group  [4]
- Marvel Comic Group  [2]
- American Comic Group  (ACG)  [9]
- Famous Funnies-New Heroic Comics  [13]
- The Premium Group of Comics  (Novelty)  [12]

Note that Marvel drops from #2 to #10.  Demonstrates quite clearly how Goodman liked to glut the market with product.

Another fact to point out is that if you took the Avg Sale Per Issue of the Lev Gleason Comics (703,178), and plugged it into the main list of publications, it would have been #26 on the list.  In fact, if you had done that for every one of the Comic Groups, they all would have fit in the top 100.  Since each of the Comic Groups consisted of 2 or more comic book titles, had you actually broken the comics down into titles, you can image how overwhelmed the top 100 would have been with comic book titles.  Once again, this is without Dell Comics and other publishers whose circulation numbers are not included.

Also note that 4-Most Comics (Premium) and True Comics (Parents Magazine) are already separated out as #52 and #74 on the 1948 ranking.

Now of course, comic books were only at $0.10 cover price where almost every other magazine was at least $0.15 or more.  That changes the comparison between them and mags a bit.

If you like these kinds of numbers and comparing sales, a great web site is John Jackson Miller's The Comics Chronicle (http://www.comichron.com).  There is massive amount of data and great discussion too.

Update: John Jackson Miller does an interesting comparison of these numbers and today's comic books at his Comics Chronicle here.

Diamond Dateline Dec. 17, 1992

Today's publication came out this week from Diamond Comics Distributors to their retail accounts.  This 4 page, slick weekly publication gave retailers the latest information on products they ordered and other industry news before the internet was well established.  This issue has the latest on multiple printings of the Death Of Superman storyline and Image leaving Malibu.

 

 Slid in between these 4 pages was additional information sheets.   A 2 page Star System list of TPBs, books, videos, and games that Diamond kept in stock to supply retailers on short notice. (Quite a bit smaller than today.)

A returns list for late shipping product and an Advance Reorder list for books that hadn't shipped yet, but on which retailers could increase their order.

A Previews promotional slick that retailers could copy and give to their customers to sell more copies of the Diamond catalog, and a 6 page list of everything that shipped this week.  I've only included the first page.

Also included were 2 items that were only included to the Hayward CA distribution center accounts, Diamond Discussions and a flyer about Christmas hours.  Local information mainly. 

This batch of papers was pretty typical for this weekly newsletter, though many times it also contained promotional posters, cards, or flyers from the publishers that retailers could post in their stores or learn about products.  This went out to about 4,000 Diamond accounts, which was only a portion of all the retail stores in North America in 1992.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about what a comic store got each week.

Box Score 1949 prt 1

Today's artifact is a 4 page trade publication for the newsstand magazine trade.  I don't know exactly when it came out, probably in the first quarter of 1949, but it provides circulation numbers for comic books and magazines that were on the newsstand from July-December 1947 & 1948. 

There is so much here to explain that I'm going to save the actual numbers until another post.  To be able to understand what the numbers mean, you need to understand how circulation figures were obtained.

The S-M News Company, who produced this Box Score, was a national wholesaler of magazines.  One of the few alternatives to the dominant wholesaler, The American News Company, which distributed the vast majority of periodicals to newsstands in the 1940s.  S-M was considered one of the Independent distributors.  They were owned by five magazine publishers as indicated on the back cover:

Comparable circulation numbers were collected by the industry trade group called the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).  This organization accepted circulation data from publishers with supporting documentation to verify that the publishers were not just making the numbers up.  Not every publisher gave their data to the ABC, but if they took advertising for their magazines, this was the only way to have the newsstand and subscriptions sales checked.

Comic books at this time sold their advertising in blocks (Groups) of comic books, not by individual title or issue.  Since they were "all sold to kids" there wasn't a need to differentiate at this time.  Other types of magazines like fiction mags and men's mags also did this.

The comic book publisher groups reported in this issue of Box Score were:

- National Comics Group  (DC)
- Marvel Comic Group
- Fawcett Comics Group
- Quality Comic Group
- The Thrilling Comics Group   (Standard/Better)
- Lev Gleason Comic Group
- Harvey Comics Group
- Archie Comic Group
- American Comic Group  (ACG)
- Hillman Comic Group
- United Feature Comic Group
- The Premium Group of Comics  (Novelty)
- Famous Funnies-New Heroic Comics

This list is arranged in order of total circulation for the last half of 1948, with National at the top.  Names in parentheses are more common fan names of the companies.  These are the top 13 companies, but note the absence of one sure top company (Dell Comics) and others like David McKay, Fox, and Fiction House.  You can see this is not a complete list.

More details and numbers in later post.

Metafiction 101

One of my favorite extra bits that comic book creators put into their stories are the metafictions.  Metafiction has been defined as "a type of fiction which self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction".  In comics, this can be everything from a street sign with the artists name to a creator appearing in the story.  This used to be more rare in the past than it is today.  I especially appreciate the subtle ones that do not detract from the story or call attention to themselves.  If you do not know the reference, then it passes right by the reader like an inside joke.

Today's example isn't subtle, but it is old.  And it would have been on the newsstand today in 1941.

Blue Ribbon Comics v1 #9 (February 1941) [M.L.J. Magazines Inc.]

In the Corporal Collins Infantryman story in this issue, the lead character runs into an old friend of his, Sergeant Boyle, who just happens to have a comic strip in another MLJ comic book, Pep Comics.  Their side kicks, Slappsie and Twerp also appear.  As becomes typical in character crossovers, they get into a fight and then team up to defeat the Nazis.  When they meet:

The metafiction is of course: "You're even in the wrong comic strip", as Corporal Collins acknowledges they are in a comic strip.  Then in the last panel of the strip Collins talks directly to the reader, breaking the fourth wall.

MLJ didn't wait to hear if the readers wanted to see Collins and Boyle together again as they both appeared the same month in Pep Comics #12.  They shared the same strip in several later issues too, in Blue Ribbon, Pep, and Jackpot Comics.

Expect more of these in the future.

Joe Simon RIP

Silver Streak Comics #2 (January 1940) [Your Guide Publications]

On the newsstands today in 1939.  One of the earliest Joe Simon covers.  Sorry to say he just passed.

More early covers: