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| I wonder how Harvey figured he could produce 100-pagers to sell for the same price as a regular 64-page comic. The pages may be smaller but they seem to have about the same amount of art on them. If Harvey paid lower page rates to keep the hundred-pagers' cost down, I'd think the artists would have kicked. If it were Victor Fox he wouldn't give a damn, but from what I've read Harvey was a more sensible businessman. Maybe increased production costs was one of the reasons the Pocket Comics line failed. Or maybe kids just preferred full-size comics, even with a lower page count. |
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| I've heard that they were too easy to put in a pocket and carry out of the store. There must have been some advantage to the format, or at least some perceived theoretical advantage. Could some of the stories have been inventory tales already bought and paid for? Something about cheaper printing, or more advantageous "time" on the presses? It is too early in the Golden Age I would think for reprints. It doesn't appear to be cheaper stuff purchased for a song from a lesser known shop. |
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| Alfred Harvey was a sharp businessman. The answer to how he could afford to produce a 100 page pocket-size comic book and make a profit probably isn't obvious unless you are actually looking at the physical product, and comparing it to a standard-sized golden age comic book.
The pocket-sized comics produced by Harvey were half the physical size of a standard comic book, but look closely at the pages as printed. The word balloons and lettering aren't half the size, as they'd look if you took a normal page of comic book art and mechanically reduced it in size by 50%. The pages as printed are half-sized, and have fewer story panels per page (remembering that in the early 1940s, it wasn't uncommon for a standard-sized comic page to contain anywhere from 9 to 12 panels), and the size of the word balloons and lettering as printed compares about equally to that of a standard-sized comic book page.
If you think about it, Alfred Harvey wasn't paying for 100 pages of comic artwork. He was paying for 50 pages of art boards that had been turned on their sides and bisected vertically with a gutter in the middle. The artist would then compose a "left-hand page" on one side, and a "right-hand page" on the other side of the art board, and art would then be mechanically reduced by the same percentage that it always was when printing comic books.
Regular golden age comics were 64 pages plus covers, while Harvey's pocket-sized comics were only 50 pages plus covers, trimmed on all four sides, stapled in the center, and folded in half. Pocket comics still sold for 10 cents, and appeared to give readers a better value of 100 pages versus only 64 for standard comics. BUT in reality -- Harvey was paying for 14 pages fewer of art AND of paper!!
Whether the story is apocryphal or not, Harvey failed to account for pocket comics' ease of pilferage... What he saw as a selling point -- "Fits conveniently in your pocket!" -- was just an invitation to theft. The reason I say the supposed explanation given for Harvey's pocket comics failing is suspect, is that the pilferage factor didn't seem to apply when it came to the huge success of Archie Comics' digests from the 1970s onward. Or maybe it was just different times and/or a different audience, and Archie readers weren't the type to shoplift. |
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| Interestingly, British pocket size comics were very popular and ran for a long time. Commando is still going and is now over 5000 issues.
Pockets such as Super Detective Library and Cowboy Comics which were half the size of a standard American comic had no more than 4 panels to a page and some were very wordy. When reprinting newspaper strips, editors cut and re-positioned panels to fit the size constraints.
I love the format and these Speed pockets are great. |
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| The pages are out of order due to incorrect numbering. |
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| Additional Information |
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| Publication | January 1942 | Price: 0.10 USD | Pages: 1 | Frequency: bi-monthly |
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| Content | Genre: Superhero | Characters: Captain Freedom |
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| Comic Story | The Weird Whirlpool (12 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Superhero | Characters: Shock Gibson; Bundists (villain; introduction); Mayor Gordian (introduction) |
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| Comic Story | The Hermit of Strange Island (12 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Superhero | Characters: The Hermit of Strange Island (Villain; Intro); the Nazis (Villain) |
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| Text Story | Shock Gibson Rides the Airways (2 pages) |
| Credits | Letters: typeset |
| Content | Genre: Superhero | Characters: Shock Gibson |
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| Content | Genre: Humor; Military | Characters: Biff Bannon |
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| Comic Story | The Wrath of El Toro (11 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Adventure | Characters: El Toro (Intro); Conchita (Intro); Hans Holtz (Villain; Intro); the Nazis (Villain) |
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| Comic Story | The Sleeping Death!! (12 pages) |
| Content | Characters: "The Monster" (Villain; Intro; Death); the Nazis (Villain) |
| Notes | Pat's first case in costume |
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| Content | Genre: Humor |
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| Comic Story | The Buried Treasure (12 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Adventure | Characters: Professor Books (Intro); Diane Books (Intro) |
| Notes | "Ed Ashe Westport, Conn." written on the first page of the original art for this story, in what appears to be contemporary ink (circa 1941-42). It seems logical that Edd Ashe originally signed his name with one 'd' in "Ed", but changed it later for professional reasons. |
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| Text Story | Claws of Murder (2 pages) |
| Featuring | The Zebra |
| Credits | Letters: typeset |
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| Content | Genre: Humor |
| Notes | The "Ditto" feature was last seen in Pocket Comics (Harvey, 1941 Series) #1 (August 1941). This is its final appearance. |
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| Comic Story | The Desert Rat (12 pages) |
| Content | Genre: Adventure | Characters: The Desert Rat (Villain; Intro); Pierre Moyer (Intro); Myrna Leigh (Intro) |
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| Content | Genre: Humor |
| Notes | inside front cover |
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| The data in the additional content section is courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under a
Creative Commons Attribution License.
More details about this comic may be available in their page here |
