This is a puzzle. It's obviously material from some defunct publisher, but who? Most of the inherited inventory Charlton published was reprints of earlier material. I can't find any previous printings of these stories, though. "Inspector Farnsworth of Scotland Yard" is certainly the original title; I don't see signs of re-lettered names. Charlton published two issues with Sekowsky Farnsworth stories, after which their usual stable carried the series on for two more issues. This must have been material planned by a deceased company for a Scotland Yard book that never saw print. I agree Fawcett is a likely source. Sekowsky and Peppe were working for them when Fawcett pulled the plug in 1953. Other Fawcett stories have popped up in Charlton books. Very interesting.
Yes. Charlton was always on the lookout for low-cost stories to print, including not having to pay storywriters to write them, and not having to pay artists to draw them, just paying a small flat fee to purchase the artwork, and have one of their in-house artists change a title, draw a new front cover, or change a character name (IF necessary). They always paid attention to publishers going out of business. I don't know much about non-comedy series and one-shot books. But, I do know that Charlton acquired the rights to "Fawcett's Funny Animals" series name, along with a large backlog of still existing finished artwork from it, and from Fawcett's other Funny Animal series, "Animal Fair", as well as finished artwork planned for several future issues. In addition to that, there was so many finished stories starring the Fawcett's Funny Animals characters (that HAD to be much more than Fawcett had ready to use in their next 3 issues, that it seems obvious that that title's main artist, Chad Grothkopf, must have come to work at Charlton, to continue working on that series, at lest during his time of looking for a new major employer. And I've been told that he DID, indeed work for Charlton after Fawcett closed up their comic book shop. That series continued for 8 issues. Only the last few had stories only drawn by new editor, Al Fago, who also contributed finished stories with characters his own studio had drawn for use in partnerships with Robert Farrell and for small indie 1940s publishers.
Maybe Sekowsky did the same thing, finishing Fawcett's project for Charlton, while he looked for a higher-paying client to replace Fawcett's work for him? Or maybe that small project was started by a tiny indie publisher, who went broke because they were putting out too much cash to cover operation costs, and were bringing in no revenue to cover the outlay. That must have been a common situation during 1953 and 1954.
