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[Kevin Yong]

Hi! I just posted a similar thread over at the DCM site, but it's probably even more appropriate here, considering the Silver Age vintage of the books in question. 

At this weekend's San Diego Comic-Con, I purchased two Charlton books from 1960 in a random bin of $2 clearance comics. They both have identical covers identifying them as "Brides in Love #18". However, not only are the interior pages different, they're not even romance comics! The interior of one book is a Western, and the other one is war stories!  (I've posted snapshots of the book covers and interior splash pages online over at my personal blog if anyone wants to take a look.)

The legal text on the inside front covers has the typical Charlton lack of proper copyright notice, and would thus be free to scan and share on the site. However, considering that the contents of the books are unrelated to their covers, I'm not sure how I'd categorize those uploads even if I scanned them.

(Someone at the DCM board helpfully identified the interiors as probably coming from "Outlaws of the West #25" and "Fightin' Marines #35". Perhaps I should just scan the books as if they were coverless copies and post them as incomplete additions to the Charlton Silver Age section here?)

I've seen Charlton have quality control issues regarding the print quality and page trimming on a lot of their books I've seen, but this is my first encounter with them packaging the wrong books under wrong covers. I'm curious if anyone else run across this sort of misprint before?

[narfstar]

Two at once strikes me as strange. Could it be that someone stuck a random cover on a coverless book?
I would more likely suspect that. Not that Charlton would not mess up. Since they were the same cover it
may well have been Charlton's mistake. Ramon is the GCD Charlton expert so I will ask him.

[narfstar]

Here is what Ramon had to say

What Charlton would do is, they would have several issues in the printing process in line. Sometimes, they would have a surplus of covers from comic #1, but would have no more interiors for comic #1. They would then just start with comic #2, meaning the first batch of comic #2 would have comic #1 covers and comic #2 interiors.

These would be taken out of the process and given to salesmen to give away to their clients, but would also inevitably end up in the marketplace.

Other printers were more careful about the quality control, true, but they would also be eager to keep the customer (publisher) satisfied, something Charlton did not have to worry about, being their own publisher, printer and distributor.

[Kevin Yong]

Thanks for the background info -- that makes sense how it could have happened if Charlton was just assembling these books on a production line without having matching quantities of covers and interiors.

Like you, my first assumption would also have been someone trying to pass off their coverless copies by just attaching an unrelated cover. But the binding seemed too tight, the spines were uncreased, the staples showed no signs of tampering -- so if someone had faked this, they had done an excellent job of it.

I love finding odd mystery misprint books like this. It's what makes the unbagged, unsorted back-issue bins of randomness so much fun at comic conventions. 

Once I definitely confirm where the contents of the book are from, I can scan them in for the Silver Age section of the site. I'll probably end up treating them as coverless copies since the "Brides in Love" covers obviously have nothing to do with the contents.

(Although that might be a fun Photoshop challenge for me later -- I could try to re-write the word balloons to turn the Westerns and war stories on the interior pages into romance stories about brides in love. )

[narfstar]

I wish look forward to the uploads and wish you would alter the covers as a second page after picking up the real cover from Heritage or GCD. You can check out my attempts at altering a comic here

https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1864

[Robb_K]

Here is what Ramon had to say

What Charlton would do is, they would have several issues in the printing process in line. Sometimes, they would have a surplus of covers from comic #1, but would have no more interiors for comic #1. They would then just start with comic #2, meaning the first batch of comic #2 would have comic #1 covers and comic #2 interiors.

These would be taken out of the process and given to salesmen to give away to their clients, but would also inevitably end up in the marketplace.

Other printers were more careful about the quality control, true, but they would also be eager to keep the customer (publisher) satisfied, something Charlton did not have to worry about, being their own publisher, printer and distributor.

Some publishers actually made some money from unsold books returned from their clients.  Within a year or two of their original publishing date, they sold them at bargain basement rates, to companies that wanted to use them as a giveaway entertainment item for children who are taken along shopping with their parents.

Weatherbird Shoe Company did that for their first series of giveaways, from 1954 through 1957, buying up unused, returned comic books from a jobber who bought them cheaply from various U.S. publishers for pennies on the Dollar, like Israel Waldman did for his I.W. Comics.  They had a generic cover printed, then their original covers removed, and had the new covers attached to the books. There was no publishing date or indication on the covers which book was inside.  Getting one at a shoe store was a suspenseful moment, wondering if you were going to get a D.C. or Harvey, or Atlas comic, and whether it would be a funny animal, Western, Superhero, genre book.