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Charlton History

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topic icon Author Topic: Charlton History  (Read 770 times)

crashryan

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Charlton History
« on: November 16, 2021, 02:54:09 AM »

I recently found an article on the TwoMorrows site giving the best historical outline I've seen of Charlton Comics. It's interesting reading for Charlton fans and haters alike because it explains a lot of the company's quirks both in personnel and in, uh, "quality."

https://www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/09empire.html
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Yoc

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Re: Charlton History
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2021, 09:39:11 PM »

Thanks for sharing the link Crash!
A nice read for sure.
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profh0011

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Re: Charlton History
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2021, 10:58:34 PM »

'We're waiting for the price of scrap metal to go up. '

;D
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The Australian Panther

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Re: Charlton History
« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2021, 01:05:23 AM »

Thanks for the link Crash., The Two Morrows article[/b] states,
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The primary writer of virtually all the Charlton books was Joe Gill, ever-present at his desk with typewriter, who is arguably the most prolific writer in the history of comics, producing as much as 100 pages in scripts a week, stories often as pedestrian as the artwork. [/size]

I was under the impression that Paul S Newman was the most prolific writer in the history of comics. Anybody out there know?   
From Wikipedia
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Paul S. Newman (April 29, 1924 ? May 30, 1999) was an American writer of comic books, comic strips, and books, whose career spanned the 1940s to the 1990s. Credited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific comic-book writer, with more than 4,100 published stories totaling approximately 36,000 pages, he is otherwise best known for scripting the comic-book series Turok for 26 years.   [/size]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_S._Newman

And how about Gaylord Dubois?
https://www.erbzine.com/mag21/2115.html

The info below also explains a lot.
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Dick Giordano accepted a brief position as Masulli's assistant and, because of Atlas' collapse in 1957, he was able to give Charlton assignments to an impressive array of freelancers. "Atlas [later Marvel] made the grave mistake of closing up their distribution company, and going with American News which, at the time, was the best distributor in the country. For reasons unknown, American News went belly-up in a short period of time, and Atlas was without distribution. The word had gotten around that I was in the New York office [where Giordano visited once a week to deal with New York City area freelancers], and just about every Atlas artist came up to talk to us in that month, including Sol Brodsky, who acted as the agent for some artists. I even had Joe Maneely do a job for me before he unfortunately died falling off a subway train. A few other people came up, including Sam Glanzman. I was able to get many of the freelance artists that I worked with from the New York office." Such talents as John Severin and Al Williamson had brief stays freelancing for the Derby publisher, quickly abandoning the low-paying house when more profitable opportunities rose.   


Cheers!
« Last Edit: November 22, 2021, 01:22:19 AM by The Australian Panther »
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crashryan

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Re: Charlton History
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2021, 03:45:38 AM »

I'm not sure if the Newman-vs.-Gill question will ever be answered. Newman apparently kept meticulous notes documenting everything he wrote, while Gill just pounded the stuff out and forgot it. Out of curiosity I did some rough math. If we figure an average comic has 24 non-ad pages, to match Newman's 36,000 pages Gill would have had to have written all of 1500 individual issues. If we imagine these were issues of bi-monthly titles, 6 per year, then he'd have to have written every issue of 250 titles during his career. If he wrote 10 titles per month for 25 years he'd have matched Newman. Of course this is a super-rough estimate. Newman often wrote 32-page comics, many of which were monthlies (although many others were quarterlies). My takeaway is that it's conceivable that Gill's output matched Newman's, but we'll never know.
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