[John C]

Here's MY take on some of the "connectivity" of these oddball titles: Baily seems to have been a "broker" of comic material to anyone with a paper quota during WWII. I believe that Baily (and in some cases, Baily's artists) OWNED their characters and when a Baily Shop customer showed up with a paper supply, the shop would fill a new comic title for them with the next installments of whatever they had sold to the previous customer - as if the were certain that the previous client wouldn't return? Since the copyrights were owned internally, there was never a conflict.

At the very least, that's consistent with the impressions I get from the frayed threads running through all this.  Most publishers and shops seemed to have fairly firm relationships, but others were more fluid.  It's certainly the only way I can understand that one key installment of Siegel and Shuster's Dr. Occult (as "Dr. Mystic") floating around a Centaur book.  I wonder if it's worth looking at the books by producer rather than publisher, because of this.  As you point out, after all, a good number of the publishers couldn't have cared less about what was going to press as long as it turned a profit.

Re: New Math.  In fairness, I should point out that, weird as it is, when you deal with computers, the preoccupation with number bases and "lending versus borrowing" makes a lot of material obvious.  Of the (cough) innovative teaching approaches I've seen thrown at students, it holds up far better than, say, Harvard Calculus, which I tutored for in college.  What's that you say?  It's finals time, and they never explained what a limit is?  And you have no definition for e?  Interesting...

Oh, and put me on the bandwagon of people enjoying the obscure characters and the well-crafted (if frequently artless) writing.  The Fawcett, Quality, and Nedor stuff everybody else gets excited about is fine, but I get much more excited about the weird stuff that I've never even heard of before.

Incidentally, along those lines, I think Phantom Lady should team up with the Duke of Darkness.  Her powers have nothing to do with phantoms, and his nothing to do with the dark.  It's an Abbott and Costello routine waiting to happen.

[narfstar]

I wonder how often the artists were also the writers? Jim understands the shop system better than I but it seems like they may often have done both in many cases. Martin Filchock did all but the coloring on his books.

[JVJ]

One Rural Home title, Red Band #3, was published by Publicaciones Recreatives in Mexico

The Golden Age Index by Howard Keltner states that there were four issues of Red Band, all published by "Publicaciones Recreatives", with issue 4 being an near-exact duplicate of issue 3, just the issue number and date were changed.  Was the entire four-issue run published by Publicaciones Recreatives or just issue 3?  Don't mean to throw a nit-picky question at you, I just wanted comfirmation on the GA Index was telling me.

Not nit-picky at all, bchat,
but narfstar has all my issues of Red Band. Perhaps he can answer the question. When I did my list lo those many years ago, I only had a copy of #3.

RURAL HOME
BLAZING            Rewl/Rural Home*
BLUE CIRCLE       Rewl/Rural Home*
CIRCUS   1,2      Farm Women's Publishing
EAGLE               Gail Hillson
NAVY HEROES    Almanac Publishing (no overriding reason to think it's Rural Home)
RED BAND          Publicaciones Recreatives*
RED CIRCLE        Rural Home*

From the same GA Index, I see that Cannonball Comics and Mask Comics [two issues each] were both published by Rural Home.

And, of course, since I own copies of neither title, they didn't appear on my list.  Does ANYONE out there have copies (or scans) that we can confirm that these are published by Rural Home?

So now we have:
RURAL HOME
BLAZING            Rewl/Rural Home*
BLUE CIRCLE       Rewl/Rural Home*
Cannonball         (Rural Home?)
CIRCUS   1,2      Farm Women's Publishing
EAGLE               Gail Hillson
Mask                (Rural Home?)
NAVY HEROES    Almanac Publishing (no overriding reason to think it's Rural Home)
RED BAND          Publicaciones Recreatives*
RED CIRCLE        Rural Home*

Narfstar

I wonder how often the artists were also the writers? Jim understands the shop system better than I but it seems like they may often have done both in many cases. Martin Filchock did all but the coloring on his books.

I really have NO insider information on these shops, narf. Everything I "know" is gleaned or deduced from the comics themselves. Sorry.

[archiver_USA]

Here's some more information:
Charlton Comic Group
Universal Comic Group

Also has "Medal Comics (Aragon/Gillmor/Key/Stanmor)" seperate from "Timor (Accepted Publications)"

[archiver_USA]

Here's something interesting. Snappy Comics was published by Cima Publishing Co., 11 East 44th St., New York City.

This is the same address used as the Executive offices of Story/Master (Friedman & Myers) and Premier Magazines (Friedman & Wind).

Any chance Cima was an early Friedman attempt at a comic company?
Overstreet has it tied to Prize Publications for some reason.

[JVJ]

Here's something interesting. Snappy Comics was published by Cima Publishing Co., 11 East 44th St., New York City.

This is the same address used as the Executive offices of Story/Master (Friedman & Myers) and Premier Magazines (Friedman & Wind).

Any chance Cima was an early Friedman attempt at a comic company?
Overstreet has it tied to Prize Publications for some reason.

Very interesting connection, archiver.
It is so hard to tell with these titles that only lasted ONE issue. Was the address in a high-rise? Was it someone's apartment? What happened at the address BETWEEN Cima and Story - it was three or four YEARS at least? Was it a printing company?

Is there ANY way to access old NYC phone books on line? An interesting avenue of exploration, but the simple fact that the address appears later still connected to comic books is telling. However, figuring out exactly what that connection IS is pretty iffy without more input.

Thanks for bringing it up. Also, I think Overstreet makes the Prize connection because of Airmale and Stampy, characters that appeared in Prize Comics when Bernard Baily was providing content. I believe that Baily Shop OWNED the character and therefore could use it elsewhere with impunity. I think too little attention has been paid to creator- and shop-owned features in the 1940s. It's my belief that they were rampant.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[John C]

Is there ANY way to access old NYC phone books on line? An interesting avenue of exploration, but the simple fact that the address appears later still connected to comic books is telling. However, figuring out exactly what that connection IS is pretty iffy without more input.

About the best I could find is this set of links:

http://www.oldtelephonebooks.com/pages/links

It looks like the answer is "no," but if anybody happens to be passing through Washington, the Library of Congress has a sizeable collection.

Because I'm also a bit interested about these things, I also dropped a quick e-mail to the New York Public Library's "Ask Desk."  They've got a fairly good reputation for digging out the more obscure sources, so I'll post an update here if they can turn up anything useful.

[archiver_USA]

Very interesting connection, archiver.
It is so hard to tell with these titles that only lasted ONE issue. Was the address in a high-rise? Was it someone's apartment? What happened at the address BETWEEN Cima and Story - it was three or four YEARS at least? Was it a printing company?

Apparently a high-rise:
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=157049

[JVJ]

Very interesting connection, archiver.
It is so hard to tell with these titles that only lasted ONE issue. Was the address in a high-rise? Was it someone's apartment? What happened at the address BETWEEN Cima and Story - it was three or four YEARS at least? Was it a printing company?

Apparently a high-rise:
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=157049

What a wonderful piece of information, archiver. Isn't the Internet grand?

Thanks.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[JonTheScanner]

I just did a Google search on ["APA-I" comic books] and turned up this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Comic-Book_Database

Wikipedia lists APA-I as the precursor to the GCD, and mentions a lot of people that I had forgotten who were part of it, Bob Klein and Jon Ingersol, to name two. Apparently, it's still going, ATW, but unlike GCD or GAC, it doesn't condone "lurking" or guests - active participants only.

GCD did in a sense grow out of APA-I.  I was the central mailer of Apa-I for 5 to 6 years as I recall.  This was the time GCD got started.  Bob Klein had preceded me, but not directly.  I'm pretty sure there was one person intervening.  During my time as CM, I tried to encourage everyone to submit their index on 3 1/4 disk as well as paper.  I copied those and distributed the disks as well.  (The hard thing as I recall was writing Apple compatible disks.  At that time they were much less common and I had access to none.

The original idea for GCD was Bob Klein's and Tim Stroup's.  I came on board almost right away.  APA-I is still paper oriented and that's why there is no "lurking".  I've not been a member in years.

[JVJ]

I have no idea if this belongs in the Rural Home discussion, but in the process of putting away the books that returned today from Narfstar, I discovered the following:
Within the covers of Liberty Comics #14 (dated May of 1946) lurks the contents of Red Circle #5. Had Red Circle (published by Rural Home and copyright by Enwil Associates) continued monthly from #3, issue #5 would have been May 1945.

I have two other issues of Liberty (#10 and #11) both of which reprint MLJ comics from 1943 and 1944 (Black Hood and Laugh, respectively), so I initially assumed that my #14, with the covers split with simply a "marriage" with the wrong cover around a mismatched interior. That was until I looked at the GAC copy of Liberty #14 and discovered that it had the same contents.

So we seem to have a company that produced LOTS of covers for books that never got published (Blazing 6, Blue Circle 6, etc.) that were later wrapped around coverless Fox comics in the 50s and sold on the newsstands despite the mismatched covers and the 1945 indicia dates. Okay, that's weird enough, but to discover that the guts of comics like Red Circle #5 existed and were used by yet ANOTHER company a year later is too much for my poor mind to comprehend.

This may be old news to those of you who've downloaded Liberty Comics or have seen other examples. If so, forgive my bemusement. However, if this is new news, can anyone shed even a bit more light on the subject.

As a TOTAL aside, while I was reboxing the comics, I also double-checked my memory on the role of Rae Hermann at Continental and found an Ownership Statement in Catman #30 (Dec. 1945) that listed R.R. Hermann as the Managing Editor. It was shortly thereafter that Catman ceased publishing and that the earliest titles like Patches began to transform from their Continental/Et-Es-Go versions into those that would eventually morph into Orbit.

Something very interesting is going on here.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Henry Peters]

sorry to start this thread and disappear.  thanks to everyone for their input.  i told you this would give you a headache.

[Yoc]

Ah but it's been a fun headache HP.

[JonTheScanner]

OK here's some more stuff I don't understand.

Jim seems to have found the contents of Red Circle #5 inside of Liberty Comics #14.  That would certainly imply that the contents of Red Circle #4 exist somewhere.  But Red Circle #4 only seems to exist as covers around remaindered comics.  I assume the reason Jim says Liberty has the contents to RC #5 and not #4 is that the Secret Assignment story is labeled Secret Assignment #5.  But as far as I know, Secret Assignemnt only appeared elsewhere in RC #3.  Did Secret Assignment ever appear in any other comic?

The Copy of Red Band #1 that Narfstar has uploaded is identical to the copy of Red Band #2.  Keltner indicates this should not be the case.  #2 has the origin of the Bogey man indicating what we have is #2.  The Sgt Strong story is 6 pages rather than 5 also indicating we have #2.  However we do have a one page Igloo Iggie story which Keltner gives as only in #1.

So are RB #1 and #2 the same or not?

[John C]

Don't forget to add Blazing Comics to the list.  There was no "real" fifth issue (just remaindered covers, sometimes over Rural reprints, but not always)...until one turned up in Narfstar's clutches.

My first guess would be that they overprinted the covers and later dumped the rest around random reprints.  But if that's the case, why/how would any of those reprints be Rural books?  Did Rural only print in small lots, maybe, and lose track of their covers?  That would explain how infrequently they seem to match what consensus exists.

[JVJ]

You're right, Jon,
I assumed it was #5 despite the scanner's assertion that it was actually #4. I did NOT got back and look through the other Red Circle issues. So please consider the information to be "an unpublished issue of Red Circle was published under the Liberty Comics cover little more than a year after Red Circle #3."

I've been consumed with computer problems, including a stint without a network (i.e. no Internet access), for the last couple of weeks. I'm running WAY behind in everything.

I have no answers to your guesses, JC, and one critical piece of the puzzle is whether or not there actually WERE copies of things like Blazing #5 (going totally from fading memory here, but I hope you get the gist) existed in a Rural Home contents form AND a Fox reprint form. Conflicting data on the contents suggests that it (or some other comic from RH) did. (Again I have no time to double-check and am trying to get this off AFAP).

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[narfstar]

There is confirmation of a Blazing 5 with Green Turtle,etc. I found it on ebay and scanned and posted it at GAC. I had thought only the remaindered reprints existed but #5 has remaindered and new while 6 appears to only be in remaindered form.

[JonTheScanner]

Narfstar would you check your physical copy of Red band #1 if you've not yet sent it back to Jim.  Is the cover loose?  Could it be a #2 contents inside a #1 covers?

[Henry Peters]

Narfstar would you check your physical copy of Red band #1 if you've not yet sent it back to Jim.  Is the cover loose?  Could it be a #2 contents inside a #1 covers?

narfstar's scan matches my copy of #1.  it's just a strange title. 

[narfstar]

It is already back home but I think 1 and 2 are the same as is 3 and 4

[JVJ]

There is confirmation of a Blazing 5 with Green Turtle,etc. I found it on ebay and scanned and posted it at GAC. I had thought only the remaindered reprints existed but #5 has remaindered and new while 6 appears to only be in remaindered form.

YAY! Thanks for confirming that, narf,
(and a little yay for me for actually remembering right).

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Yoc]

Moved the Life photo to it's own topic.

-Yoc

[archiver_USA]

What happened at the address BETWEEN Cima and Story - it was three or four YEARS at least?

I haven't found anything BETWEEN Cima and Story, but I found something BEFORE Cima.

In 1940, the first Hillman comics, Miracle Comics and Rocket Comics, were being published by "Hillman-Curi, Inc." with Editorial and Executive offices located at: 11 East 44th Street, New York City!

After 1940 "Curi" disappears and the offices move to 1476 Broadway, New York City (and eventually to 535 Fifth Ave.).

[JVJ]

What happened at the address BETWEEN Cima and Story - it was three or four YEARS at least?

I haven't found anything BETWEEN Cima and Story, but I found something BEFORE Cima.

In 1940, the first Hillman comics, Miracle Comics and Rocket Comics, were being published by "Hillman-Curi, Inc." with Editorial and Executive offices located at: 11 East 44th Street, New York City!

After 1940 "Curi" disappears and the offices move to 1476 Broadway, New York City (and eventually to 535 Fifth Ave.).

As Arte Johnson used to say, "Verry interesting..."

Thanks for this info.

[archiver_USA]

Ok, this is off topic, not like this topic belongs under "Help and Support > Suggestions" to begin with, but if I don't get this out of my head I'm sure it will explode.

Frank Z. Temerson and I. W. Ullman start Ultem by buying Chesler's first company in 1936 and later selling it to Centaur in 1938 before moving on to start Holyoke in 1940. In 1942 Holyoke acquires Blue Beetle from Fox giving an editorial office of "52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York City" in Blue Beetle's indicia.  Here is where this gets interesting: Calling All Girls (Parents' Magazine) for March 1944 and August 1944 give an editorial office of "52 Vanderbilt Ave., New York 17, N.Y." and an executive editor/editor named "Frances Ullmann" (two Ns).

So are the Parents' Magazine titles part of Holyoke?? Argggg!!!