Has it been "a day or two" already? Actually, the kids took a nap so I had some free time, so I figured I'ld get this out of the way.
Regarding Geoffrey Tolle's website: I won't knock the guy for trying. Yeah, there's ommissions & errors and all that, but it's a "fan site", so I took that information with a grain of salt when I came acrossed it years ago. If nothing else (and this is how I feel about Wikipedia, too), it's a nice place to start when trying to learn more about these characters, and that's all it should be until someone reads the stories themselves.
And now ...
There was more than just facts that bothered me about the two-part article that ran in Alter Ego. Right off the bat, the author, who proclaims himself to be a "longtime comics researcher", takes all of one paragraph to belittle hsi chosen subject. Why invest the time into something if you have such a low opinion of it? The article is riddled, in my opinion, with back-handed comments aimed at making the comics seem inferior to what other publishers produced during that period of time. The impression I get from the author is that he considers the contents of any given issue "weak" if Jack Cole, Will Eisner, BIll Everett or any of the other "big-name artists" didn't contribute more than a few pages, or if superheroes didn't make-up the bulk of material of the comic book.
Another thing that bugged me about the article was the constant use of "actual" issue numbers. If something was released as "volume 2 number 3", then THAT is the issue number, that's what collectors are looking for when they want to purchase the books, not whatever issue number the author feels like assigning it. He seemed incredibly hung-up on the fact that some books debuted with issue numbers other than "1", and constantly wondered why no explanation was ever given to the readers (because no one cared?). I know it's me just being nit-picky, but it got annoying to see after a while.
What follows are the "errors" I came across and my thoughts. Now, I might be wrong about something, so if somebody wants to correct me and provide the correct & accurate information, please do so. This isn't about me or the author of the AE article, it's about making sure that fans of the "Centaur" books have some decent information for a change. There were a few other things I didn't agree with in the article, but I feel that it's just me being a little too nit-picky and not really important enough to mention.
... ""Dr Occult appeared in FPS (Funny Picture Stories ... something the author corrected in the 2nd part of the article) vol 1 # 1, with his name changed in mid-continuity to "Dr Mystic. The next month, Doc was back home in More Fun Comics".
This implies that the "Dr Mystic" story in Comics Magazine # 1 (May 1936) was a side-step in the publication of National's "Dr Occult" series ... that is to say that the Dr Mystic/Occult stories could have been read in the order in which they were published. The fact is that National continued publishing Dr Occult stories even though "Dr Mystic" appears in "CM # 1" for the first part of a story that isn't continued until October. In May 1936, Dr Occult appeared in MFC 10, "The Metheuselah Murders". In July-September 1936, Dr Occult appears in MFC 11-13, "The Werewolf Pt 1-3". Dr Occult appears in More Fun Comics v2 n2 (aka # 14 - October 1936) in the second part of the story begun in "The Comics Magazine # 1".
... "Jack Cole's Mantoka ... makes magic only in this (issue 34 of Funny Pages) and in # 37"
What about Funny Pages v4 n1? And then ...
... "Martin Filchock's The Owl makes his one and only appearance here" (again apparently referring to issue 34 of FP).
The actual issue is FP v1 n4.
... "KDF (Keen Detective Funnies) # 16 introduces The Eye ... ".
The actual issue number is v2 n12. Nit-picking? Yeah, but it's a $7 publication that has editors, so their standards should be a lot higher than what you'ld expect from someone on the internet.
A Biggie! ... "AMF (Amazing Mystery Funnies) # 24 has, on the inside back cover, an ad featuring black-&-white images of covers to Ace Comics, Sure Fire and Super-Mystery. It is now known that Hardie was one of the partners in ownership of the Ace company".
Really? Is that how we establish ownership now? Ads? I do know that E.L. Angel, who was part-owner of Centaur at one point, was also a part-owner of Ace's titles, but "Angel" isn't "Hardie" and seeing ads in one publisher's books isn't proof that they own another publisher's books. How about showing readers a Statement of Ownership as proof? Is this how a "longtime comics researcher" does things?
... "With # 2, Amazing Adventure Funnies became Fantoman, featuring Gustavson stories starring the mysterious hero, though every issue also contained Cole's Little Dynamite, Air-Sub D-X, The Arrow, and text illustrations by Everett".
I happen to have an issue of Fantoman (identified by the seller as being issue 4, which I scanned & uploaded to the main site ... which has been downloaded over 1200 times, believe it or not). It's missing the first two wraps (four pages off the front & another four off the back), but it's clear that the issue DOES NOT include Little Dynamite, Air-Sub D-X or The Arrow (I wish it did include The Arrow). The text story, "Dr Darkness", is by Ray Gill and the illustration is signed "R.". To my untrained eyes, it looks nothing like how Everett drew.
... "... But # 3 (of The Arrow) features one of our favorite bizarre characters. ... Naturally, The Rainbow saves his girlfriend ...".
For something that's apparently one of the author's favorite characters, he sure didn't pay attention to the story very well. The dark-haired girl Rainbow saves is not his girlfriend (who is blonde), but an unnamed girl he just happened to save from Black Rufus.
... The Blue Lady pages reproduced in part two of the article states that they are both from Amazing-Man Comics # 26, and show Blue Lady's origin. They're NOT from the same issue. Her origin (the page on the left for those reading along at home) was in issue # 24, while the other page (on the right) is from the story in Amazing-Man Comics # 26. The author continues the error ("origin in # 26") in the main part of the article. In reference to the Blue Lady tale in 26, he states "She imbibes something called Blue Mist, enabling her to grow extremely tall and strong ...". What?! "Grow extremely tall"? What story was he looking at when he wrote that line?
The author decides to make some pretty big leaps in logic towards the end of the article, yet provides no proof of those claims ...
... "(Chicago Mail Order Comics) ... Leftover Centaur heroes including The Invisible Terror, Filchock's Super Ann and Plymo the Rubber Man appear in Hardie's last book."
... and ... "Hardie ... was constantly begging his readers to buy, read and tell others about his books. He had numerous contests offering free issues ..."
... and ... "In his 1970s volume The Golden Age of Comic Books, Richard O'Brien says 'The Centaur books suffered from poor distribution ..."
The "Super Ann" that appeared in CMO wasn't the same character as the one that appeared in the Mighty Man stories (most hardcore "Centaur" fans could tell you that), nor was the CMO Super Ann story drawn by Martin Filchock. As with the Rainbow & Blue Lady comments, I wonder if this "longtime researcher" even bothered to READ any of the stories.
The last two comments deal with the "demise" of the comic line. Why is holding a contest automatically viewed as an indication that the books are selling poorly? Has the author never heard of the concept of "marketing"? It's not like Hardie could advertise in Wizard Magazine or pay USA Today to have links from their website to his website, so what other options did he have left to boost sales? And why is the idea of trying to boost sales, through contests or free give-aways, viewed as a bad thing? Yes, such tactics could be viewed as a result of poor sales, but they could also be an indication that the owners of the books weren't going to settle for "good enough".
It irks me to no end that the only "evidence" of poor sales & bad distribution that I've ever seen are simply comments from a few books that say the "Centaur" books sold poorly. I'm not saying that the statements are flat-out wrong, but where's the proof? Where is that information coming from?
