[Jetstone]

Did you have a preference as a kid ?

I love them all now.
But as a kid ( mid 1960s to early 70s ) I would peruse the drugstore comic stand and come home with mostly MAD MAGAZINE, Turoks and MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER  if I could get my hands on it.
Star Spangled War Stories with dinosaur covers were my first Dc purchases.
Eventually got a Marvel 25 cent giant when the Avengers were fighting the uh... forgot the other guys lined up opposite them on the cover.
I found that Marvel and DC had so many hype dialogue boxes that I felt left out of some clic.
I finally bought a Superman when he had to decide Jimmy Olsen's fate based on telling a red from a black playing card blindfolded.
As a kid, Fantastic Four and the Flash were the most instantly interesting characters.

[Robb_K]

Did you have a preference as a kid ?

I love them all now.
But as a kid ( mid 1960s to early 70s ) I would peruse the drugstore comic stand and come home with mostly MAD MAGAZINE, Turoks and MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER  if I could get my hands on it.
Star Spangled War Stories with dinosaur covers were my first Dc purchases.
Eventually got a Marvel 25 cent giant when the Avengers were fighting the uh... forgot the other guys lined up opposite them on the cover.
I found that Marvel and DC had so many hype dialogue boxes that I felt left out of some clic.
I finally bought a Superman when he had to decide Jimmy Olsen's fate based on telling a red from a black playing card blindfolded.
As a kid, Fantastic Four and the Flash were the most instantly interesting characters.

I was a kid during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s.  I started reading with Carl Barks' Donald Duck, and started collecting mostly Disney funny animal, and WB funny animal, and Walter Lantz (all Dell/Western Comics).  I soon added Dell's "Animal Comics" and MGM cartoon character comics.  I never really read superhero, Western, Sci-Fi-, Horror, teen Comedy, Military, etc., - although, I did collect "Classics Illustrated for a while. 

[The Australian Panther]

Marvel, DC or Gold Key? Funny you should ask. I stopped reading comics for a couple of years in the early 60s What kickstarted my habit was not Marvel immediately but Gold Key, in particular 'Space Family Robinson' and 'Dr Solar' I have no idea why now, but Magnus was at least third on that list. I loved the Art but didn't warm to the stories.
Marvel was next, but later. And DC was always third on my list of that lot.           

[ComicMike]

Did you have a preference as a kid ?

I really read every comic I could get as a kid. In addition to the funny comics, my favorites were the Gold Key comics. Magnus, Dr. Solar, Space Family Robinson, Samson ect. But I also loved the Marvel comics, or Turok, Metamorpho and of course Superman anyway, because, there was humor in Superman's world. 

[misappear]

I bought all the Superman titles starting in 1962.  I added Space Family Robinson, Turok, and Magnus next.  I didn

[SuperScrounge]

DC, then probably Gold Key & Marvel.

[Jetstone]

It's a privilege to hear from anyone who experienced Golden Age comics in "real time".
I bought lots of 10 cent comics as a collector in the 80s... mostly for the covers. Now that I have been scanning a couple of needed issues I am floored by the interior art. SPUNKY the SMILING GHOST, ATTACK !  and BLACK CAT MYSTIC have absolutely blown me away.
Those three and JET POWERS #3,  and PLANET #22 will be uploaded in the next few weeks.

[paw broon]

As a kid growing up in the '50's, I saw very few DC comics, or American comics of any sort, and my reading was mostly British weeklies, Christmas annuals - Broons or Oor Wullie, or by the late '50's the odd pocket library.  When American comics were distributed here, I read DC.  When Marvel showed up, I tried them and I recall reading FF #1 and thinking it was ok. Spiderman was different.  I thought the early issues were great.
Rather than Gold Key, it was Dell with those photo covers that caught my eye.
Overall, though and after Ace Hart and the occasional Frew Phantom, I was DC all the way.
I know this will sound like me going back on myself, but as the '60's wore on, I was really taken with Magnus and Doctor Solar.

[crashryan]

My earliest comics recollections are from when I was 5-6 years old living in the Philippines. I never saw comic books of any kind. Dad bought the Sunday Manila Times and I was entranced by Mac Raboy's Flash Gordon. I was an art fan even then.

When we moved back to the States I started reading comic books. I think my folks may have chosen them, I don't know. Dell was my brand. I dug adventure stories from the One Shot series (westerns, Sgt Preston) and especially the movie adaptations. Yep, my favorite boyhood comics were Dell movie and TV comics. I also read lots of Donald and Scrooge. Decades later, in college, I met a Barks fan. When he showed me his Comics & Stories collection I recognized many boyhood stories.

We moved to Washington when I was in fourth grade. The Seattle papers had great strips: Raboy's Flash Gordon, Tuska's Buck Rogers, Wunder's Terry (grotesque, I admit, but I liked it), Caniff's Steve Canyon, Barry's Phantom, Fredericks' Mandrake. An embarrassment of riches! My comic book tastes expanded to take in DC. I loved Infantino's Flash. He was my second-earliest influence after Alberto Giolitti. I read Green Lantern and Mystery in Space but the Superman-Batman books and the Kashdan/Boltinoff second stringers like House of Mystery never appealed to me.

I still remember the first Marvel superhero comic I saw on the stands. It was Fantastic Four #6, the Puppet Master origin. I hated it. It's funny that for a company that became famous for amazing covers, Marvel in its early days had the ugliest covers this side of Charlton. Remember?  Every background seemed to be grey or sickly yellow and the art was defaced by enormous balloons with thick color outlines. You have to admit Julie Schwartz' books had slick, colorful covers and quality printing. To me Marvel looked cheap. I didn't buy another Marvel until FF #45, the first Inhumans story. After that I was hooked.

I remained a Dell fan till the bitter end. I even wasted money on those gawdawful Dracula/Werewolf/Frankenstein books. I was put off when Gold Key first launched because they seemed simplified with big rectangular balloons, no panel borders, and oversize lettering. I was soon won over by the likes of Magnus, Dr Solar, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, MARS Patrol, and Twilight Zone. GK had some great art, including my old idol Alberto.

[Jetstone]

DELL and GOLD KEY painted covers are irresistible. in addition to TUROK, MAGNUS and DR SOLAR ... my collection includes all of the TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET and FIREBALL XL-5, MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES ( Roger Corman ! ) and SCARECROW OF THE ROMNEY MARSH... one of the most powerful Disney TV productions ever.

The Gold Key readers pages with the kid's drawings of monsters is worth buying a book for.
My grandmother got Disney comics ( Donald Duck ) in the mail. The Uncle Scrooge Giant about looking for the City of Gold with the Beagle Brothers was really deep, exotic fantasy.

[The Australian Panther]

Crash, on this we think alike.

It's funny that for a company that became famous for amazing covers, Marvel in its early days had the ugliest covers this side of Charlton. Remember?  Every background seemed to be grey or sickly yellow and the art was defaced by enormous balloons with thick color outlines.

There was a short period there when Marvel was starting its Superhero run, where the covers were very disappointing. What was most puzzling to me was why. Kirby did great covers on much of his earlier work. Fighting American and his Challengers of the Unknown covers for DC, to name two. So why was the cover of FF#1so dull in comparison? Even in comparison to his earlier coves for many of Marvel's monster books. Yes, the FF cover is iconic and has been imitated many times, but it is still a low point in Kirby's work.
The answer may lie in the identity of whoever was in charge of visual production for Marvel/Timely at that time.

[SuperScrounge]

There's a rumor that Marvel was hiding the fact that their new books were superhero books so the early FF titles had covers that looked like just another monster book which they had done a bunch of.

[paw broon]

Now that's an interesting rumour.
As for those " gawdawful Dracula/Werewolf/Frankenstein books", being a complete superhero nut, I had to have them.  Even I was disappointed, and I've read some truly awful superhero stuff in my time. Mind you, I still have some of the issues
Crash mentions the "Kashdan/Boltinoff second stringers like House of Mystery never appealed to me." Well, they appealed to me, which might once again reflect my lack of taste.  Especially House of Secrets when Eclipso started.  Now that was really good stuff.  And I enjoyed Prince Ra-Man.  Actually, I also enjoyed Mark Merlin and liked the Meskin art.

[crashryan]

In later years my distaste for House of Secrets et al. softened as I discovered the Meskin, Elias, and especially Toth hiding among their pages. On the other hand my distaste for the monster-hero books remains. I still cannot see anything good about the power team of Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico. The comics did provide a funny pun name however: the female reporter Miss Ann Thrope.

[The Australian Panther]

I even wasted money on those gawdawful Dracula/Werewolf/Frankenstein books. 

I would pick these up from the shelves, if the cover was good enough to attract my interest, and quickly browse through them. If the art was dreadful, usually so was the story, so I wouldn;t buy the book.   

  In later years my distaste for House of Secrets et al. softened as I discovered the Meskin, Elias, and especially Toth hiding among their pages.

Same deal here. I had a definite preference for book-length stories. That alone made me reluctant to look at Anthologies, like DCs Mystery books, Kanighers War books, Charltons mystery books,Gold Keys Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff anthologies. [Which were better than average] and Marvels.
But if the book featured Ditko, Toth, Kane, Tuska, Prentice, Williamson, Wood or their ilk,I would usually pick them up.
I also had a weakness for movie adaptations, and bought may God Key and Dell movie adaptations. They usually seemed to attract excellent creative teams. Possibly because they were working in conjunction with movie studios and felt obliged to turn out something of reasonable quality.
Cheers!         

[Robb_K]

I know that the comparison on this thread is oriented towards the superhero and related human-character comics of those 3 publishers, but as I didn't read them as a child, I can only compare those 3 publishers based on their funny animal production.  Of course, for that genre, Western's Dell Comics would be far and away the best.  And as recently as the start of Gold Key Comics, Timely/Atlas/Marvel were not producing any funny animal comics.  Or, if they were, I wasn't interested in them, or never saw them.  Same for D.C., which had many funny animal titles during the 1940s and 1950s, but only "Fox and Crow" making it into the '60s in any meaningful way.  And only "Fox and Crow" having good enough quality to make it worth reading (but even it got old fast, be too formulaic, and the same exact plot).

So, my comparison of the 3 publishers compares 1940s and 1950s Timely/Marvel/Atlas, and National/D.C., with early (1962-66) Gold Key. 

In this case, Gold Key wins, just for Barks' "Uncle Scrooge", "Walt Disney's Comics & Stories", and "Donald Duck" stories, alone, but also helped by some still good WB, Walter Lantz, and MGM cartoon-based character hang-ons in 1962-1964, as the quality was still degrading gradually since 1956, and really accelerating around 1959.  Timely/Marvel would be second, despite a paucity of funny animal series and books after 1947, and especially after 1953.  Their stories were always slapstick and silly (no long adventures like Barks' Uncle Scrooge).  But their characters had personality (The Creeper, Widjit Witch, Ziggy Pig, Wacky Duck, Toughy Cat, Posty Pelican and Lolly Elephant).  Whereas, despite D.C. having innumerable different character series, and during the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, their stories were drawn by ex-animators from The Sangor Studios, who drew most of the great Creston/ACG and Better/Nedor/Standard funny animal artwork, their work, although competent artwise, was dull, and thus, sub-standard.  It seemed lifeless.  Certainly, it was partly due to D.C.'s aiming their product only at little children.  So there were no real story plots, only simple sight gags-Nothing even complicated enough to challenge 8-10 year olds' minds.  That's where Timely beat them.  At least the latter had a few inside jokes and double meaning jokes.

So, I would list Western/Gold Key first, Timely/Marvel ('47-'51)/Atlas second, and National/D.C. last.

[The Australian Panther]

Robb, I would be in agreement with what you write. Also, into the 60s and 70s Harvey was still publishing. Now they didn't have animals as characters, if memory serves, so what category do you put their books in? outside of Gold Key, I would put them as the best of that 'Cartoon character comics'. I read a lot of them, I think that my mother bought them for my younger sisters, at least that's my excuse. But I've always been attracted to character and narrative. And the Harvey books, Spooky, Casper, Wendy, Little Dot, Little Lotta,[Little Lotta was kind of a kid kartoon female little girl Hulk, come to think of it] Baby Huey, [Funny Animal!] Hot stuff, Little Audrey, Stumbo the Giant. They often had book length narratives. And the stories always made sense. Why the emphasis on 'Baby and Little' I don't know, but they knew their market. Richie Rich was not my cup of tea tho. Was he something of a Scrooge pastiche?
And to me, Sad Sack was, well, a bit of a Sad Sack.         

[Robb_K]

Robb, I would be in agreement with what you write. Also, into the 60s and 70s Harvey was still publishing. Now they didn't have animals as characters, if memory serves, so what category do you put their books in? outside of Gold Key, I would put them as the best of that 'Cartoon character comics'. I read a lot of them, I think that my mother bought them for my younger sisters, at least that's my excuse. But I've always been attracted to character and narrative. And the Harvey books, Spooky, Casper, Wendy, Little Dot, Little Lotta,[Little Lotta was kind of a kid kartoon female little girl Hulk, come to think of it] Baby Huey, [Funny Animal!] Hot stuff, Little Audrey, Stumbo the Giant. They often had book length narratives. And the stories always made sense. Why the emphasis on 'Baby and Little' I don't know, but they knew their market. Richie Rich was not my cup of tea tho. Was he something of a Scrooge pastiche?
And to me, Sad Sack was, well, a bit of a Sad Sack.   

I rate Gold Key VERY, VERY low.  The only comic books I really liked published by them were mainly the Carl Barks stories they printed in 1962-63, and the few Barks stories in 1964-65 that were decent quality.  The artwork at Western had deteriorated quite a bit since the quality of paper they gave their artists was reduced for the 3rd time in 1959, and was so slick that the inkers had to tighten up their strokes so the ink didn't run all over the page, and so, the pencilers also tightened up their poses and action, so the inker (often themselves) wouldn't have so much trouble.  Another major problem was that the quality of the story writing also went downward drastically.  I believe that the editors were also aiming to capture mainly a much younger audience.  The colouring was atrocious compared to what it had been with Dell.  The sky in each succeeding panel would have a solid, new and different bright colour, blinding the reader, and making the story impossible to read.  I couldn't bother to read the US Gold Key Barks stories.  I read them once, and couldn't even remember what I had tried to read.  I only really read the stories after getting the Dutch versions reprints in the 1970s and 1980s, because even the Dutch first (1960s) printings of the 1960s Barks stories had terrible colouring (not as bad as the US versions, but still bad).  The WB, Walter Lantz, and MGM comics were also abominable after the first 10 issues, or so of Gold Key.  And changing from ink-outlined speech balloons to squared ones made them impossible to read.  Luckily, they went back to round balloons after a few months.  But, they also tried an experiment to not ink the panel boundaries, but just have a light-coloured 2mm wide box around the panel.  With each box being a different panel.  Luckily, that experiment was stopped after a few issues.  None of those gimmicks helped sales.  What they needed to do was to get better artists and writers, and better paper.  The problem was that they were still selling their books at 12 to 15 cents, when the cost of living and their cost of operation had jumped several times higher than it had been in the 1940s and 1950s.  So, the quality had to come down drastically.  They were still 36 pages.  But, NOW there were only 24-28 pages of comics, whereas Dell issues started with all 68 pages as comics, then, all 52 as comics.  Then 51 comics and 1 advert.  Then 50 comics and 2 adverts, then 49 and 3 adverts, then 36 and 1 advert, then 36 and 2 adverts.  Dell's Disneys never had more than 2 pages of adverts.

Of course there are several other major funny animal publishers whose comics I like better than both Timely and DC.  They include ACG, Nedor/Standard, Fawcett, Quality, EC, Dearfield, Archie/MLJ.

So, really, I'd rather read a Timely funny animal comic from 1943-47 with not so-good story, but inspired art, than even a good Barks story in a Gold Key printing.  On the other hand, I have virtually every DC funny animal comic from the 1940s and 1950s, and I NEVER read them, and many of them were drawn by the same Sangor Studio artists whose Giggle and Ha Ha stories I love.

As to Harvey Comics, they DID have their own funny animal comics, starting in 1945, with "Nutty Comics", which ran during 1945-46 with 6 issues (3-8), which starred Nutty Squirrel, Helpful Hank(Hound), Pop Gunn(Vulture Sheriff), Bozo Bear, Buddy Beaver, Hep Chick, Rags Rabbit, Goldie Goldfish, Freddie Fix-It(Squirrel), Stinky Skunk, Blimpy Pig, Pat Pigeon, Jumping Jack(Bug), and Tabby Cat.  Also in 1945, they  had G-Man Bull, a bulldog detective in a 1-page gag in "Green Hornet #24.  They also had "Clown Comics", which ran 3 issues in 1945 and 1946, which had 2 funny animal features ("B.Fuddle(Dog detective, and "Cracker Parrot").  Then, in 1953, they had "Funny 3-D(3-D comic with the "Nutty Comics" stars.  Also, their "Rags Rabbit" series of 9 issues ran from 1953-54, with Rags Rabbit, his nephews, Pesty & Jesty, Pop Gunn, Blimpy Pig, Buddy Beaver, Pat Pigeon, and Shaggy Dog as features.  Also, Wily Fox had some gags of his own.  Rags Rabbit had 2 books of his own issued in The "Harvey Hits" series in 1957, as did Herman & Katnip, Buzzy Crow, and Baby Huey, and many of the "Nutty Comics" characters recurred in The "Rags Rabbit" and later Harvey Comics' series.

Also in 1953 they started printing "Paramount Animated Comics", with funny animal characters: Herman & Katnip, Buzzy Crow, Brownie Bear, and Baby Huey.  In 1954, Baby Huey's first series started. In 1956, Felix The Cat moved to Harvey.  Also, his nephews, Inky & Dinky got their own series.  "Blondie" came to Harvey, and a spin-off series "Daisy and Her Pups" started in 1951 and ended in 1954, and had at least 11 issues.  The series and stories were focused on the dogs, despite having Humans, The Bumstead family as secondary characters on occasion.  So, I consider that series in the "funny animal" genre.

So, I count 29 different funny animal characters that were featured in their own titled stories and gags in Harvey Comics between 1945 and 1960.  I don't care what happened after that.  Harvey's funny animal stories were weak in the '60s and getting weaker by the year.  I count  8 different Harvey Comics funny animal characters that had their own book series during those 16 years, if we assign "Nutty Comics" to Nutty Squirrel, who was generally in the book's first story, and also the only one of that book's characters to have 2 stories of his in some of the books.  In addition to Nutty, Rags Rabbit, Herman & Katnip, Baby Huey,  Buzzy The Crow, Felix the Cat, Inky & Dinky, and Daisy and Her Pups all had their own Harvey comic book series.

So, Harvey was not a Disney-level funny animal comics publisher, but they were definitely not a NON-funny animal publisher.

[Drahken]

I grew up in the 80s. I eschewed "serious" comics such as superhero, western, army, etc, largely because of the publishers' money-grubbing tactics. If you pick up any "funny" comic, you get several complete stories per issue, but with "serious" ones you have to buy hundreds of issues just to get one story. In particular I remember an incident with a spiderman comic. I had always been a huge spidey fan (reruns of the 60s toon, the 70s live action series, the segments on the electric company show, the amazing friends toon, the stand alone spidey toon from the 80s, etc), but when I tried reading a spidey comic there were more yellow boxes saying "as seen in..." and "continues in.." than there were dialog boxes & thought bubbles. It would have been bad enough if it was just a single title, but they spread it over numerous spidey titles plus numerous non-spidey titles too.

As such, I scorned both marvel & dc back in the day (the only exceptions being marvel's harvey-like star imprint and the transformers comics). I don't think gold key was still publishing then, although I did have a fair number of gold key and whitman comicsthat I had gotten for 10-15 cents at flea markets over the years. My fav publishers were harvey & archie. I loved casper, richie rich, and my fav was hot stuff.
As I alluded to a moment ago, I was a huge transformers (and giant robots in general) fan, plus marvel didn't pull that money grubbing crap with licensed titles like that, so I did buy a bunch of their transformers comics back then (I still have most of them).

[Jetstone]

Hi Robb,
if your fingers are recovered from that post I wanted to ask if the UNCLE SCROOGE 25cent giant issue with the "lost city of gold " story ( with the Beagle Boys ?) was a Barks story. I guess that would've been late 60s ? I never thought I would get so deeply involved in a Donald Duck story.

[Robb_K]

Hi Robb,
if your fingers are recovered from that post I wanted to ask if the UNCLE SCROOGE 25cent giant issue with the "lost city of gold " story ( with the Beagle Boys ?) was a Barks story. I guess that would've been late 60s ? I never thought I would get so deeply involved in a Donald Duck story.

Unfortunately, I can't answer your question, because I had stopped buying US comic books by then.  But, I'd guess that you are referring to Carl Barks' originally untitled story from Dell Comics' Uncle Scrooge #7 in 1954, which was reprinted in 1967 in "The Best of Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck # 2".  The story first received the following title in that printing: "The Seven Cities of Cibola".