Ditko at Charlton: Part 1

ALTHOUGH STEVE DITKO'S BEST-KNOWN SUPERHERO IS SPIDER-MAN, he had drawn another super character several years earlier ... at Charlton Comics.

Captain Adam became Captain Atom at the beginning of 1960. But it wasn't Charlton Comics' first foray into the superhero field.

Captain Atom was created by artist Steve Ditko and scripter Joe Gill, probably towards the end of 1959, and first appeared in the Charlton anthology comic Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960).

WHO THE HECK ARE CHARLTON COMICS?

In many ways Charlton Comics were similar to Marvel Comics. Both were privately held companies, both were considered among the bottom feeders of the publishing industry paying the lowest rates to their contributors, both had owners with slightly shady pasts (though the same could be said for DC Comics), both handled their own distribution ... they even shared the same ad space agency. Then, going one further than Marvel, Charlton even had their own printing presses.

Charlton had been founded by John Santangelo, an Italian immigrant bricklayer by trade, and lawyer Ed Levy. Santangelo had started publishing song lyric sheets in 1931 at 10c a go, undercutting other publishers of such material who were changing 35c, but he hadn't bothered to seek permission of the copyright holders. The law caught up with him in 1934 and he was sentenced to 12 months in jail. While in prison, he met Levy and the pair decided to partner up and continue publishing lyric sheets on the outside, this time legitimately, starting in 1935 They called the new company T.W.O. Charles as they both had sons of that name. Santangelo moved a printing business he already owned from Waterbury, Connecticut to Derby, his wife's hometown and this formed the basis of what would become Charlton Publishing.

Charlton's earliest publications were music fan mags that included the lyrics to popular songs, printed legally after Santangelo made a deal with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). Hit Parader lasted well into the 1980s.

By 1941, the company was publishing two song lyric sheets, Big Song Magazine and Radio Song Hits, under the imprint of Charlton Press. The following year, it launched an actual music fan magazine, Hit Parader, which still included the lyrics of popular songs, and changed its name to Charlton Publications. The magazine was soon selling 600,000 a month and the company added a companion mag, Song Hits, when they bought rival publisher Song Lyrics Inc.

One of Charlton's massive four-colour printing presses in the 129 acre Derby, Connecticut plant. The company would eventually have seven of these on-site.

Because these big four-colour printing presses were only stopped twice a year for cleaning, Charlton had to find ways of keeping the machines running and in 1944 it branched out into comic publishing. Yellowjacket Comics (Sep 1944), a superhero title, launched under the shell company imprint of "Frank Comunale Publications", presumably to prevent any creditors coming after the main company if the comic failed. The following year saw the debut of Zoo Funnies (Nov 1945) and in 1946, Charlton added Catholic Comics (Oct 1946) to the lineup.

No hidden gold here. Most of the creators of these comics are either unrecorded or long-forgotten, though there is a Sid Greene (later a key inker in DC's Silver Age) story in the first issue of Catholic Comics.

As the comics line grew, Charlton turned to comics packager Al Fago (brother of Marvel editor Vince) to supply material. By 1951, Fago had become in-house editor of the Charlton line and set about building a bullpen, both freelance and in-house, including such notables as Dick Giordano, Vince Alascia, Jon D'Agostino, Sam Glanzman, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, Dick Ayers, Sal Trapani and, of course, Steve Ditko.

Inside the Charlton bullpen, some time in the mid-1960s I'd guess ... looks like there's some proofreading and art bodging going on here.

With the increased capacity, Charlton began to add titles in every gentre. Initially, crime romance and space were the main focus, but soon other types of comics followed, including the slightly odd range of hod rod comics.

In 1951, Charlton added two crime titles, Crime and Justice and Lawbreakers, probably because the the success of Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay. But horror also made the cut, as well as ... hot rods.

In 1953, with Fawcett Comics beaten down by DC's ongoing lawsuits against Captain Marvel, Charlton bought out the Fawcett inventory and added a roster of titles, including:

This Magazine is Haunted Strange Suspense Stories Nyoka Gabby Hayes Western Lash LaRue Western Monte Hale Western Rocky Lane Western

Six-Gun Heroes Tex Ritter Western Tom Mix Western Western Hero. Sweethearts Romantic Secrets Romantic Story

Space was quite popular as a genre during the early 1950s, and so was the western ... so why not give Space Westerns a go?

In 1955, with the introduction of the Comics Code, some other smaller publishers threw in the towel and Charlton acquired material and titles from St John, Superior Comics and Simon and Kirby's Mainline Comics. They also published a superhero title, The Blue Beetle, largely reprinting material from the original Fox Comics title of the 1940s.

During 1955, Charlton published the final inventory issues of Simon & Kirby's failed Mainline Comics. None of the titles outlasted the supply of S&K material that came with them.

Around the same time, Al Fago left Charlton and the editorship passed to his assistant Pat Masulli who would guide Charlton for the next decade. Coincidently, also in 1955, the company was devastated by the flooding of their Derby, Connecticut site. The 18-foot flood waters destroyed much of the Fawcett artwork they'd just acquired, along with printing plates and presses, and over a quarter of a million dollars worth of paper stocks. To make matters worse, Charlton had to bear the losses themselves, as it was impossible to get flood insurance at the time in Connecticut.

Other fan favourite comics from the period include the giant 68 page horror titles Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds and Out of This World, along with Tales of the Mysterious Traveller, Konga and Gorgo ... all of which heavily feature Ditko art.

From the mid-1950s until the end of the decade, Steve Ditko became Charlton's mainstay artist, contributing dozens of covers and snappy short stories, not a million miles away from what he was doing with Stan Lee over at Marvel pretty much around the same time.

One interesting aside about Charlton was that they provided publishing services for Harvey Kurtzman's third foray into satire magazines, Humbug. After splitting wth EC around the time Mad became a magazine, Kurtzman and Elder struck a deal with Playboy publisher High Hefner to put out a big budget, all-colour newstand humour magazine Trump. It only lasted two glorious issues. Then in 1957, Kurtzman took another stab at the genre with Humbug, a comic book-size magazine that frequently got lost on the newsstands. The money had been put up by Kurtzman and Elder, with substantial contributions from contributors Arnold Roth, Al Jaffee and Harry Chester. Productions, printing and distribution was handled anonymously by Charlton Publications. Humbug lasted 11 issues.

Unlike its predecessors Mad and Trump, Humbug was a little more political in its stance, and included prose pieces in among the comic strips.

Then, towards the end of the 1950s Steve Ditko and Joe Gill worked up a new superhero character, Captain Atom, that debuted in Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960). The character seemed popular, because the series would run in the title for the next year and a half until Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), when Steve Ditko began to cut back on his work for Charlton in favour of Stan Lee's Marvel Comics.

In 1965, editor Masulli stepped aside in favour of long-time Charlton artist Dick Giordano. Giordano was looking to revive the superhero line and persuaded Ditko to moonlight on the character even as his relationship with Stan Lee and Marvel comics was in decline. As well as drawing Captain Atom once again, Ditko would contribute art to The Blue Beetle, Nightshade and The Question. Other Charlton superheroes of the period included Sarge Steel, Judomaster, Thunderbolt, and Peacemaker.

Although I never even came across any copies of Thunderbolt or Peacemaker at the time, I enjoyed Judomaster, and still have a soft spot for the character today.

By the end of 1967, though, the Charlton superhero line had fizzled out and Giordano left for DC comics, taking many of the artists he'd nurtured with him, including Ditko and Jim Aparo, and writer Denny O'Neil. After Giordano's departure, Charlton shifted its focus to licensed properties like Hannah-Barbera, King Features and Jay Ward cartoons, while continuing its war, horror and romance titles.

Co-founder Ed Levy retired in 1965 and sold his half of the business to John Santangelo. Santangelo died in 1979, and his sons ran the company for a few more years, then sold the superhero characters to DC Comics.

AND ... BACK TO CAPTAIN ATOM

Charlton comics were among the first to follow DC back into the superhero business, helping to kick off the Silver Age. Though only just pipped at the post by Archie Comics, who launched Simon & Kirby's Double Life of Private Strong in June 1959 followed very closely by The Fly in July 1959, Charlton were a close third, publishing their superhero effort Captain Atom in Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960).

Though The Shield was the revival of a Golden Age Archie character, DC objected the similarities with Superman and forced Archie to cancel the book. The Fly did a little better, lasting 39 issues, though S&K departed after issue 4.

It's an odd serendipity that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were the first artists to draw non-DC superheroes after the successful launch of the revived Flash in Showcase 4 (Sep 1956), long before Stan Lee assigned them Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man at Marvel Comics.

It doesn't look like Charlton had high hopes for their new superhero, as they didn't even spring for new cover art, instead lifting a panel from Ditko's interior art and repurposing that.

The first Captain Atom strip ran a luxurious nine pages, giving artist Steve Ditko plenty of space to flesh out the story. His depictions of grief when the Air Force personnel think one of their own has perished are especially effective, and I don't think you'll find such a fine expression of emotion in any other comic book of the period.

Though Captain Atom is wearing his familiar gold and red uniform on the debut issue's cover, the interior art depicts him in a blue uniform. Ditko's use of the nuclear symbols to depict Atom's power is pretty cool and very much in keeping with the Cold War themes that would emerge later in the run.

The remainder of the story details Captain Adams' transformation into the superbeing Captain Atom, his instant acceptance by the US president as a secret weapon (though the secrecy aspects would be slowly eroded over the early part of the character's series), and an exhibition of his seemingly limitless powers.

The atomic symbolism crops up again, as Captain Adam reconstitutes his physical form back on Earth. That feat of teleportation wouldn't be repeated, as his preferred mode of transport going forward would be flying at Mach 3 speeds, leaving a trail of nuclear fairy dust.

The president and Sgt Gunner Gosun are recurring background characters, but neither is given much to do beyond their contributions to moving the plot forward. Interestingly, Captain Atom's first actual adventure would occupy just the final page of the story. This would be a shortcoming of all the Space Adventures episodes ... limited space resulting in too-short tales with unsatisfying conclusions.

Captain still didn't rate new cover artwork, or indeed the lion's share of the cover. But note the use of red, white a blue on the Captain Atom logo, some years before another Captain would use the same idea.

Most of the Captain Atom run in Space Adventures would concentrate on, well, space adventures, with the Captain concentrating on battling alien invaders. The Captain's second outing in Space Adventures 34 (Jun 1960) had him rescuing a Russian astronaut when his communist masters rush him into space with no clear way to bring him back. Only the intervention of Captain Atom saves the Russian's life and causes him to realise the inhumanity of the Soviet regime.

In this short tale, Captain Atom shows empathy with and mercy towards an "enemy", caring more for the Soviet cosmonaut's life than the pilot's own people. Teaching kids such basic human decency doesn't seem like a priority any more.

This is especially fascinating because, just less than a year later, in April 1961, the Soviets were the first to launch a man into space. Yuri Gargarin orbited the Earth once in the spacecraft Vostok 1 and caused some denting of American pride.

Just the one six-page Captain Atom story in Space Adventures 35. Despite appearances, "Spies from Another World" isn't a Captain Atom tale, but a short fantasy story that wouldn't be out of place in a Marvel comic of the same period.

The Captain Atom tale in Space Adventures 35 (Aug 1960) was an altogether more whimsical affair. Billy, the son of Sgt Gosun, has been sleeping for unusually long periods, then describing vivid dreams when he awakens. 

"The Little Wanderer" is a slight and ultimately unsatisfying story about a child whose dreams about intelligent monster birds in space turn out to be real.

Suspecting there's something more than a child's vivid imagination, Captain Adam investigates as Captain Atom and discovers that Billy is traversing the universe with a benign space bird creature called Loga. There really isn't any conflict to resolve. Captain Atom just states that Loga will return Billy to his parents now and that's the end of the story.

I think this is the first time Steve Ditko shows both identities of a superhero in the one image, something he'd do repeatedly a few years later during his run on Spider-Man at Marvel.

Space Adventures 36 (Oct 1960) had two Captain Atom stories, both five pages, both once more a little thin on the ground. "The Wreck of X-44" had Captain Adam, now identified as a test pilot, blown out of the sky when a saboteur's bomb detonates the experimental X-44 space rocket miles above the Earth. The saboteur is identified, Captain Atom gives chase and captures the spy. That's it.

Other than lacking mystery or suspense, the first story in Space Adventures 36 is very good. The Ditko artwork helps a lot.

The second story has no more substance than the first. When the Soviets launch missiles at an orbiting American weapons platform, Captain Atom destroys the Russian warheads.

There's a lot of wanton destruction of Russian hardware and the American weapons platform survives, but it's never mentioned again and neither the characters nor the narrative captions stop to consider whether an orbiting death star might be a tad provocative.

No effort is spent debating the ethics of the US weaponising space, or whether the Russians might have had a point, which is a bit out of character for Captain Atom, given his efforts to save the life of a Soviet cosmonaut in Space Adventures 34.

The cover art for Space Adventures 37 is a composite of two interior Ditko panels (see below page scans). The first story in this issue, "The Space Prowlers", doesn't rate a cover mention.

Space Adventures 37 (Dec 1960) also sported two Captain Atom stories, each of five pages. "The Space Prowlers" starts off with Captain Adam discovering a spy filching documents from an Air Force base, but soon escalates into panoramas of destruction as his super alter ego wipes out an entire alien battle fleet by detonating his own body in a nuclear explosion.

"The Space Prowlers" packs a lot of spectacular action into its brief five pages. When Captain Atom discovers an alien invasion fleet hovering above Earth, he directs his nuclear powers at it, destroying every last vessel ... which does seem a little extreme.

"A Victory for Venus" is an altogether more eccentric affair, with Captain Atom discovering space mermaids in the vicinity of Venus, destroying any Earth rockets that come close. When Venutians destroy a Terran space camera, Captain Atom meets some comely space sirens who warn him off, then despatch him back to Earth with the odd statement that they will meet again as friends. 

It seems as though this story was setting up some larger future conflict between Venus and Earth, but the series was cancelled before we ever got to see the space mermaids again.

I don't believe the dangling plotline was ever resolved - though there is another lady from Venus in Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), who appears to be unrelated to this bunch.

Details of the stories in this issue will have to remain a mystery until I can add a copy of Space Adventures 38 to my burgeoning collection.

I can't tell you very much about Space Adventures 38 (Feb 1961), as I don't have a copy and the stories weren't reprinted in the later Strange Suspense Stories run. However, the issue featured three five-page tales ... "1 Second of War", "Backfire" and "The Force Beyond", all by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko. I'll add further detail here when I eventually track down a copy of the comic.

This cover has a bit of a rushed feel to it, even by Charlton standards. "See Captain Atom", it blares but prefers to keep the details quiet. Or maybe the rest of the cover line fell off on the way to the print room. There's certainly a gap for it.

Space Adventures 39 (Apr 1961) had two five-page stories by Steve Ditko and a seven-pager by Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, "Peace Envoy".

It's not a splashy story, just Captain Atom on a short rescue mission. The dialogue at the end of page 5 suggests that Captain Atom's existence is still supposed to be a secret.

The first Ditko story, "Test Pilot's Nightmare", has Captain Adam trying to warn a stubborn scientist about a failing oxygen valve on a stratospheric plane. His warnings are ignored and it's up to Captain Atom to save the endangered test pilot.

"An Ageless Weapon" is even more low-key, and more of a Captain Adam story than Captain Atom. Though he shows the spies his powers, they never see him in costume, so the secrecy is preserved.

The second Ditko story gives us Captain Adam as a courier of secret documents being captured by East German spies. Adam quickly turns the tables on the spies, captures them and delivers them to NATO headquarters. This short piece is unusual because we don't get to see any Captain Atom action. In fact, Captain Adam's super alter-ego doesn't even appear until the final panel.

Though the cover lines are every bit as sparse as last issue's, at least it doesn't look like the text has fallen off. GCD speculates that the headshot may be Rocke Mastroserio's work, but I don't think it looks anything like his style.

The next issue of Space Adventures, 40 (Jun 1961), gave us a seven-page Captain Atom story, featuring more anti-communist rhetoric and a shorter more whimsical tale in which the Captain cures a young lad's cancer.

I've left out the more mundane exposition pages and focussed here on the action-packed scenes of Captain Atom melting hundreds of Russian missiles. You're welcome.

In the first tale, "The Crisis", Captain Adam first impersonates an elderly diplomat, Mr Haynes, who is scheduled to make an important speech at a conference in Europe. Enemy agents kidnap the fake Mr Haynes and try to coerce him into altering his speech. But the disguised Captain Adam doesn't fear their guns and tells the assembled representatives of the Soviet shenanigans. Of course they shoot him - to little effect - and are quickly arrested. And Mr Haynes is free to give his speech. But an undercover US operative within the Soviet delegation informs Captain Atom of an imminent plot to launch a nuclear strike on the US while the conference is under way. Captain Atom streaks off to destroy the Soviet arsenal in spectacular style and all-out war is averted once again. It's a lot of plot packed into seven pages.

This is the first we hear of Captain Atom using the rays of this particular star to cure his own radiation poisoning ... and the first time we've heard that he even had any ill-effects from his own exposure to nuclear energy.

The second story tells of a normally-reliable Air Force technician who keeps making silly blunders. Captain Adam feels there is more to the story than just carelessness and finds out that the technician's son is seriously ill. As Captain Atom he takes the child on a journey to a mysterious star, whose rays can counteract the gamma poisoning that has made the lad ill.

It's the final appearance of Captain Atom in his original Space Adventures run. Quite why Charlton discontinued the character is unknown. Possible Ditko's increasing workload at Marvel Comics might have been the cause.

Space Adventures 41 (Aug 1961) doesn't have any Captain Atom stories, but he returns in Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), in two stories from Rocke Mastroserio and the final adventure of the period from Steve Ditko, "The Silver Lady from Venus".

"The Silver Lady from Venus" is an odd little tale to conclude Ditko's first run on Captain Atom. No reason is given for not returning the Venutian Siren to her home planet, and just dumping her behind the Iron Curtain doesn't seem like an effective solution.

The title character has been broadcasting a television show that seems to have top research scientists mesmerised, enticing them to cause missile launches to fail in a most disastrous manner. Captain Atom investigates and discovers that the Silver Lady is indeed from Venus, but has no relationship to the Venutian sirens we encountered back in Space Adventures 37.

And with that, Captain Atom was gone. Charlton may have been considering carrying on with Rocke Mastroserio as a replacement for Ditko, as they'd published several instalments drawn by him in Space Adventures 39 and 42. But Ditko had been contributing a number of stories to Stan Lee's post Atlas Marvel line, beginning in 1958 and with the addition of two extra fantasy titles - Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, Ditko's Marvel work was expanding at the same time as his Charlton work was shrinking.

By the time Ditko finished his run on Captain Atom in mid-1961, his only two remaining Charlton titles were Konga and Gorgo, both of which he drew until the end of 1963, which was around the same time that Amazing Spider-Man went monthly.

Maybe it was only DC that insisted on exclusivity during the 1960s, as Ditko continued to draw these Charlton titles while he was working for Marvel and even while drawing Spider-Man and Dr Strange.

The Space Adventures run was interesting mostly for the mixture of slick and quirky that Steve Ditko brought to the art. Though not as polished as his later Spider-Man work, there's still a great deal to admire in Ditko's drawing. Unfortunately, the stories are let down by Joe Gill's slapdash scripts, which fail to make the most of Ditko's tight plotting. Gill had done much better work in previous years at Atlas, notably on Kid Colt Outlaw, but here it often seemed to me that he was inserting text into panels even when he had nothing to say ... and from the result, you'd think Gill had Van Gogh's ear for dialogue, especially if you compare it to what Stan Lee was doing over at Marvel during the same period.

Later, as Steve Ditko became dissatisfied at Marvel, he would return to Charlton and the character he helped create at the beginning of the decade. But that's a story for another time.

Next: More of Captain Atom and his pals

Marvel Comics Cover Gallery - 1957

THERE USED TO BE A REALLY USEFUL WEBSITE, a few years ago, called Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index (SAMCCI). You could scroll through and see all - well, most of - the covers for a given month. I think you can still find the site via Wayback Machine, but the owner never completed the index, so not all the covers were there.

So, I thought I'd have a crack at presenting Marvel's Silver Age Marvel covers in a similar format, though I've cheated a little and plan to present each month as a single composite image, partly because it's easier for me and partly because of the technical limitations here on Blogspot.

The last Atlas-distributed comic and the first (unbranded) Marvel comic distributed by Independent News were cover-dated for the month of October 1957, on sale 15 July 1957.

I figured a good place to start would be 1957, which was the last year Martin Goodman's comics were released by his Atlas distribution company. As has been well-documented here, Goodman screwed the pooch when he got greedy and tried to chisel a few extra dollars by folding his Atlas company and switching the American News Company. ANC went out of business the following month, leaving Marty with no way to get his magazines to the stands so he had to beg Independent News (owned by DC Comics and operated by Goodman's golfing acquaintance Jack Liebowitz) to distribute his books

DC limited Marvel's output initially to eight titles a month, and the Atlas line was instantly slashed to 16 bi-monthly titles. Editor Stan Lee had to stop commissioning new material until the massive backlog was used up, throwing many Marvel artists and writers out of work. Several key Atlas regulars, like Gene Colan, John Romita, John Buscema, Joe Sinnott and Vince Colletta started working for other companies and it took Stan years to lure them back to Marvel.

But slowly, Lee began to rebuild the lineup, introducing superheroes in 1961 and, by 1965, rehiring most of the artists he'd lost in that 1957 disaster.

To give you an idea of the huge fall from grace suffered by Magazine Management's comics group because of Goodman's folly, here's a month-by-month round up of all the titles Atlas was publishing in its final year of operation. By comparision to the beginning of the year, October looks very sad indeed.

JANUARY 1957

The Atlas titles cover-dated for the first month of 1957 included several examples of each of the common genres. Martin Goodman was never one for leading the field, so he favoured a mix of westerns (9), mystery (10), war (8), romance (3), teen humour (4), and a Casper the Friendy Ghost ripoff, Homer (1).

Click image to enlarge

There were 35 Atlas comic titles published in January of that year. Navy Action must've been quite successful, because Goodman debuted Navy Tales. And if Two-Gun Western was doing okay, why not go four better and add Six-Gun Western to the lineup? Kid Slade, was a continuation of the numbering from Matt Slade Gunfighter - I'm not clear if it's the same character or if Martin Goodman just wanted "Kid" in the title. 

It's worth noting that the mystery titles (Astonishing, Journey into Mystery, Journey into Unknown Worlds, Marvel Tales, Mystery Tales, Mystic, Strange Tales and Uncanny Tales) and the "girls" titles (Love Romances, Millie the Model, Patsy and Hedy), along with Kid Colt Outlaw, were mostly monthly during this period.

One aspect of the covers of Goodman's comics I'd mentioned in the very first post of this blog was that the colours used were often muted, lots of greys and browns with the occasional splash of red. At the time, I'd speculated that this might be because with the early 1960s superhero titles, Goodman was trying to avoid the bold primaries used by DC so as to fly under Liebowitz's radar. But after looking at all these Atlas titles, I just think that was the house style.

FEBRUARY 1957

No new titles in February, but 44 old ones ... some older than others. This month there were eight westerns, 14 mystery, six war, five romance, five teen humour, two jungle girls, two crime, along with Melvin the Monster and The Yellow Claw.

Click image to enlarge

Quite a few copycat titles here. World of Mystery and World of Suspense (there was World of Fantasy in odd months, too). A lot of western "Kids". Strange Stories of Suspense, Strange Tales of Suspense and Strange Tales of the Unusual. Tales of the Marines is a continuation of the numbering from Devil-Dog Dugan, which makes it technically a first issue. Martin Goodman firmly believed that a title with a strong buzzword ("Suspense", "Tales", and "Strange" were three of his favourites) and attention-grabbing cover art was what sold a comic. I'm not sure he ever opened one of his own books.

Showgirls is a bit of a puzzle. The Overstreet Guide says that the title is a continuation of Sherry the Showgirl, but the timings and the cover dates don't support that. Showgirls 4 was published in place of Sherry the Showgirl 4 (which doesn't exist). The title continued two months later as Sherry the Showgirl 5. Then in June Showgirls 1 came out, the same month as Sherry the Showgirl 6.

MARCH 1957

The odd numbered months seemed to have far fewer Atlas titles. Coincidence or plan? Who can say? March offered comic readers 33 comics - three "Battle" titles to choose from, out of seven war comics. There was also eight westerns, three romance, four teen humour, ten mystery and Homer the Casper Copycat.

Click image to enlarge

The teen humour books are a weird bunch. Falling somewhere between the existing Atlas romance titles and Archie comics, it's difficult to see who the audience for this was. The Millie cover gags seem to be aimed more at a male audience than a female one. Whereas the Patsy Walker cover gags have a little less leering about them.

APRIL 1957

On sale around Christmas 1956 and New Year 1957, there were 45 titles cover-dated for April, the largest monthly output during those end days for Atlas. Of these, eight were war titles, nine were westerns. There were also five romance titles, five teen humour, 13 mystery, two crime, two jungle girl and The Yellow Claw.

Click image to enlarge

Caught 5 would be the last issue, a sign that crime comics had run their course. Marines at War was a title change for Tales of the Marines - maybe Goodman forgot that he liked to have "Tales" in a comic title.

MAY 1957

On offer during the January of 1957, were 34 Atlas titles cover-dated for May. The western comics were leading the charge at ten books, followed by the mystery mags with nine titles. Then six war books, five teen humour books, three romance mags, and Homer the Potential Lawsuit.

Click image to enlarge

Western Trails was a new title, featuring Ringo Kid. It's hard to say whether Ringo Kid was doing well and Goodman wanted more of him on the stands or if Atlas just had some inventory material Goodman wanted to use up. The consecutive job numbers on the strips in issue 1 tend to favour the former.

JUNE 1957

On sale in February, the June cover-dated Atlas titles gave us four new titles - The Adventures of Homer Ghost, Commando Adventures, The Kid from Texas, and Showgirls. This is kind of unusual, because Martin Goodman would have had to register the new titles with the US Post Office for subscription reasons, which cost money. This is why he had historically changed one title to another, rather than starting any new comics on the roster from issue 1.

Click image to enlarge

The June genres included nine western books, eight war titles, eight mystery mags, four romance titles, five teen humour comics, two jungle girls, one crime book, plus that second Homer Ghost title and Melvin the Monster, a copy of Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace newspaper strip, if slightly more mean-spirited. Jann of the Jungle was cancelled this month.

JULY 1957

Going on sale around the end of March and beginning of April, the 34 July issues allowed for 12 western books, seven war titles, six mystery titles, four romance mags, four teen humour comics, and Melvin the flippin' Monster.

Click image to enlarge

This month's output of the Atlas range gave the first indication that all was not well with Martin Goodman's company. Several titles came to a halt, including Adventures into Mystery, Combat Casey, GI Tales, Kid Slade Gunfighter, Navy Tales, Six-Gun Western, Wild Western, World of Mystery and World of Suspense. Melvin the Monster would also see its last issue, just one month after the previous bi-monthly one, as though Goodman was trying to clear the decks before the boom was lowered. But that was nothing compared to the following month.

AUGUST 1957

This would be pretty much the last opportunity for Goodman to publish as much Atlas inventory material as he could, so August's output consisted of a mammoth 42 titles, almost matching April's record. Mostly going on sale in late April to early May, we were given ten mystery titles, nine war comics, nine western mags, six teen humour books, five romance titles, and two comics featuring Homer the Ghost.

Click image to enlarge

The majority of the month's output would be last issues, as might be expected, including Astonishing, Battle Action, Battlefront, Combat Kelly, Commando Adventures, Frontier Western, Journey into Unknown Worlds, Kid from Texas, Lorna the Jungle Girl, Lovers, Marines at War, Marvel Tales (once the company's flagship title), Mystery Tales, Mystic, Mystical Tales, Navy Action, Showgirls, Sherry the Showgirl, Stories of Romance, Strange Stories of Suspense, Strange Tales of the Unusual, Western Gunfighters, Western Kid, and Western Outlaws.

Journey into Mystery went on hiatus for a year, Hedy Wolfe was the first and last issue, as was the The Romances of Nurse Helen Grant. All in all, a bit of a publishing bloodbath.

SEPTEMBER 1957

By comparison, the Atlas output for this month was pretty sorry-looking. Compared to April's year-high of 45 titles and the previous month's 42, May/June's September cover-dated output was a slender 25 comics. This broke down to eight western mags, four war books, four romance titles, four teen humour comics, a crime titles and a trio of odd number 1s - A Date With Patsy, Marvin Mouse and Black Rider, which I'm guessing were already in the pipeline before it all went pear-shaped with American News Company.

Click image to enlarge

The Black Rider book contained three Jack Kirby stories, two of which have an "L" job number and one having an "M" job number, suggesting that these were drawn at different points during Kirby's brief 1956 period working for Atlas before going to DC for a couple of years. Seeing that the end was closing in, Goodman likely cobbled this together and included it with the final Atlas titles, if only to get the inventory material off the ledgers.

On the other hand, A Date With Patsy looks like an attempt to use up inventory material from Patsy and Her Pals. And for some weird reason, Goodman changed the title of Melvin the Monster to Dexter the Demon, re-lettering all the interior strips in the process. My guess would be that Hank Ketcham, or perhaps the syndicate, sent Goodman a cease-and-desist letter, and this was his way of dodging the bullet and getting the last few inventory strips out of the red column.

OCTOBER 1957

The last three Atlas titles appeared during July of 1957, along with the first comic distributed by the DC-owned Independent News, Patsy Walker. I'm not aware of any of Goodman's comics carrying an American News identifier on the cover.

Click image to enlarge

Cartoon Kids looks like an opportunity to gather up the last few cartoony inventory items. Dippy Duck had been intended as an ongoing title and had been trailed in the previous month's Marvin Mouse with sample story carrying a line of (Stan Lee) hand-written text along the foot of final page saying, "Don't miss Dippy's further adventures in his own magazine: 'Dippy Duck!' Now on sale!"

I'm at a loss to explain Nellie the Nurse. Cast in the same mould as the Millie the Model and My Girl Pearl comics of the period, it just seems to be a slightly tamer version of the Bill Ward cartoons from men's magazines, and doesn't travel very well. "Martin Goodman always thought there was something inherently sexy about nurses," Stan Lee said to Roy Thomas in an interview for Comic Book Artist 2, Summer 1998. "I could never get inside his thinking there."

NOVEMBER 1957

This was the first tranche of titles that would be distributed by Independent News. Because DC's Jack Liebowitz didn't want Goodman to try to crowd DC comics off the stands by sheer weight of titles, he limited the former Atlas line to just eight titles a month. Even then Goodman gamed the system by publishing 16 bi-monthly comics. What was more interesting was the selection of titles Goodman decided to keep on his roster. It's almost certain that he would have picked the best-sellers, but would have balanced that by ensuring that he also had a good spread of genres.

Click image to enlarge

For November, Goodman kept two romance books, two westerns (Kid Colt seemed to be his character of choice), two teen titles, a war comic and a kiddy title. This mix and number of titles would be the limit of the line for a few years to come.

DECEMBER 1957

When you compare the other bi-monthly titles Goodman decide to publish, you see a bit of a pattern. If nothing else, Goodman knew circulation, so it will not be a coincidence that he paired genres together in the same month. My instinct would have been to publish the two bi-monthly romance titles in alternating months, but Marty chose to publish two romance titles one month then two war comics the next. So I reckon Goodman knew that the two titles in each genre would support each other by being on the stands the same month.

Click image to enlarge

So in December, we got two mystery comics, two westerns, two teen humour and two war.

Looking at the line as a whole, it meant that Goodman's 16 bi-monthly titles broke down to four westerns, four teen titles, three war books, two mystery, two romance comics and Homer the Happy Copyright Infringement.

Over the next couple of years, Goodman would be forced to cancel an existing title if he wanted to try a new book. This meant a big gamble as he'd have to sure that the replacement comic could "catch on" and sell more copies, or at least make a better sell-through figure, than the title it was replacing. No more just chucking mud at the wall to see what stuck.

I plan to do cover galleries for the remaining years of Marvel's Silver Age, so you'll be able to see how the 16 title rule slowly relaxed as it became clear that Marvel's sell-through numbers were better than DC's and it would have been business suicide for Liebowitz to stick rigidly to limiting Goodman's comic output.

Next: Moonlighting with Steve Ditko

Marvel Ad-Men: Part 2

BY 1963, MARVEL'S TITLES WERE BEGINNING TO FEATURE MORE AND MORE SUPERHEROES, which resulted in steadily rising sales. At this point DC Comics were still outselling Marvel by a 86% margin, so if advertisers were looking for the best venue to reach millions of children, then an ad in a 12 cent DC comic seemed the sensible way to go. The Superman tv show was still in syndication across the US, making the character a household name, so you can see why advertising agencies would prefer to buy space in Superman comics than in Martin Goodman's lesser-known Fantastic Four or Spider-Man comics.

If you wanted to reach the maximum number of children in June 1963, would you choose the magazine featuring America's most famous hero, or the relatively obscure Marvel Comic character, Spider-Man?

Because of this, you were far more likely to find bigger name advertisers hawking their wares in DC Comics than in Marvel books. I had thought that those familiar 1/3-page Tootsie Roll ads started appearing in DC mags in the early 1960s, but a little research shows that they first started with a full-pager in the early 1955 titles. 

We never got Tootsie Roll confectionary in the UK, and I've never tasted it myself, though later I did get to try Hershey's chocolate. I didn't like it.

Then, after a few months of testing just single 1/3-page ads, Tootsie Roll moved fairly quickly to taking three per issue in most DC books. Aside from the occasional AMF Roadmaster Bicycle or Winchester Air Rifle ad, Tootsie Roll would remain DC's best-known advertiser well into the 1960s, while the lower-rent advertisers, like Mike Marvel Body Building, would recede and disappear by 1963.

What was interesting was that it was also about this time that DC started having the final page of some of their stories run to just 2/3 of a page. This seemed to be to accommodate the Tootsie Roll ads. But in 1959, for some reason the company paused their advertising campaign, very probably without warning, leaving DC with a bunch of comics pages in the pipeline that were a third of a page short. And this is when we first started seeing the banner style house ads - lettered up by the immortal Ira Schapp - that would take the place of missing Tootsie Roll ads whenever needed.

DC house ads for their companion titles were always either half or full pages until 1959, when a break in the Tootsie Roll ad campaign left DC with some awkward spaces to fill.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel Comics, Martin Goodman was still clinging tenaciously not only to the body building ads, but also to the trade school and part-time selling opportunity ads that marked his publications as intended for lowbrow adults rather than children ... and to those pesky Classified ads.

Most of these small ads are for stamp companies, but there's a sprinkling of coin companies too. What intrigues me is those slightly shady music companies looking for poems, presumably to use as the lyrics for songs. Did they ever find any lyricists that way? Is it a scam? Click to enlarge.

However, over the next few years, as Stan's line of superhero comics gained ground on DC's floundering portfolio, we'd begin to see some incremental change in the style of ads that were appearing in the Marvel books ... but not much.

1963 - MARVEL

After the debut of The Fantastic Four in late 1961 and the first appearances of The Hulk, Ant-Man, Thor and Spider-Man in 1962, the following year consolidated Marvel's superhero line with the addition of Iron Man in Tales of Suspense 39 (Mar 1963), Dr Strange in Strange Tales 110 (Jul 1963), X-Men and The Avengers (Sep 1963) and the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man (Mar 1963).

In what was a bumper year for Marvel Comics, 1963 saw the consolidation of the superhero line. DC just didn't see the writing on the wall ...

Here's a revised version of the sales table I included in the April 2020 edition of this blog where I looked at the sales trends of Marvel and DC during the 1960s. You can see that from 1962 to 1963, Marvel enjoyed a 20% sales bump. And these are not the claimed sales figures that Martin Goodman guestimated for his second-class postal statements in the comics. These are the audited sales numbers that appeared in the N W Ayres advertising directories of the period.

	1st HALF		2nd HALF			FULL YEAR AVERAGE		DIFFERENCE
YEAR	DC	MARVEL	DC	MARVEL		DC	MARVEL
1960	6,695,210	2,322,162	8,056,093	3,058,312		7,375,652	2,690,237	-63.53%
1961	6,908,803	2,833,849	7,747,787	3,401,069		7,328,295	3,117,459	-57.46%
1962	6,049,602	2,992,017	7,250,513	3,587,987		6,650,058	3,290,002	-50.53%
1963	6,262,836	3,364,779	7,283,109	4,145,588		6,772,973	3,755,184	-44.56%
1964	6,671,121	3,903,821	7,461,786	5,322,151		7,066,454	4,612,986	-34.72%
1965	6,274,065	4,873,463	7,010,828	5,935,322		6,642,447	5,404,393	-18.64%
1966	6,987,445	5,980,401	7,687,633	7,300,363		7,337,539	6,640,382	-9.50%
1967	5,848,098	6,390,403	6,800,572	7,695,583		6,324,335	7,042,993	11.36%
1968	5,970,013	7,088,687	6,614,980	9,147,001		6,292,497	8,117,844	29.01%

Furthermore, since I last posted this table, I've managed to access some more pages from later N W Ayres Directories and they further confirm more of the numbers in the above table (marked in orange).

Click to enlarge.

So although the listed Marvel titles for 1962 in the N W Ayres Directory may be a little out of date, we can be sure that the circulation figures are accurate. More importantly, the numbers for Marvel books trended upwards as the 1960s wore on, while the figures for DC displayed a definite downward dwindle, barring a slight uptick in 1966 due, no doubt, to the blast of publicity around the god-awful Batman tv show.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel's ad agency, it was business as usual. We were still a year or two away from the increased sales trickling down to the Ayres Directory and the kind of audited figures that would merit the company being able to charge advertisers higher rates. They were still operating a Red Unit group of titles and a Yellow Unit, a practice that would exist until 1968 or 1969.

Both groups had essentially the same page configuration, with ads or at least non-comic strip material in the same spots throughout the magazine.

COMIC BOOK PRODUCTION - AN ASIDE

I probably should have mentioned this last time, but it's worth explaining to folks not familiar with printing methods how a 36-page comic was put together at the printers. Bearing mind that the covers were always printed separately on different, higher-quality paper, the interior pages of the standard American (and British, for that matter) comic have always been in multiples of 16. So when comic books first started appearing in the 1930s, they comprised four outer pages of the cover and 64 pages of interior newsprint paper. When paper shortages hit the industry during World War Two, many publishers were forced to drop to 48 interior pages. By the beginning of the 1950s, this was levelling out to 32 interior newsprint pages, plus outer covers.

Try it yourself ... The left hand grids are one side of the paper (web) and the right grids are the other side. Fold each as indicated, so you end up with the blue (3 or 11) on the outside facing you. Tuck the lower web inside the upper, staple at the centre, then trim the top and right edges. Your own mini comic.

This is because comics were printed on standard newspaper presses, mostly coldset letterpress machines. And because there was no heat-drying process, that's why newspaper ink used to come off on your fingers. The paper is fed into the printer via a continuous roll (the "web") and is printed on both sides in one pass. Four broadsheet size (23.5" by 14.5") pages will fold down into 16 comic book pages, so the interior of a comic requires two broadsheets, folded down to make 32 pages of comics.

Why am I telling you this? Well, consider that each of the four sides would be planned (assembled) from eight pages of negative film per side and then metal plates made from the film to print each side of the section at once. Four colour printing would require four plates for each side of the broadsheet section - cyan (c), yellow (y), magenta (m) and black (k, so as not to be mistaken for blue). You'll still find CYMK colour models used in software like PhotoShop and Illustrator. 

Examples of some registration marks printers put on the outer edges of a printed section to ensure the four colours are lining up correctly.

Keeping the ad pages in the same place for each comic saves a bit of work at the planning stage, especially when you're running the same ads across several titles.

AND ... BACK TO THE ADS

Nothing much had changed as 1962 rolled over into 1963. On all Marvel titles across the board, the non-comic-strip pages continued to be (8,) 9, 15, 19, 25 (26,) 27, 33, 34 - I put 8 & 26 in brackets because they tended to be either text editorial or house ads, but almost never comics strip.

Click to enlarge.

I'm using Rawhide Kid to represent the Marvel Red Unit, but comparing it with Fantastic Four 18 the same month, the ads are the same. Rawhide Kid 35 (Aug 1963) has 23 pages of comic strip and two pages of text story. There's seven pages of paid advertising on the interior pages and three of the four cover pages are also paid ads.

Click to enlarge.

We're still seeing a lot of the same ads, or at least ads in a similar vein. Trade training courses like electrical repair and car maintenance, selling opportunities and what seems like too much emphasis on hypnosis. And body building.

Click to enlarge.

In Marvel's Yellow Unit, focussing more on the girls' titles, the page plan of the comics followed the same configuration as the Red Unit, with the ads in exactly the same places. In Patsy Walker 108 (Aug 1963), only the single text page is placed differently. The second text page has been swapped out for a house ad for Millie the Model Annual 2 and Patsy and Hedy Annual 1. 

Click to enlarge.

The paid advertising is more in keeping with the perceived female audience for this title, with a couple of ads for "train to be a nurse", star photos and fan clubs and, in an inspired moment of ad placement, a "don't be skinny" ad on the same spread as a "don't be fat" ad.

1963 - DC

Meanwhile, over at DC the same year, it was pretty much business as usual, with no great deviation from what the company was doing in 1962. One thing that did change was the return of the one-third page Tootsie Roll ads, with editorial specifying that the final page of each story in the comic would be just two-thirds of a page to allow to include the Tootsie Roll ad at the bottom. This started with Action Comics 292 (Sep 1962), just missing the 1962 roundup I presented last time by a single issue.

The Tootsie Roll campaign wasn't a new thing for DC, but as mentioned above, it wasn't a consistent presence during the early 1960s. More out of curiosity, I thought I'd trace the origins of these ads in DC comics as far back as I could.

Tootsie Roll was a gooey confectionary first marketed in the U.S. by Sweets Company of America in 1908. The inventor, Leo Hirschfield, was the son of an Austrian sweet maker and started working at a confectionary business in New York in 1896. Details are hazy, but it seems that the sweetshop was acquired by confectionary manufacturers Stern and Saalberg, and it while working for that firm that Hirschfield invented Tootsie Roll candy around 1907. Shortly after this, Hirschfield became Vice-President on the company and continued in that role until Stern and Saalberg both retired around 1917 and the company officially became Sweets Company of America. Despite the success of Tootsie Roll candy, Hirshfield committed suicide for uncertain reasons.

The earliest ad I could find in DC Comics for the candy was in Action Comics 201 (Feb 1955).

By 1935, the company was in serious difficulties and it was then that the manufacturer of Tootsie Roll's packaging materials Joseph Rubin and Sons, fearful of losing their biggest client, decided to acquire the company. Under the new leadership, and with a change to the formula and size of the Tootsie Roll candies, Sweets Company of America began to return to profitability. Surviving the difficult war years, the sales of Tootsie Rolls had increased twelvefold by the time of Rubin's death in 1948.

Action Comics 245 (Oct 1958) was the earliest example I could find of DC making the final page of a feature story just two-thirds of a page to allow room for paid advertising.

After sporadic appearances during the mid-1950s, the Tootsie Roll ad campaign in DC's titles ramped up again in 1958, with first a full page ad in Action Comics 244 (Sep 1958), then the following issue, the one-third page ads kicked off in earnest, with each of the three comic strip stories making room for a one-third page Tootsie Roll ad on their final page.

Click to enlarge.

The trend would continue, with Sweet Company of America concentrating their campaigns in the summer/autumn issues of the DC titles. As you can see above, the ads featured throughout the August issues of DC comics, including Action Comics 303 (Aug 1963), part of DC's Blue Unit.

Click to enlarge.

Other advertisers included Mike Marvel Bodybuilding (one of the final entries), a Garcelon Stamps ad, no fewer than four toy soldiers ads and four beautifully lettered Ira Schapp house ads. That left readers with 24.66 pages of comic strip (including a couple of Henry Boltinoff two-third-page cartoon strips), and one page of readers' letters. 

In DC's Red Unit, Strange Adventures 155 (Aug 1963) had almost exactly the same ads but just placed in different positions throughout the magazine. Thinking this a little curious, I looked at some other DC Mags the same month and found that My Greatest Adventure 81 (another Blue Unit title) had completely different ads to Action 303.

Click to enlarge.

Then Blackhawk 187 (also a Blue Unit title) had the same ads as Action and Strange Adventures. I don't have access to N W Ayres for 1964, but looking at the Directory for 1965, it looks like some titles had been swapped around between the Red and the Blue Units.

Click to enlarge.

So, instead of Strange Adventures (which must've become a Blue Unit title during 1963), I'm going to use Detective Comics 318 (Aug 1963) to represent the Red Unit.

Click to enlarge.

The ads are, tellingly, similar to the selection in My Greatest Adventure 81. Where MGA81 has 24 pages of comic strip, three pages of house ads, a letters page and seven pages of paid advertising, Detective 318 has 25 pages of comics strip (including a Henry Boltinoff cartoon strip), 1.5 pages of house ads, a text page and 6.5 pages of paid ads.

Click to enlarge.

I'm still trying to decide if those Community ads in the DC comics of the period count as house ads or paid advertising.

1964 - MARVEL

By 1965, the N W Ayres Directory's entry for Marvel had updated the listed titles to show the 1964 lineup.

Click to enlarge.

You can see that Daredevil has entered the list along with the titles that debuted in 1963, Amazing Spider-Man, Sgt Fury, The X-Men and The Avengers, along with a belated appearance of Fantastic Four. There's a striking contrast between the circulations of the Red Unit (3,119,500, over 13 boys' comics titles) and the Yellow Unit (784,321, across four girls' comics titles), though it still represented an impressive 22.8% increase in sales from 1963 to 1964.

Sticking with Rawhide Kid to represent Marvel's Red Unit, issue 41 (Aug 1964) looked like this:

Click to enlarge.

We're still at 23 pages of comic strip, one page of text story and a full-page house ad, and still with 10 pages of paid advertising.

Click to enlarge.

It doesn't look like - even with the mounting success of the superhero comics - Martin Goodman has been able to (or even wanted to) capitalise on the improved sales and start bringing in a better class of advertiser, because the ads here don't look a great deal different to what we were seeing in the 1963 issues, but for the full page ad for the Marvel titles, Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man (the previous issue featured the first house ad for another title, Avengers 5).

Over in the Yellow Unit, the trend was, once again, little different from what we were seeing in the 1963 issues, other than a full page house ad for the Yellow Unit companion titles, Patsy and Hedy and Modelling with Millie.

Click to enlarge.

Patsy Walker 114 (Aug 1964) also had 23 pages of comic strip (or similar) pages, one page of text story and the house ad mentioned above. The remaining 10 pages were paid advertising.

Click to enlarge.

The paid ads were the usual mix of weight-loss, nursing tuition and manicure commercials. Only the gardening ad seemed a little out of place.

1964 - DC

By contrast, we see quite an improvement in the class of advertiser DC were starting to attract, even as their sales were beginning to decline. Representing the Blue Unit, Action 315 (Aug 1964) had 22.66 story pages, 1.66 pages of house ads and a whopping 9.66 pages of paid advertising. It's as though someone was actively bringing in new advertisers to make up for slipping circulations.

Click to enlarge.

No body building ad this time (though they're still popping up in other DC comics, like Action 316 and Adventure 325, Oct 1964). No more of those Stephens Mottoes ads either, which in 1964 were still hanging around in the Marvel titles. DC were clinging on to the toy soldiers ads, but had also added 2.66 pages of breakfast cereal commercials and a full page for Silly Putty.

Click to enlarge.

In the Red Unit's Detective Comics 330, there's some overlap of ads, but still enough difference to mark them as separate groups. There's 24 pages of comic strip, 1.5 pages of house ads and just a half-page letter column, with a third-page "Scienti-facts" feature. The rest of the interior pages are filled out with 7.66 pages of paid advertising, and whatever those Community messages count as.

Click to enlarge.

The paid advertising includes - like Action - 2.66 pages of cereal ads, the same Silly Putty ad, two pages of toy soldiers ads and the ever-present Junior Sales Club of America.

Click to enlarge.

Signing General Mills was quite a coup for DC. As well as producing a vast array of breakfast cereals, the company also sponsored the Rocky and Bullwinkle tv show, not something we'd recognise in the UK, but pretty much a household institution in the US during the 1950s and 1960s. We wouldn't see that quality of advertising in a Marvel comic for many years to come.

1965 - MARVEL

By 1965, Marvel's Yellow Unit had dwindled to just four titles, while the Red Unit, comprising of all the western, war and superhero comics had grown to 13, plus four Annuals. I'm sticking with Rawhide Kid as the Red Unit title, but comparing it with Fantastic Four 42 for the same month, the ads are identical. The page count for comic strip has dropped to 22 (though many of Marvel's titles would have just 20 pages of comic strip by the end of 1964), there's two pages of house ads and a letters page. The paid ad page count remains unchanged at 10.

Click to enlarge.

The type of ads we're seeing hasn't really changed either. Despite a healthy 17% increase in sales from 1964 to 1965, Martin Goodman is still chasing the low-rent, small-time advertisers, instead of going after high-paying corporate players. Why, I can't fathom. Was it some sense of inferiority, believing his publications were too low-brow to attract household name level advertising?

Click to enlarge.

The sales opportunity ads are still there, with Masons Shoes right upfront on the inside cover, along with GRIT later on in the comic. The lost interior comic strip page has been replaced with an extra house ad, selling Marvel t-shirts and MMMS memberships. The other house ad is touting the line-up changes to Strange Tales (Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD replaces the Human Torch), with The Sub-Mariner taking Giant-Man's slot on Tales to Astonish.

Click to enlarge.

The Marvel Yellow Unit titles are still a different kettle of ads. These titles, typified by Patsy Walker 120, are still offering 23 pages of comic strip or similar material, with just a single house ad and a letters page.

Click to enlarge.

The ads - 10 pages of them - are still more female oriented but there's also sales opportunities and home study education ads side-by-side with the beauty products and cheap novelties. And no classified ads pages.

1965 - DC

In 1965, DC continued its association with General Mills cereals and added Hasbro's GI Joe to their advertising line-up. But this would change as DC's circulations continued to decline. Unlike Marvel, DC lost 6% sales from 1964 to 1965, yet astonishingly weren't able to tell why Marvel was on the march and they were going backwards.

Click to enlarge.

Even though DC were giving us 23.33 pages of comic strip material for our money, readers seemed to prefer Marvel quality over DC quantity. In DC's Blue Unit titles, Action Comics 327 (Aug 1965) there was also a letters page (ever these lettercols seemed dull compared to Marvel's) and just over a page of house ads.

Click to enlarge.

The paid advertisements included Tootsie Roll, Wen-Mac (aero-models), sales companies Junior Sales Club and Wallace Brown, and the cereal and GI Joe ads mentioned earlier, totalling 8.66 pages of paid advertising.

Click to enlarge.

Meanwhile, the Red Unit titles, represented here by Detective Comics 342, gave us 23 pages of comic strip, a page of letters (squeezed out of the montage below for lack of space) and a page of house ads.

Click to enlarge.

The almost nine pages of paid ads consisted of General Mills cereals, GI Joe and Tootsie Rolls. In fact, the ads pages are almost identical to those in Action Comics the same month, though this is perfectly possible if the advertisers elected to run their commercials across both Red and Blue Units.

Click to enlarge.

As a counterpoint Strange Adventures 167 (Aug 1965), part of the same Red Unit that contained Action Comics, showed a slightly different set of ads, but still adding up to nine pages, if you include the Community ad (which I've omitted from the above montage for space reasons). The Tootsie Roll one-third pagers are still there, and both titles carried the Wen-Mac, AMT and GI Joe ads, but Strange Adventures also had a couple of half page toy ads - 104 Cars for $1.49 and Medals & Insignias - which kind of lowered the tone a little.

1966 - MARVEL

I was hoping that I could report an upturn in the quality of Marvel's paying advertisers by 1966, but judging from the examples I've been able to uncover, I'm not able to do that. It looks like even at that point, with Marvel's circulations poised to overtake DC's, Martin Goodman failed to capitalise on his market position to attract high-paying, better-known brands to his comics. Still doggedly pursuing the type of ads that were aimed as high school drop-outs and kids from low income families, Goodman managed to keep his product at the low-brow end of the publishing world, even as Stan tried to elevate his comics and the medium by consciously not targeting young children and unskilled working class readers.

Click to enlarge.

Marvel's Red Unit comics, typified by Rawhide Kid 53, were still displaying 10 pages of paid advertising, a letters page and a Marvel merchandising house ad. A new addition was the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins, which debuted in the December 1965 issues. This left 22 pages for comic strip material.

Click to enlarge.

The paid ads were the familiar mix of selling opportunities, body building and trade skills tuition, with the rest made up of slots for cheap novelties and a page and a half of classified ads.

Click to enlarge.

Over in the Yellow unit, this time represented by Patsy and Hedy 107 as Patsy Walker had been cancelled by this time, the story was much the same. Ten pages of paid advertising, a letter column and a single house ad, but no Bullpen Bulletins. Maybe Stan figured that girls who read Patsy and Hedy would be interested in what was going on with the rest of the Marvel line. This left us with 23 pages of comic strip or similar material.

Click to enlarge.

The ads were the familiar mix of beauty products, career opportunities and star photos. There were also a couple of anomalous ads for Polaris subs and fishing tackle.

So between 1963 and 1966, Marvel's most successful years in terms of growth, Martin Goodman was content to treat his comics line as an afterthought, with no effort made to go after the kind of big name advertisers that were all over the DC comics of the same period. But there would be one big effect from the slow reversal in fortunes of Marvel and DC ...

1966 - DC

In 1966, something curious happened at DC. One of the company's biggest advertisers, General Mills purveyors of famous breakfast cereal, all but disappeared from DC's pages. No Tootsie Roll ads either.

Click to enlarge.

The Blue Unit title Action Comics 340 carried just eight pages of paid advertising. Was this to make room for the centrespread pinup of Superman, or was the poster taking up the slack left by the departure of General Mills?

Click to enlarge.

What DC did still have was GI Joe (Hasbro), Mattel and AMT. The rest of the ads were a full page for Ant Farms, Home Science Labs and Matchbox model cars. Interestingly, the final page of the Supergirl story is two-thirds of a page, as though DC were expecting to place a Tootsie Roll ad there. That guess is strengthened because over in Strange Adventures 191, all the stories have space on their final pages for one-third page ads, occupied by house ads.

Click to enlarge.

In the Red Unit title Detective Comics 354, there are just seven pages of paid advertising, just over a page of house ads, and a one-page letters column. Which leaves space for just 22 pages of comic strip.

Click to enlarge.

There are just two high-profile brands advertising in the comic - Hasbro and Mattel - and with three of the comic strip pages having the lower third taken up with house ads, again I wonder if the Tootsie Rolls ads were cancelled unexpectedly.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

By 1968, Marvel were well ahead of DC in terms of circulation. At the start of the year, Marvel split its anthology titles Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish into six new titles, giving each of the featured heroes their own books. Sgt Fury spinoff Captain Savage also got his own book, as did The Silver Surfer. But there were some casualties, too. Modelling with Millie, Patsy and Hedy and Ghost Rider were all cancelled, and Two Gun Kid went on hiatus for a couple of years.

Also in 1968 (or possibly 1967, I don't have the Ayres Directories to check for sure), Marvel abandoned the Red/Yellow Unit split of their titles for advertising purposes. Advertisers found themselves occupying space across the entire range, unless they negotiated a separate rate for a specific title or titles.

Click to enlarge.

DC however continued the practice into the 1970s. Though titles were shifted around from Blue Unit to Red Unit and back again, the company maintained the two groups of titles for advertising purposed until at least the end of the 1960s.

So, by the close of the decade, with Martin Goodman no longer the owner of Marvel Comics, the gap between the kind of advertisers we'd see in the DC titles and the low-rent advertisers Goodman was hanging onto was closing up, so that both companies were showing closer to the same sort of quality of advertiser in their books.

Click to enlarge.

Starting with the October 1968 titles, with the paid ad page-count increased to 11 and the number of comic strip pages long-since standardised at 20, Marvel added General Mills as a client with a campaign that ran across the late summer / autumn months. The number of classified pages increased to two, though in effect these were more small panel ads rather than classifieds. And there were two pages of letters (which I've omitted from the montage above for space reasons).

Click to enlarge.

During 1969, Marvel added another high-profile advertiser, Lee Jeans, then a couple of months later, Matchbox models, though the GRIT newspaper and cardboard Polaris Sub ads would cling on into the 1970s.

From Daredevil 67 (Aug 1970) - click to expand.

And who could forget the Columbia Record Club double-page ads? By the time these started appearing, I was a teenager and just starting to get into music via bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin, so I must have been the target audience for ads like this.

It looks to me like Goodman's sale of Magazine Management to Perfect Film and Chemical in 1968, loosened his grip on the overall control of the magazines and the comics, and the new owners started to seek better advertisers. The trend would continue through the late 1960s and into the next decade, until Goodman's contract with Perfect Film expired in 1972.

Next: Atlas Comics cover gallery (1957)