How Comics Were Marketed in the Silver Age

This is something that came up in a recent podcast I listened to and I thought it might make an interesting post. In the Silver Age, comic books were marketed at newsstands. Not the kind of newsstand you'd see in the big city, which was just a wooden shed on the sidewalk, these were actual stores that were extremely common in smalltown America in the 1950s-1970s, but are mostly gone today. They usually had newspapers and magazines at the front of the store, with a soda fountain and short-order cook to whip up fast food like a hamburger and fries in the back and a pinball machine in the corner. Almost every small town in America had one of these places. The larger towns might have a full rack of comics, while smaller burgs just had a spinner rack or two.

The differential in comic capacity had significant impacts. For example, my hometown of Allendale had a small newsstand with only one spinner rack, which meant that the only comics stocked were DC, Archie or Harvey; it was not until about 1968 that I can recall seeing a Marvel there and that was a stray Silver Surfer issue. The town north of mine had a bigger newsstand (which was also closer to the train station), so they had Marvels and Charltons as well.

Comics were sent to stores with the understanding that unsold copies could be returned to the comics company for a refund. To save money on mailing costs, comics companies had the vendors simply tear off the top 1/3rd of the cover and send that back; they were then supposed to destroy the rest of the comic although it was not uncommon for vendors to turn around and sell those partial cover issues to used bookstores. Hence the fact that all comics dedicated about the top 1/3rd of the cover to the title of the comic, and this exhortation that I'm sure all of you have ignored thousands of times (as have I):



Hence also the numerous older comics that come up for sale on ebay with that crucial top-third of the cover missing. By the way, almost all magazines were sold that way, not just comic books; when I worked at a convenience store in the early 1970s one of my weekly tasks was to pull the TV Guides and rip off that same top third.

How did the comics companies know they had a hit on their hands? It's really pretty simple; on those issues the number of returns were smaller. As a practical matter, I'm sure each of the editors had a few high-volume locations (like Grand Central Station) he could call to check on how many copies were remaining of a particular issue to gauge interest a little quicker.

What were typical returns like? I don't know yet, but I am going to look into the matter. Starting with 1965's reporting year DC began reporting more detailed information on their publications than had previously been available. Here's the Batman report as it appeared in Batman #183:



DC's returns for Batman were about 35% on average with the most recent issue about 30%.

Here's the statement from Challengers of the Unknown #51:



Returns for Challengers were generally around 35%.

World's Finest #158:



Again, returns running generally in the 30-35% range.

This appears to have been intentional. The comics companies back then always made sure that there were excess copies printed, partly on the theory that if something was a hit they could tell (because suddenly returns went down), and partly because if the issue turned out to sell higher than normal, they could then charge their advertisers more. Remember, the money that the comics companies made from sales of the comics was (relatively) peanuts compared to the big money in the books, which came from the ads.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the way comics are sold now, with the publishers shipping pre-ordered comics to (mostly) comics-only stores which cannot return them. But I thought I would mention it because it's definitely one of the major differences between comics of the Silver Age and comics today.

Number 518


De fust time


The story of how Pogo met Albert is told by Walt Kelly in Dell Four Color #105, Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum, published in 1946.

It's fun to see the characters develop before our eyes. Pogo and Albert had many appearances in Animal Comics and in one-shot comics like Four Color #105 before they became the Pogo and Albert we recognize today.

At some point Kelly gained the copyright for his characters. In this comic the copyright is held by Oskar Lebeck.

I scanned this from its original 1946 printing. The story was reprinted by Eclipse Books in their Complete Pogo Comics volume, "Dreamin' of a Wide Catfish," published in 1990.

When I'm the Evil Genius

I will not allow my enemy to live a few moments longer while I tell him a story:



Prior entries in the "When I'm the Evil Genius" series.

Giant Green Ring Things, Part II

We've already hit the Showcase appearances, so now it's time to talk about GL's own magazine. In GL #1 we start out with giant ice tongs:


It's clearly a giant green ring thing; I'll give it three star sapphires out of a possible five. I assume most of my readers are old enough to remember these items although they were on their way out. Back before the refrigerator, every home had an icebox, an insulated container for perishable foods. The iceman would make regular deliveries of large cubes of ice, and ice-tongs were how he carried them.

Green ring thing #10 is:



Umm, I guess that's supposed to be a giant fist, but it's clearly missing a finger. One star sapphire. Correction: As pointed out by Booksteve in the comments, it's a hand, not a fist and the hand is grabbing the crook by the collar between the thumb and (hidden) index finger.

Green ring thing #11 is a giant lock wrench:



It's how GL defuses the menace shown on the cover of issue #1 and thus I award it the full five star sapphires.

In GL #2 we get the first human green ring thing:



Is it giant or not though? The text describes it as huge bulk, but it does not look significantly larger than a normal football player and thus does not qualify.

Green ring thing #13 is a sledgehammer:



But it is not giant, unlike #14



The Giant Green Umbrella only gets two star sapphires out of five as it is not used to combat a menace but to keep people from getting wet.



A Giant Green Chiller Diller Menace to get Green Lantern out of listening to a proposal from Carol? That rings the bell: five star sapphires!

That takes us through the first three issues of GL's solo title. Running tally so far:

Giant Green Net: 1
Giant Green Bird: 1
Giant Green Springs: 1
Giant Green Test Tube: 1
Giant Green Ice Tongs: 1
Giant Green Fist: 1
Giant Lock Wrench: 1
Giant Green Umbrella: 1
Giant Green Chiller Diller Menace: 1

So far, still no Giant Green Boxing Glove!

Number 517


Graveyard of the Rocketeers!


Captain Rocket #1 from 1951 may be the only comic book published by P.L. Publishing of Canada. I don't know of any other, and if you do let me know.

At one time I heard that Harry Harrison had something to do with it. Harrison was Wally Wood's collaborator for a time, and went from comics into being a world famous science fiction writer. But whether he had anything to do with Captain Rocket I don't know. I'm not an expert on Harry Harrison’s comics work.

Captain Rocket is space opera, pure and simple; Planet Comics stuff...rocket ships that look right out of Buck Rogers, ridiculous costumes, and girls who wear bikinis as everyday clothing. It's so simple-minded that Captain Rocket can disguise himself as a bearded rocket ship navigator in a crooked gambling joint, and you know he's a navigator because it says so right on his tunic.

I love this sort of thing. In spite of its built-in dumbness the strip is great fun. Captain Rocket may have been doomed by low sales or poor distribution. I'll be posting the other three stories from the comic at some future time.

Number 516


Introducing the Thorn


This story from Flash Comics #89, November 1947, is the introduction of the Thorn and Rose.

Robert Kanigher wrote this origin story, and Joe Kubert penciled and inked. Kubert proved he could draw sexy girls.

Back To The Other Comics Blogs

Go over and give a warm welcome to Jacque Nodell, proprietress of Sequential Crush, a look at the romance comics of 1960s and 1970s. As I have discussed in the past, the romance genre gets too little attention from comics bloggers. Romance comics were written for slightly older readers than the superhero fare of the time and thus generally hold up better. I look forward to reading Jacque's posts on this under-appreciated segment of comics history.

Bill Jourdain has a terrific post on the Kefauver hearings on comic books and violence during the 1950s, which led to the Comics Code Authority (and the Silver Age of Comics):

But what about the rest of the industry? Well, the post-Comics Code Authority world was really a new beginning as it signaled the definite end of the Golden Age of Comic Books and the birth of the Silver Age of Comics with Showcase #4, and the introduction of the Silver Age Flash. The superheroes were back!

Comics of Rhodey explains why Captain America's shield is indestructible:

And there you have it. Cap's shield is made of an Adamantium even stronger than that usually used in the Marvel Universe! It's stronger than Wolverine's claws and bones, tougher than Ultron's body, and harder than the Constrictor's coils.

The last time I checked the Steve Ditko comics blog it was pretty much dead (with only one post in January), although I certainly appreciated the link I got from them on my posts on the Question. However I surf over today and find that there were 21 terrific posts in April on all things Ditko. Definitely worth checking out!

Read this fascinating post on death from Pulp Hero:

Superhero violence has become more gory and grotesque as the readers have aged...after all, comics are in competition with other media. And death, the natural byproduct of "real" violence, has become cheap as well. The convention of the superhero story no longer has room for "shorthand" of the superhumanly strong superhero "pulling his punches" to keep from killing his weaker opponent. Only by skill and the grace of the gods does the weaker character escape, and yet lost is the drama of survival beneath an avalanche of horror. Bleeding mouths, gored lips, tattered flesh have replaced the old artist shorthand of crosshatches to indicate bruising and the ripped cape.

As I have discussed in the past, my interest in comics pretty much ends around the mid-1970s. It's not that there hasn't been a lot of quality stuff published since then, it's that too much of it is too coarse for my tastes. And it's not that I dislike violence or sex in comics; Savage Tales #1 was awesome. But not every comic has to be Savage Tales.