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  1. #1
    Astonishing Member Air Wave's Avatar
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    Default The Best of the Decade - 1935 through 1939

    I know...that's only half a decade but that's all we got. What are your favorite DC stories of the 1930's?

  2. #2
    Mighty Member jb681131's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Air Wave View Post
    I know...that's only half a decade but that's all we got. What are your favorite DC stories of the 1930's?
    It's already been done:
    https://community.cbr.com/showthread...ciation-Thread

  3. #3
    Astonishing Member Air Wave's Avatar
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    Does anyone have any favorites from the period before Action Comics #1?

  4. #4
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    It's my policy not to post on appreciation threads--so, as long as this isn't an appreciation thread, I can be consistent and post here.

    The roots of D.C. go back a little further than 1935, if you take into consideration the history of M.C. Gaines.

    Maxwell Charles Gaines was working for Eastern Color Printing in 1933 and came up with a way to package newspaper comics in a promotional magazine, and thus FUNNIES ON PARADE was born. In the same year he packaged a 36 page comic book called FAMOUS FUNNIES: A CARNIVAL OF COMICS for Eastern Color in collaboration with Dell. The next year for Eastern Color/Dell, Gaines launched the ongoing FAMOUS FUNNIES.

    In 1935, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied published NEW FUN and then NEW COMICS, which included a couple of features by a young talent named Sheldon Mayer.

    By 1936, Sheldon Mayer was now working as an assistant editor on the Dell titles THE FUNNIES, POPULAR COMICS and THE COMICS. He created in-house ad copy for these comics, which happened to feature a little guy named Scribbly as their pitchman, who soon got his own one page feature to fill out the content in POPULAR COMICS and THE FUNNIES (a rare original feature among all the syndicated strips that Dell reprinted). At the same time, Mayer came to work for M.C. Gaines who was now at the McClure Syndicate, which not only syndicated newspaper strips but handled the reprinting of those in comic books. Around this time, both Mayer and Gaines saw the Superman strip that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were hoping to have syndicated.

    Of course, by 1939, Gaines made a deal with Jack Liebowitz (the part owner of National Allied, which Jack and Harry Donenfeld had acquired from Wheeler-Nicholson), to publish comics from their new company, All-Amercan Comics, Inc. Sheldon Mayer was brought in as an editor and creator--and his Scribbly came along with him.

    Donenfeld and Liebowitz's Independent News--which distributed National Allied/Detective Comics Inc. titles---also distributed the All-American line, and therefore the Gaines and Mayer books carried the D.C. bullet on their covers and had ad copy for the National/D.C. line.
    Last edited by Jim Kelly; 08-03-2020 at 10:32 AM.

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