Posted in: Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: captain marvel, Promise Collection, superman

The Promise Collection 1944: Superman v Captain Marvel

"It is estimated that 20 million copies of 135 different titles of comic books are sold every month in this country," reported a column in the Decatur Herald in February 1944, reflecting on news from a recent gathering of educators and parents on the subject of comic books.  "Seventy percent of that volume goes to children, with adults — that is, persons of legal voting age — accounting for the other 30 percent. The consensus was that the comics, in general, are not the menace they were believed to be a couple of years or so ago. There are, of course, good comics and bad but there the question of taste enters the picture. Miss Josette Frank of the Child Study Association of America declared that conflicts between parents and children over the subject of comic bocks might be far more harmful than the poorest comic book ever would be."  The young fan who assembled the Promise Collection would've been about 13 in 1944.

Around this same time, Fawcett Publications released a survey conducted on its behalf about the comic book market to newspapers and magazines, which reported comics market data in more detail. "Comic magazines are read in three out of four American homes," the Market Research Company of America survey declared. "It is called the first national study of the market that comprises the vast comics audience. The survey, conducted for Fawcett Publications by the Market Research Company of America, covers readers of all comic books,  a field which now totals a 25,000,000 monthly circulation. In the 6 to 11 year age group, 96% of the boys read an average of 14 comic books per month, and 94% of the girls read 11 books. Ninety-one percent of 12 to 17-year-old boys read 14 magazines each month, while 87% of the girls in the same age group average 11 magazines. Of men 18 to 30 years old, 55% read comic magazines, averaging 7 books per month. Forty-three percent of the women are comics fans, averaging 9 books per month. Men and women above 30 years of age show a readership of 29% and 22%, reading 8 and 6 books per month, respectively."

The Market Research Company of America data concludes with something that seems outright unbelievable from our current day perspective on this Golden Age history: "Comic books have the approval of parents, 82% of all adults considering them good clean fun for everybody. Seventy-two percent feel the magazines teach a good moral lesson, and 61% consider them of educational value."  It's difficult to know how seriously to take this survey data without knowing something about how it was conducted.  It would appear that Market Research Company of America was widely used by various industries for decades for this sort of purpose.  This survey itself was cited by the media for a decade or more after the fact, countless times in scholarly articles since then, and is generally taken at face value.  It's pretty difficult not to be skeptical of that 82% "good clean fun" number, but even if it's a significant exaggeration or the result of leading questions in the survey, the data as a whole is a remarkable reflection of how the industry was able to evolve and deflect criticism during the World War II era.  It also helps explains why people like the young fan who put together the Promise Collection kept expanding his collecting interests throughout this period.

Welcome to Part 7 of the Promise Collection series, which is meant to serve as liner notes of sorts for the comic books in the collection. The Promise Collection is a set of nearly 5,000 comic books, 95% of which are blisteringly high grade, that were published from 1939 to 1952 and purchased by one young comic book fan.  The name of the Promise Collection was inspired by the reason that it was saved and kept in such amazing condition since that time. An avid comic book fan named Junie and his older brother Robert went to war in Korea.  Robert Promised Junie that he would take care of his brother's beloved comic book collection should anything happen to him. Junie was killed during the Korean War, and Robert kept his promise.  There are more details about that background in a previous post regarding this incredible collection of comic books.  And over the course of a few dozen articles in this new series of posts, we will also be revealing the complete listing of the collection.  You can always catch up with posts about this collection at this link, which will become a hub of sorts regarding these comic books over time.

January through June 1944 in the Promise Collection

While we can't be completely sure about the data behind that highly-publicized Market Research Company of America comic book survey on behalf of Captain Marvel publisher Fawcett Publications, we do know that Junie purchased around 180 comic books in all of 1943 and about 125 comic books in the first six months of 1944.  His purchases had increased from about 15 comic books per month to about 21 comics per month over that period.  Among publishing lines, Junie liked Fawcett Publications the best by this time, purchasing 30 Fawcett comics over period, compared to 25 DC Comics issues and 16 from Marvel in the first half of 1944.

Lots of other comic book readers agreed with Junie's preference for the Captain Marvel family around this period.  This is worth calling out because Fawcett Publications claimed that Captain Marvel Adventures was the top-selling book in comics around this time, and this claim has been widely repeated ever since.  These claims have been notoriously difficult to unravel because Audit Bureau of Circulation data is available but is typically reported by publishing "groups", where publishers group several of their titles together for the purposes of selling space to advertisers.  But Captain Marvel Adventure's individual sales data is available for 1944. The title peaked at around 1.35M in early 1944.  While we don't have head-to-head data for Captain Marvel Adventures vs Superman over this period, we do know that Superman hit 1.5M by July 1945, and pulled away from the Big Red Cheese thereafter.  Based on everything we know about the rest of the Fawcett and DC Comics data, (Note: I believe the data charted is only from monthly group units based on what we know from other sources, which makes the picture murkier. Further note that the monthly groups also factored staggered bi-monthlies into the mix for their monthly totals). I would suspect that Captain Marvel Adventures and Superman were likely neck and neck in late 1943 / early 1944, and it is perhaps not unlikely likely that Captain Marvel Adventures beat out Superman occasionally over this period.  However, it also appears unlikely that Captain Marvel Adventures had any period of sustained dominance at any time. Of course, National Comics Publications, Inc. v. Fawcett Publications, Inc., the long-running litigation over DC Comics' claim that Captain Marvel infringed on the copyright of Superman had begun in 1941 and would continue through this period and beyond.

Paper rationing continued to be one of the defining factors of the comic book industry in 1944, and this is reflected in the Promise Collection comics from January to June of that year.  With some special exceptions that we'll get to shortly, this is again reflected in a comparatively modest number of new series launches in the collection over this period, which includes Major Victory Comics #1 from Chesler and Terrific Comics #1 from Frank Z. Temerson.  Page counts per comic book also continued to plummet over this period and varied wildly from January through June. About half of the comic books in the collection of this period are 56 pages, but a large number had settled at 48 pages as well, and some Fawcett comics from this June had dropped to 40 pages.  DC Comics' World's Finest and Comic Cavalcade had dropped down to 80 pages from the original 96 pages by this time.  Despite the significant overall drop in page counts by this time, there are also a number of new square-bound edition comics appearing in the Promise Collection in 1944 with page counts of up to 128 pages — but these comics are from a single obscure publisher which operated under unusual circumstances.

The Big Books of William H. Wise & Co.

William H. Wise & Co was for much of its history a mail-order publisher of a variety of material including history books, encyclopedias, recipe books, how-to books, and the like.  They are known to have dabbled in newsstand sales by the mid-1940s and to have sold to a huge variety of other outlets ranging from book clubs to various types of wholesalers who themselves likely resold to a variety of retail outlets.  In the mid-1940s, they had coveted access to paper and perhaps to somewhat different markets that comic book publishers did not reach.  William H. Wise & Co., worked with the likes of DC Comics, Victor Fox, Lev Gleason, and others to produce high page-count (compared to most other comics on the stands) comic books at a higher price point.  Some of these comic books present in the Promise Collection like Big All-American Comic Book consisted of new material.  Others like Complete Book of True Crime consisted of rebound copies of returned or undistributed individual copies with their covers stripped.

While very little has been pieced together about this publisher to date, a lawsuit between William H. Wise & Co and Rand McNally in the next decade describes one type of business arrangement they were involved in: "Plaintiff, Wm. H. Wise & Co., Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "Wise"), is a publishing concern. The defendant, Rand McNally & Co., is a printing establishment. Under an agreement dated on or about July 19, 1955, Wise engaged Rand to print 25,000 copies of plaintiff's book entitled "Complete Book of Home Decorating." Under the agreement, Wise was to furnish the paper stock and to pay the defendant $8,050 for making positives, color separations, engravings, and press plates for printing. In addition, Wise was to pay 16 cents per copy for press work and 41.1 cents for binding. Wise furnished the manuscript and artwork, drawings, photographs, linotype composition, cover dies, and jackets Rand printed the work in accordance with the agreement."

Perhaps more to the point, a June 1945 Writer's Digest piece about William H. Wise & Co's pulp Mystery Book Magazine provides a closer-to-home operational data point about this extremely obscure publisher:  "A newcomer to the stands this past month, promises to be a good market for top-notch detective story writers. Leo Margulies is editing this for William H. Wise, the publisher, This is outside of his regular job as Editorial Director of Ned Pines' pulps, and, I understand, has no connection. Only original material is going to be used in Mystery Book. And payment is going to be three cents a word and up—better than any of the pulps in almost every case, and right up elbowing the slicks."

Prominent among the William H. Wise & Co. released from the first half of 1944 is Complete Book of True Crime, which includes in its rebound contents the notorious Crime Does Not Pay #22, a 1942 release which is considered the first crime comic book.  Complete Book of True Crime is also the first crime comic book in the Promise Collection, but it would not be the last.  This trend would lead the comic book industry into controversial territory again in the months and years ahead.

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