comics scholar, library educator, youth advocate
In late March 1968, National Periodical Publications (aka DC) merged with Kinney Service Corporation, a company best known for its parking lots, funeral homes, and cleaning services. This was not a cash sale but an exchange of approximately 1.4 million shares comprising Common and Series B Kinney shares to National’s owners (e.g. the four individuals…
When Barrie Schindler was young, her mother Jane Krom Grammer mentioned to her that she had drawn art for comic books. Jane kept a package filled with several issues of Supersnipe Comics from the mid-1940s and pointed to the Dotty stories in them. But Jane’s name didn’t appear anywhere on the art and there were…
In a previous post, I shared information on comic book sales trends in the 1940s. While John Jackson Miller’s excellent ComiChron is a reliable site for contemporary (and some historic) sales data, there’s a gap in what’s easily available. This morning I perused Judith S. Duke’s 1979 book Children’s Books and Magazines: A Market Study,…
Learn about the comic book business of the 1940s in this essay highlighting a 1949 MBA thesis written by Charles Cridland, an employee of the David McKay Company, publisher of titles such as ACE COMICS, KING COMICS, and MAGIC COMICS. Cridland’s research documents the growth and economics of the early comic book industry.