Lev Gleason Publications

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lev Gleason Publications, founded by Leverett Gleason, was the publisher of a number of popular comic books during the 1940s and early 1950s, including Daredevil, Crime Does Not Pay, Captain Battle and Boy Comics.

Gleason was based in New York, and was among the first to produce comic books aimed at an adult audience. He labelled some of his books "illustories" to suggest that they were a new, different form.

Gleason was behind the first and most successful crime comic, Crime Does Not Pay (1942), which spawned dozens of imitators. Gleason's titles (along with those produced by EC Comics) became targets of increasing criticism of the influence of comic books. This pressure led to the formation in 1948 of the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers (ACMP) in an effort to avoid external regulation. Gleason was a founding member. The ACMP was the first step towards the establishment of the Comics Code Authority in 1954.

Gleason went out of business in 1955.