St. John Publications

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St. John Publications is an American comic book publisher that during its short existence from 1947-1958 established several industry firsts, as well as a larger societal first.

The company, founded by Archer St. John, brother of a noted war correspondent, was based at 545 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

The digest-sized "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust (1950), an early precursor of the graphic novel. Cover art by Matt Baker and Ray Osrin.
The digest-sized "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust (1950), an early precursor of the graphic novel. Cover art by Matt Baker and Ray Osrin.

The company's notable comics include the first 3-D comic book, Three Dimension Comics #1 (Sept. 1953 oversize format, Oct. 1953 standard-size reprint), featuring the Terrytoons movie-cartoon character Mighty Mouse. According to Joe Kubert, co-creator with the brothers Norman Maurer and Leonard Maurer, it sold an exceptional 1.2 million copies at 25 cents apiece at a time when comics cost a dime. [1]. St. John also published the second 3-D comic, the aptly named 3-D Comics, the single issue of which incongruously billed itself as "World's First!"

Other St. John comic books included the first movie-comedian tie-in series, Abbott and Costello Comics; one of the first proto-graphic novels, the 25-cent "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust (1950); and a five-issue series (Sept. 1953 - Oct. 1954), appearing under three titles, that introduced the enduring Kubert prehistoric hero Tor.

Finally, St. John Publications utilized the first African-American comic-book artist in mainstream media, Matt Baker, who contributed to the ostensibly true-crime series Authentic Police Cases, the light-humor comic Canteen Kate, the romance books Cinderella Love and Teen-Age Romances, and many others.

Contents

[edit] Archer St. John

Flying Cadet #17 (Oct. 1944), cover artist unknown. The topless woman indicates this was not a comic for little boys.
Flying Cadet #17 (Oct. 1944), cover artist unknown. The topless woman indicates this was not a comic for little boys.

The younger brother of noted World War II correspondent Robert St. John, Archer St. John was born c. 1904 in Chicago, Illinois. Their mother Amy, a nurse, and father John, a pharmacist, moved the family to suburban Oak Park in 1910. Following the father's death in 1917 and the mother's eventual remarriage, Archer attended the St. Albans Episcopal Academy boarding school in Sycamore, Illinois. Both brothers became journalists, with Archer founding the Berwyn [Illinois] Tribune in the early- to mid-1920s.

He had left that newspaper by 1930, by which time he'd become advertising manager of the New York City-based model train maker, Lionel Trains Corporation. Among his duties, he edited the company's hobbyist magazine, Model Builder, debuting cover-dated January 1937. It included true railroad stories in its editorial mix, eventually adding such comic-bookish featurettes as "Famous Railroad Sagas".

By the early 1940s, St. John was editor of the 17-issue magazine Flying Cadet (Jan. 1943 - Oct. 1944). Like Model Builder, it, too, mixed editorial prose with comics-style instructional featurettes. That changed with its final issue, a standard comic book that included fictional adventure ("Buzz Benson" by Maurice Whitman and George Kapitan; the remarkably progressive Lt. Lela Lang, art by Kapitan, about a female bomber pilot) and humor ("Grease Pan Gus") strips. The company — also called Flying Cadet — additionally published American Air Forces #1 (Oct. 1944), as well as some issues of Dynamic Comics and Punch Comics.

Either editing in his off hours while continuing to work at Lionel, or having left and returned to the company — a December 1944 letter that he signed places St. John in the Lionel advertising department at that time — St. John left the model-train maker in early 1945. After acquiring a reported $400,000 in start-up financing,1 he began publishing the comic-strip reprint comic books Comics Revue and Pageant of Comics, under his own name as publisher, in 1947. Shortly afterward, his comic-book company took on the name St. John Publications.

[edit] Mice and men

Terry-Toons Comics #61 (Oct. 1947), cover artist unknown. Note the gun gag, considered acceptable for children at the time.
Terry-Toons Comics #61 (Oct. 1947), cover artist unknown. Note the gun gag, considered acceptable for children at the time.

St. John acquired the license to publish comics based on the movie cartoons of producer Paul Terry. The Terrytoons properties, originally adapted as comic book by Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics, included such characters as Mighty Mouse, the crows Heckle and Jeckle, Gandy Goose, and Deputy Dawg. The first such St. John comic was Mighty Mouse #5 (August 1947), its numbering taken over from the Timley run.

The company expanded into licensed characters from another animation company, the joint Paramount Pictures-Famous Studios, which included the future Harvey Comics characters Casper the Friendly Ghost (unnamed in his movie 'toons to that time, and given his familiar designation in his eponymous comic-book's September 1949 premiere), Baby Huey (who premiered in that comic before his March 3, 1950, screen debut, "Quack A Doodle Do"), Little Roquefort and Little Audrey.

Little Eva, Audrey's lesser-known replacement, was added to the publishing schedule in 1952 after the Audrey licence passed on to Harvey. Eva could be viewed as one of the company's few original comic characters of the period, although her originality is dubious at best; both Audrey and Eva may be described as literary descendants of Marjory Henderson Buell's Little Lulu.

Continuing in the popular vein of reprinted comic strips, St. John published comic books of such gag strips as Moon Mullins and Nancy, and of the NEA syndicate's private detective adventure strip Vic Flint. This hardboiled fiction by the pseudonymous Michael O'Malley (writer Ernest Lynn and others) and artists Ralph Lane, Dean Miller, Art Sansom, and John Lane, was reprinted in the comic books Vic Flint (#1-5, Aug. 1948 - April 1949); all but the first issue of Fugitives from Justice (#1-5, 1953); and some issues of Authentic Police Cases (#1-38, 1948-1955).

St. John entered the new field of romance comics with Hollywood Confessions #1 (Oct. 1949), a title that metamorphosed two issues later into Hollywood Pictorial, and then shifted from comic book to movie magazine (Hollywood Pictorial Western) with issue #4 (March 1950). Notably, this was the first of what would become a line of St. John magazines.

The company introduced several other, mostly short-lived original series from 1948 through 1953, including a rare, for the company, superhero series, Zip-Jet, starring a yellow-clad "supersonic enemy of evil." That and the two St. John series titled Atom-Age Combat (see in Bibliography, below) directly reflected the era's Cold War "nuclear jitters" and popular-culture fascination with the breaking of the sound barrier.

[edit] Pioneering "picture novel"

In 1950 — more than 20 years before Gil Kane & Archie Goodwin's Blackmark and almost 30 before Will Eisner's A Contract with God and Don McGregor & Paul Gulacy's Sabre — St. John helped pioneer the medium that would become known as the graphic novel. The digest-sized, adult-oriented "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust was a film noir-influenced slice of steeltown life starring a scheming, manipulative redhead named Rust. Touted as "an original full-length novel" on its cover, the book by pseudonymous writer "Drake Waller" (Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller), penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin, was sold at newsstands. It proved successful enough to lead to an unrelated second picture novel, The Case of the Winking Buddha by pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab.

[edit] List of St. John comic books

3-D Comics #2 (Nov. 1953 edition with 3-D cover). Art by Joe Kubert.
3-D Comics #2 (Nov. 1953 edition with 3-D cover). Art by Joe Kubert.

[edit] Cartoon-character series

[edit] Comic-strip reprint series

[edit] Movie-comedian series

  • Abbott and Costello Comics  #1-40 (Feb. 1948 - Sept. 1956)
  • Laurel and Hardy Comics  #1 (March 1949 - ?)
  • Three Stooges  #1-7 (Sept. 1953 - Oct. 1954); on St. John's Jubilee Publications imprint

[edit] Original series

  • 1,000,000 Years Ago (a.k.a. One Million Years Ago)  #1, featuring Tor; continued as:
  • 3-D Comics  #2
three eds.: standard & oversize, Oct. 1953; standard w/3-D cover, some different content, Nov. 1953; featuring Tor; continued as:
  • Tor  #3-5
  • Anchors Andrews  #1 (Jan. 1953); continued as:
  • Anchors the Salt Water Daffy #2-4 (March-July 1953); continued as:
  • Approved Comics  #-12 (1953-1954)
Showcase series featuring generally one issue each of series including Crime on the Run, Daring Adventures, Fightin' Marines, Flyboy, The Hawk, Invisible Boy, Kid Cowboy, Northwest Mounties, and Western Bandit Trail. Approved Comics also name of a St. John imprint.
  • Atom-Age Combat  #1-5 (June 1952 - April 1953)
  • Atom-Age Combat Vol. 2, #1 (Feb. 1958)
  • Authentic Police Cases  #1-38 (Feb. 1948 - March 1955; sporadically included Vic Flint comic-strip reprints)
  • Basil the Royal Cat  #1-4 (Jan.-Sept. 1953)
  • Blue Ribbon Comics  #1-3 (Feb.-Aug. 1949); on St. John's Blue Ribbon imprint; continued as:
  • Teen-Age Diary Secrets  #4-9; continued as:
  • Diary Secrets  #10-30 (Feb. 1952 - Sept. 1955)
  • Canteen Kate  #1-3 (June-Nov. 1952)
  • Cinderella Love  #12-15 (Oct. 1953 - Aug. 1954, continued from Ziff-Davis run) See also Romantic Love
  • Crime Reporter  #1-3 (August-Oct. 1948)
  • Daring Adventures  #7-18
  • Double Trouble  #1-2 (Nov. 1957 - Feb. 1958)
  • Fugitives from Justice  #1-5 (Feb.-Oct. 1952; last four issues included Vic Flint comic-strip reprints)
  • The Hawk  #8-12 (Sept. 1954 - May 1955; continued from Ziff-Davis run; reportedly no #5-7 published)
  • Hollywood Confessions  #1-2 (Oct. 1949 - ?); continued as:
  • Hollywood Pictorial  #3 (Jan. 1950); continued as:
  • Movie magazine Hollywood Pictorial Western #4 (March 1950)
  • The House of Terror #1 (Oct. 1953; 3-D comic)
  • Kid Cowboy #11 & 14 (Winter 1952/53 & June 1954; continued from Ziff-Davis run; reportedly no #12-13 published)
  • Little Eva  #1-31 (May 1952 - Nov. 1956)
  • Little Eva 3-D  #1-2 (Oct.-Nov. 1953)
  • Meet Miss Pepper  #5-6 (April-June 1954; continues from Lucy, The Real Gone Gal; further info n.a.)
  • Northwest Mounties  #1-4 (Oct. 1948 - July 1949); on St. John's Jubilee Publications imprint
  • Romantic Marriage  #18-24 (continued from Ziff-Davis run); continues as:
  • Cinderella Love  #25-29 (see also Cinderella Love above)
  • Son of Sinbad  #1 (Feb. 1950)
  • Secret Missions  #1 (Feb. 1950 one-shot)
  • Strange Terrors  #1-7 (June 1952 - March 1953)
  • Teen-Age Romances  #1-45 (Jan. 1949 - Dec. 1955); on St. John's Approved Comics imprint
  • The Texan  #1-15 (Aug. 1948 - Oct. 1951); continues as:
  • Fightin' Marines  #15 (Aug. 1951), #2-12 (Oct. 1951 - March 1953); continues as Charlton Comics title
  • Tip Top Comics
  • Wartime Romances  #1-18 (July 1951 - Nov. 1953)
  • Weird Horrors  #1-9 (June 1952 - Oct. 1953); continues as:
  • Nightmare  #10-13 (? - Aug. 1954); continues as:
  • Amazing Ghost Stories  #14-16 (? - )
  • Western Bandit Trails  #1-3 (Jan.-July 1949); on St. John's Jubilee Publications imprint
  • Whack  #1-3 (Oct. 1953 - May 1954; 3-D comic)
  • Wild Boy of the Congo  #9-15 (Oct. 1953 - June 1955; continues from Ziff-Davis run; reportedly no #10 published)
  • World’s Greatest Stories  #1-2 (? - May 1949); on St. John's Jubilee Publications imprint
  • Zip-Jet  #1-2 (Feb.-May 1953)

[edit] Footnotes

  • Note 1: Vincent Fago interview, Alter Ego Vol. 3, #11 (Nov. 2001)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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