Who is the most under-rated Golden Age Publisher? 0

[Metarog]

I would like to mention Street & Smith Publishing here. They published comics for over a decade with several enduring characters including-The Shadow & Doc Savage and some long lasting series such as Super Magician, Supersnipe and True Sport. Maybe not the best art or writing but still a memorable publisher.

[143ksk]

OK, now that we have 2 strong votes for MLJ, I will post the rest of my list.

 

Many hundreds of years ago when I was young, I was interested in Golden Age hero books but poor . I spent a lot of time looking at GA titles/companies to find ones that were worth collecting but not as expensive as Timely and DC. I finally settled on:

 

1). MLJ. For reasons given above by both me and Shawn. I ended up collecting near complete sets of Hangman and Pep. Both are great titles--easily as good as anything that Timely or DC put out at the time.

 

2). Fox. Great early GA superhero books and late GA GGA books. I mostly concentrated on All Top (Rulah, Phantom Lady and the Blue Beetle )

 

3). Nedor. Awesome Schomburg war covers and the Black Terror is one of the most stylish characters of the GA. Also the prehero issues of Exciting have some great early SF work in them. And the late GA issues have Xela covers.

 

I also added non-hero books from Dell by Carl Barks, John Stanley and Walt Kelly. And some reprint books such as Tip Top with Nancy and Sluggo and Peanuts.

 

Since that time I have added Airboy (HIllman Pub.) to the list--excellent stories, great covers (especially on Air Fighters) and REALLY cheap!

 

Oh, and Simon and Kirby romance books, too. Great stuff!

 

There are just such a huge number of publishers, genres, titles, characters and artists to choose from in the GA. I would urge everyone who is interested in GA books to pick up a few and see for yourself. You may be very pleasantly surprised.

[The Black Hand ®]

I would have to go with MLJ, but I don't consider them to be as under rated as you guys seem to think. I think they get a lot of respect, just maybe not the prices some of the other publishers get. I've also grown fond of Hillman because of Airboy. Easy to pick up and affordable and with great stories and cover art, particularly the early Air Fighters.

[Forbush-Man]

How about Fiction House? Some very attrative covers and notable interior art!

[Mister_Comics]

I'll say George A. Pflaum Publishing mainly because I collect TREASURE CHEST COMICS. They were something different for me to read other then the superhero books. I liked the sport stories and the adventure/mystery stories. CHUCK WHITE stories were always pretty good. And I always like the artwork in the comics.

[AllTop8Me]

I would be interested to see who you feel is the most under-rated Golden Age Publisher. Please list "Who" and "why". Please exclude D.C., Timely or Fawcett, as they were in the top's in publishing numbers. Who else?

 

If this is an old question please forgive me.

 

Chesler

[Electricmastro]

The short-lived, but fascinating company known as Rural Home, whom in addition to creating some interesting covers also created some interesting features, such as Maureen Marine, Blue Circle, Green Turtle, Gail Porter, and Captain Wizard. 

 

Edited July 2, 2020 by Electricmastro

[KCOComics]

4 minutes ago, Electricmastro said:

The short-lived, but fascinating company known as Rural Home, whom in addition to creating some interesting covers also created some interesting features, such as Maureen Marine, Blue Circle, Green Turtle, Gail Porter, and Captain Wizard. 

 

The red band is super cool!  Great post! 

[Robot Man]

12 hours ago, Electricmastro said:

The short-lived, but fascinating company known as Rural Home, whom in addition to creating some interesting covers also created some interesting features, such as Maureen Marine, Blue Circle, Green Turtle, Gail Porter, and Captain Wizard. 

 

That Blue Circle 6 is interesting to me. This is a 3rd known cover variation I have seen. This one says Bugsie Siegel. I recently saw one with Martin Kane. My copy has nothing. Odd, as it would have cost the publisher additional money. The cover would have been printed with probably plate changes throughout the run. They would have had to stop, change the plate, put on another roll of paper several times. Seems more trouble than it was worth.

Seems like all the ones I have seen contain Fox comics. Later Fox comics always have the first page on the inside front cover which is always missing on reprints. They would have to repaginate and maybe drop an ad page to make the first story complete. 

Not only is my copy missing the first page but there is even a blank front and back page in back to make it a complete 4 page signature. Mine is a copy of Murder Inc from 1948. 

[Robot Man]

On 6/25/2004 at 8:55 PM, sfilosa said:

For me, Star Publishing.

 

Nothing compares to classic L.B. Cole covers!!!!!

Leonard B Cole covers rock and always have. I hesitate to say this because he is on fire right now, but other than many of the classic Cole covers, the contents pretty much Suk. There are some Jayson standouts, but in general weak stories and art. This is from some one who has collected them and PCH for over 40 years. Might not matter to slab collectors, but for those of us who actually like to look inside, a little disappointing. Certainly, for the most part, not worth the nosebleed prices they are bringing these days for me. 

[Randall Dowling]

Thread necromancy!

[Electricmastro]

Worth Carnahan:

[circumstances]

CEEEENNNNNNTTTTTTAAAAAUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[sfcityduck]

Interesting topic.

To me, the answer depends on whether you mean unappreciated back in the day or unappreciated now.  Because Centaur, Star, Nedor, Fiction House, and just about every other publisher mentioned on this thread so far are highly appreciated by devoted droves of collectors on this very site.  

Of the publishers mentioned so far, I'd agree that Quality comics are, by far, the least appreciated by collectors as a whole (with some notable titles as exceptions).  But I do think that there is a GA publisher that is ever more unappreciated:

Harvey Comics.  Here's why: 

* Harvey is a true GA publisher starting with superhero comics in 1940.  It published superheros throughout the war:

* Harvey Comics gave us what is perhaps the least appreciated GA superhero of them all:  The Black Cat.  A superhero in continuous publication from 1941 to 1957 (outlasting many other superheros) and which was revived in 1962 (a better record than Timely's characters).  First Black Cat cover:

* In the latter 1940s, Harvey commenced serving up a helping of classic adventure comic strip characters:

* In 1949 Harvey dove into the Romance genre with several long running titles:

* Harvey Comics had a healthy helping of PCH horror in the vein of EC starting in 1951, which features some absolutely classic covers;

* Harvey helped pioneer and dominate kiddie comics starting in 1951.  NO pictures necessary.  

I could go on, as they published other genres and collectable comics.

BUT, most here just don't appreciate this output, I think, as much as it deserves.

[MrBedrock]

In my opinion Quality is the most underappreciated publisher. The reason? The covers for most (other than Hit and National) were pretty lame so folks don't check out the interiors. And until EC hit its prime in the early '50s there was no other publisher with interior art and writing of such a consistently high ... quality. Imagine if Quality insides had Timely covers.

[Electricmastro]

34 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

In my opinion Quality is the most underappreciated publisher. The reason? The covers for most (other than Hit and National) were pretty lame so folks don't check out the interiors. And until EC hit its prime in the early '50s there was no other publisher with interior art and writing of such a consistently high ... quality. Imagine if Quality insides had Timely covers.

Yeah, understanding that this forum is collector-focused, it’s still nice to see a forum as big as this is talk about Golden Age comics at all, which I don’t seem many forums for in the first place, but it would still be nice if people talked about the interiors more though. That said, while most people tend to talk about Lou Fine’s covers, I think there are definitely other Quality cover artists that deserve more recognition, like Reed Crandall:

[MrBedrock]

1 minute ago, Electricmastro said:

35 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

In my opinion Quality is the most underappreciated publisher. The reason? The covers for most (other than Hit and National) were pretty lame so folks don't check out the interiors. And until EC hit its prime in the early '50s there was no other publisher with interior art and writing of such a consistently high ... quality. Imagine if Quality insides had Timely covers.

Yeah, understanding that this forum is collector-focused, it’s still nice to see a forum as big as this is talk about Golden Age comics at all, which I don’t seem many forums for in the first place, but it would still be nice if people talked about the interiors more though. That said, while most people tend to talk about Lou Fine’s covers, I think there are definitely other Quality cover artists that deserve more recognition, like Reed Crandall:

Crandall was great, and his covers were beautiful. Unfortunately it would take three to five Crandall covers and a Lou Fine cover or two to make up for each Gill Fox cover.

[telerites]

2 hours ago, MrBedrock said:

In my opinion Quality is the most underappreciated publisher. The reason? The covers for most (other than Hit and National) were pretty lame so folks don't check out the interiors. And until EC hit its prime in the early '50s there was no other publisher with interior art and writing of such a consistently high ... quality. Imagine if Quality insides had Timely covers.

I have always said Quality is an apt name.  Both inside and out, the art and the writing was tops.

[Electricmastro]

1 hour ago, MrBedrock said:

Crandall was great, and his covers were beautiful. Unfortunately it would take three to five Crandall covers and a Lou Fine cover or two to make up for each Gill Fox cover.

I don’t know, I always liked this Gill Fox cover.

[Electricmastro]

6 hours ago, telerites said:

I have always said Quality is an apt name.  Both inside and out, the art and the writing was tops.

Yep, I think that Everett M. "Busy" Arnold definitely accomplished what he set out to do with the Quality name, as even the interiors were usually interesting to look at and not just the covers.