St. John Publications
Encyclopedia
St. John Publications was an American
publisher of magazines and comic books. During its short existence (1947-58), St. John's comic books established several industry firsts. Founded by Archer St. John (1904-55), the firm was located in Manhattan
at 545 Fifth Avenue. After the St. John comic books came to an end in 1958, the company continued to publish its magazine line into the next decade. Flying Eagle Publications was a magazine affiliate of St. John Publications. Comic book imprints included Approved Comics, Blue Ribbon, and Jubilee Publications.
correspondent and author Robert William St. John
(1902-2003), 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 mid-1920s.
He left that newspaper by 1930. By then, he had 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 January 1937. It included true railroad stories in its editorial mix, eventually adding such illustrated 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, he began publishing two comic books, Comics Revue and Pageant of Comics, both reprinting comic strips. They appeared under his own name as publisher in 1947. Shortly afterward, his comic book company took on the name St. John Publications.
The company's 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. 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
. In 1953, St. John took over a number of Ziff Davis
comics titles, including the romance comics
Cinderella Love and Romantic Love, the Western comic Kid Cowboy, and the jungle adventure title Wild Boy of the Congo.
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.
. 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 Little Roquefort. The first such St. John comic was Mighty Mouse #5 (Aug. 1947), its numbering taken over from the Timely 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 Casper the Friendly Ghost #1 before his March 3, 1950, screen debut, "Quack A Doodle Do"), and Little Audrey
.
Little Eva, Audrey's lesser-known replacement, was added to the publishing schedule in 1952 after the Audrey license passed on to Harvey.
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's first romance comic
was Teen-Age Romances #1 (January, 1949), followed by ten issues of romance comics over the next nine months. St. John's Hollywood Confessions #1 (October 1949) metamorphosed two issues later into Hollywood Pictorial, and then shifted from comic book to movie magazine (Hollywood Pictorial Western) with issue #4 (March 1950). That was the first title in what eventually became the St. John magazine group.
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" reprinted from Punch Comics' "Rocketman" feature. That and the two St. John series titled Atom-Age Combat directly reflected the era's Cold War
"nuclear jitters" and popular culture fascination with the breaking of the sound barrier
.
& Archie Goodwin
's Blackmark
and almost 30 before Don McGregor
& Paul Gulacy
's Sabre
and Will Eisner
's A Contract with God
— 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 pseudonym
ous 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.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
publisher of magazines and comic books. During its short existence (1947-58), St. John's comic books established several industry firsts. Founded by Archer St. John (1904-55), the firm was located in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
at 545 Fifth Avenue. After the St. John comic books came to an end in 1958, the company continued to publish its magazine line into the next decade. Flying Eagle Publications was a magazine affiliate of St. John Publications. Comic book imprints included Approved Comics, Blue Ribbon, and Jubilee Publications.
History
Archer St. John
The younger brother of noted World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
correspondent and author Robert William St. John
Robert William St. John
Robert William St. John was an American author , broadcaster and journalist .-Early Life:...
(1902-2003), Archer St. John was born c. 1904 in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. Their mother Amy, a nurse, and father John, a pharmacist, moved the family to suburban Oak Park
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park, Illinois is a suburb bordering the west side of the city of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is the twenty-fifth largest municipality in Illinois. Oak Park has easy access to downtown Chicago due to public transportation such as the Chicago 'L' Blue and Green lines,...
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
Sycamore, Illinois
Sycamore is a city in DeKalb County, Illinois, United States. It has a commercial district based and centered on Illinois Route 64. The population was 17,519 at the 2010 census, up from 12,020 at the 2000 census.-Early settlement:...
. Both brothers became journalists, with Archer founding the Berwyn
Berwyn, Illinois
Berwyn is a city in Cook County, Illinois, co-existent with Berwyn Township, which was formed in 1908 after breaking off from Cicero Township. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 54,016.-Demographics:...
[Illinois] Tribune in the mid-1920s.
He left that newspaper by 1930. By then, he had 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 January 1937. It included true railroad stories in its editorial mix, eventually adding such illustrated 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
Bomber
A bomber is a military aircraft designed to attack ground and sea targets, by dropping bombs on them, or – in recent years – by launching cruise missiles at them.-Classifications of bombers:...
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, he began publishing two comic books, Comics Revue and Pageant of Comics, both reprinting comic strips. They appeared under his own name as publisher in 1947. Shortly afterward, his comic book company took on the name St. John Publications.
Magazines
The group of magazines published by St. John included crime fiction (Manhunt, Mantrap, Menace, Murder, Verdict), a Western digest (Gunsmoke), the scandal-exposé title Secret Life and the men's magazine Nugget. Manhunt began January 1953 as the monthly digest, Manhunt Detective Story Monthly. The title was shortened to Manhunt early in 1956. It expanded to a larger standard-size format from March 1957 to May 1958 but then returned to digest-size and a bimonthly schedule. The popularity of Manhunt kept it running for 114 issues until April-May 1967. Verdict ran as a digest-size monthly from June 1953 to September 1953 and was briefly titled Verdict Crime Detection Magazine (Aug.-Nov. 1956) before a shortening back to Verdict.Comic books
Stereoscopy
Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...
comic book, Three Dimension Comics #1 (Sept. 1953 oversize format, Oct. 1953 standard-size reprint), featuring the Terrytoons
Terrytoons
Terrytoons was an animation studio founded by Paul Terry. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Deputy Dawg, Luno and Heckle and Jeckle; these cartoons and all of its...
movie-cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
character Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
. According to Joe Kubert
Joe Kubert
Joe Kubert is an American comic book artist who went on to found The Kubert School. He is best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Sgt. Rock and Hawkman...
, co-creator with the brothers Norman Maurer
Norman Maurer
Norman Albert Maurer , a comic book artist and writer, was also a director and producer of films and television shows.-Comic books:...
and Leonard Maurer, it sold an exceptional 1.2 million copies at 25 cents apiece at a time when comics cost a dime. 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
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...
; 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
Tor (comic book)
Tor is a fictional character, a prehistoric-human protagonist who originated in comic books from the U.S. company St. John Publications. He was created by writer and artist Joe Kubert in 1,000,000 Years Ago! Tor is a fictional character, a prehistoric-human protagonist who originated in comic books...
. In 1953, St. John took over a number of Ziff Davis
Ziff Davis
Ziff Davis Inc. is an American publisher and Internet company. It was founded in 1927 in Chicago by William B. Ziff, Sr. and Bernard G. Davis. Throughout most of its history, it was a publisher of hobbyist magazines, often ones devoted to expensive, advertiser-rich hobbies such as cars,...
comics titles, including the romance comics
Romance comics
Romance comics is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War...
Cinderella Love and Romantic Love, the Western comic Kid Cowboy, and the jungle adventure title Wild Boy of the Congo.
St. John Publications utilized the first African-American comic-book artist in mainstream media, Matt Baker, who contributed to the ostensibly true-crime
True crime (genre)
True crime is a non-fiction literary and film genre in which the author examines an actual crime and details the actions of real people.The crimes most commonly include murder, but true crime works have also touched on other legal cases. Depending on the writer, true crime can adhere strictly to...
series Authentic Police Cases, the light humor comic Canteen Kate, the romance books
Romance comics
Romance comics is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War...
Cinderella Love and Teen-Age Romances, and many others.
Mice and men
St. John acquired the license to publish comics based on the movie cartoons of producer Paul TerryPaul Terry (cartoonist)
Paul Houlton Terry was an American cartoonist, screenwriter, film director and one of the most prolific film producers in history...
. The Terrytoons
Terrytoons
Terrytoons was an animation studio founded by Paul Terry. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Deputy Dawg, Luno and Heckle and Jeckle; these cartoons and all of its...
properties, originally adapted as comic book by Timely Comics
Timely Comics
Timely Comics, an imprint of Timely Publications, was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics....
, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, included such characters as Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
, the crows Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle are cartoon characters created by Paul Terry, and released by his own studio, Terrytoons for 20th Century Fox. The characters are a pair of identical magpies who calmly outwitted their foes in the manner of Bugs Bunny, while maintaining a mischievous streak reminiscent of Woody...
, Gandy Goose, and Little Roquefort. The first such St. John comic was Mighty Mouse #5 (Aug. 1947), its numbering taken over from the Timely run.
The company expanded into licensed characters from another animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
company, the joint Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
-Famous Studios
Famous Studios
Famous Studios was the animation division of the film studio Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967. Famous was founded as a successor company to Fleischer Studios, after Paramount acquired the aforementioned studio and ousted its founders, Max and Dave Fleischer, in 1941...
, which included the future Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics was an American comic book publisher, founded in New York City by Alfred Harvey in 1941, after buying out the small publisher Brookwood Publications. His brothers Robert B...
characters Casper the Friendly Ghost
Casper the Friendly Ghost
Casper the Friendly Ghost is the protagonist of the Famous Studios theatrical animated cartoon series of the same name. As his name indicates, he is a ghost, but is quite personable...
(unnamed in his movie 'toons to that time, and given his familiar designation in his eponymous comic-book's September 1949 premiere), Baby Huey
Baby Huey
Baby Huey is a gigantic and naïve duckling cartoon character. He was created by Martin Taras for Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios, and became a Paramount cartoon star during the 1950s. Although created by Famous for its animated cartoons, Huey first appeared in comic-book form in an original...
(who premiered in that Casper the Friendly Ghost #1 before his March 3, 1950, screen debut, "Quack A Doodle Do"), and Little Audrey
Little Audrey
Little Audrey is a fictional character, appearing in Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios cartoons from 1947 to 1958. She is considered a variation of the better-known Little Lulu, devised after Paramount decided not to renew the license on Marjorie Henderson Buell's comic strip character...
.
Little Eva, Audrey's lesser-known replacement, was added to the publishing schedule in 1952 after the Audrey license passed on to Harvey.
Continuing in the popular vein of reprinted comic strips, St. John published comic books of such gag strips as Moon Mullins
Moon Mullins
Moon Mullins, created by cartoonist Frank Willard , was a popular American comic strip which had a long run as both a daily and Sunday feature from June 19, 1923 to June 2, 1991. Syndicated by the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate, the strip depicts the lives of diverse lowbrow characters who...
and Nancy
Nancy (comic strip)
Nancy is an American daily and Sunday comic strip, originally written and drawn by Ernie Bushmiller and distributed by United Feature Syndicate....
, and of the NEA
United Media
United Media is a large editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service based in the United States, owned by The E.W. Scripps Company. It syndicates 150 comics and editorial columns worldwide. Its core business is the United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association...
syndicate's private detective adventure strip Vic Flint. This hardboiled
Hardboiled
Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...
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).
Romance comics
Romance comics
Romance comics is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War...
was Teen-Age Romances #1 (January, 1949), followed by ten issues of romance comics over the next nine months. St. John's Hollywood Confessions #1 (October 1949) metamorphosed two issues later into Hollywood Pictorial, and then shifted from comic book to movie magazine (Hollywood Pictorial Western) with issue #4 (March 1950). That was the first title in what eventually became the St. John magazine group.
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" reprinted from Punch Comics
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
"nuclear jitters" and popular culture fascination with the breaking of the sound barrier
Sound barrier
The sound barrier, in aerodynamics, is the point at which an aircraft moves from transonic to supersonic speed. The term, which occasionally has other meanings, came into use during World War II, when a number of aircraft started to encounter the effects of compressibility, a collection of several...
.
Pioneering "Picture Novels"
In 1950 — more than 20 years before Gil KaneGil Kane
Eli Katz who worked under the name Gil Kane and in one instance Scott Edward, was a comic book artist whose career spanned the 1940s to 1990s and every major comics company and character.Kane co-created the modern-day versions of the superheroes Green Lantern and the Atom for DC Comics, and...
& Archie Goodwin
Archie Goodwin (comics)
Archie Goodwin was an American comic book writer, editor, and artist. He worked on a number of comic strips in addition to comic books, and is best known for his Warren and Marvel Comics work...
's Blackmark
Blackmark
Blackmark is a Bantam Books paperback , published January 1971, that is one of the first American graphic novels, predating such seminal works as Richard Corben's Bloodstar , Jim Steranko's Chandler: Red Tide , Don McGregor & Paul Gulacy's Sabre , and Will Eisner's A Contract with God...
and almost 30 before Don McGregor
Don McGregor
Donald Francis McGregor is an American comic book writer best known for his work for Marvel Comics, and the author of one of the first graphic novels.-Early life and career:...
& Paul Gulacy
Paul Gulacy
Paul Gulacy is an American comic book illustrator best known for his work for DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and for drawing one of the first graphic novels, Eclipse Enterprises' 1978 Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species, with writer Don McGregor.-Early life and career:Paul Gulacy began...
's Sabre
Sabre
The sabre or saber is a kind of backsword that usually has a curved, single-edged blade and a rather large hand guard, covering the knuckles of the hand as well as the thumb and forefinger...
and Will Eisner
Will Eisner
William Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an...
's A Contract with God
A Contract with God
A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories is a graphic novel by Will Eisner that takes the form of several stories on a theme. Published by Baronet Books in October 1978 in simultaneous hardcover and trade paperback editions — the former limited to a signed-and-numbered print-run of 1,500 —...
— St. John helped pioneer the medium that would become known as the graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
. The digest-sized, adult-oriented "Picture Novel" It Rhymes with Lust
It Rhymes with Lust
It Rhymes with Lust is a book, originally published in 1950, considered one of the most notable precursors of the graphic novel. Called a "picture novel" on the cover and published by the comic book and magazine company St...
was a film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
-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 pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
ous writer "Drake Waller" (Arnold Drake
Arnold Drake
Arnold Drake was an American comic book writer and screenwriter best known for co-creating the DC Comics characters Deadman and the Doom Patrol, and the Marvel Comics characters the Guardians of the Galaxy, among others....
and Leslie Waller
Leslie Waller
-Biography:He is a son of Ukrainian immigrants and was born in Chicago, Illinois. He suffered from amblyopia and poliomyelitis as a child, but graduated from Hyde Park High School by the age of 16...
), penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin
Ray Osrin
Raymond Harold Osrin was an American cartoonist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928, and studied at the High School of Industrial Arts and the Art Students League. He was a staff inker at Jerry Iger's comics shop from 1945 to 1949...
, 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.
Further reading
- Benson, John. Romance Without Tears (Fantagraphics, 2003)
- Benson, John. Confessions, Romances, Secrets and Temptations: Archer St. John and the St. John Romance Comics (Fantagraphics, 2007), and online supplement "St. John Romance Comics Checklist"