I’m fascinated by the publishing history of the pulps and comics. It was quite sordid and money-grubbing, and superhero comics were connected to the mob until shockingly recently (the 1970′s, I think). This article entitled “Comics, Porn and the Mob” has piqued my interest about the book “Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and The Birth of the Comic Book”.
Jones is telling tales of the various Mob-related folks who were involved in the comic-book distribution network back in the ’50s, Evanier the Senate subcommittee hearings of the same era. Evanier notes that one reason the Senate got intrigued with comics in those days was because the Mob controlled the magazine circulation business. “As early as 1910,” Jones adds, “there’s a relationship between publishing and organizing crime. I think everyone knew the circulation business was Mobbed-up, at least in the major cities.”
Martin Goodman, of Timely and Marvel Comics fame, was publishing both girlie magazines and comic books in the late ’50s because, Evanier notes, “Naked women were where the money was.” Because the comics and magazines were published by the same company, they often arrived on the same truck, meaning they ended up adjacent to one another on the magazine racks.
Of course, if you’ve seen the great Golden Age covers from Fox and Fiction House, you know there was always a rather thin line between pornography and comics.