13 Freaky Facts You May Not Know About Comics And Their Creators

4. DC Comics Kept Its #1 Competitor (Marvel) Alive And ... Competing!

Sometimes, what seems like a sound business idea is anything but. Many comic book publishers during the 1950s operated their own distribution companies. DC, Charlton and Atlas all distributed their own comics and magazines - and Martin Goodman (of Atlas) had always used this arrangement to great advantage. The publisher was known to flood the newsstands with his books, often crowding out other, and worthier publications. Goodman's game plan had always been quantity not quality, and his numerous pulps and slick magazines, frequently filled with reprints, proved this point. (However, regarding Atlas Comics, Goodman's chief editor, Stan Lee, managed to maintain a level of quality despite the large number of titles being published each month.) But in the mid-fifties, Goodman got a bad idea: he decided to close his distribution company, in favor of letting someone else worry about getting his wares to market. Goodman signed a contract with American News Distributors, and for about a year everything went just swell ... until American News abruptly got out of the magazine business! Goodman suddenly found himself - in 1956, the dawn of the Silver Age of Comics - with no way to get his dozens of pulps, magazines and comics to the newsstands. He quickly dropped his remaining pulps, and drastically reduced the number of magazines and comics he published. And then he made "a deal with the devil"! DC's sister company, Independent News, magnanimously agreed to distribute its biggest competitor. After all, what could it hurt? IND saw a way to make money on Goodman's wide assortment of magazines; and at the same time the distributor could also force him to limit the number of comics Atlas published. Besides, Goodman's company would NEVER really pose a threat to the DC giant. IND limited the distribution of Atlas comics to only 8 titles per month. But editor-in-chief, Stan Lee, wisely found a way around this limitation, by producing 16 different titles published bimonthly - staggering the distribution, with eight titles one month, the other eight titles the next month. This working agreement between Goodman and Independent News lasted until 1968, at which time the publisher, now known as Marvel, cut a deal with Cadence Distribution. Once again the floodgates were open - wide open - and Stan Lee let loose with dozens of new titles. It was time for payback, and DC would have to struggle to keep up!