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Funnies Inc.

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Funnies, Inc. was an influential comic book packager during the early Golden Age of comic books, and supplied, among other things, the contents of Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), the first publication of what would become the multimedia corporation Marvel Comics.

At the birth of comic books

American comic books originated as colorful magazines that reprinted newspaper comic strips These strips, coming from "the funny pages", were colloquially called "the funnies". Gradually, new material began to be created for the emerging medium of comic books. In the late 1930s, with the huge sales success of Superman, the first superhero, magazine publishers jumped on the trend.

Funnies, Inc. supplied the contents of Marvel Comics #1, the first publication of Marvel predecessor Timely Comics.

One of the many comics companies founded during this time, Centaur Publishing, found relative success with Amazing-Man Comics, an anthology featuring such superheroes as the titular Amazing Man (created by company art director Lloyd Jacquet and writer-artist Bill Everett), the Iron Skull, Mighty Man, Minimidget, and Skyrocket Steele. After the first issue, Jacquet broke off to form Funnies, Inc., a packager that would create comics on demand for publishers (while retaining the rights to characters created). Centaur staffers who followed him, on at least a freelance basis, included artists Everett, Carl Burgos, Paul Gustavson, and Ben Thompson; writers Ray Gill and John Compton; John Mahon, a publisher for one of Centaur's earlier iterations; business manager Jim Fitzsimmons; and sales director Frank Torpey. Others who worked there included future novelist Mickey Spillane; Leonard Starr, future creator of the comic strip On Stage; and artist Bob Davis, who for for Funnies, Inc. created the boy hero "Dick Cole" in Novelty Press' Blue Bolt Comics. The company's office was located on West 45th Street in New York City, near Times Square.

Two other notable comics packagers were formed around this time: Eisner & Iger, founded by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, and the quirkily named Harry "A" Chesler's studio.

Initially called First Funnies, Inc., the company's first project was Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, a promotional comic planned for giveaway in movie theaters. The idea proved unsuccessful, and the only eight known samples among those created to send to theater owners were discovered in an estate sale in 1974. Additionally, proofs were made for the covers of issues #2-4. Cartoonist Martin Filchock drew the covers to all but #3, drawn by Max Neill.

The first Marvel comic

Funnies, Inc.'s first actual sale was to pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman, who was looking to enter the comics field. For what would be called Marvel Comics #1, Funnies, Inc. created a set of features that included two nascent star characters: Burgos' original Human Torch and Everett's Sub-Mariner, expanding an origin story Everett had created for the never-released Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1. Among the other characters introduced was Gustavson's The Angel, a modest hit who would appear in more than 100 Golden Age stories. Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, eventually used Timely Comics as the umbrella name for his comic-book division.

Other early companies that bought material from Funnies, Inc. include Centaur, Fox, and Hillman Periodicals. For the Novelty Press division of the Premium Service Company, writer-artist Joe Simon created Blue Bolt and cartoonist Basil Wolverton did Spacehawk.

Simon, in his autobiography (cited below), recalled that his Funnies, Inc. rate for a completed comic-book page — written, drawn and lettered — was $7. For comparison, he recalled that at Eisner-Iger — where Eisner wrote the features and created characters, hiring novice artists — the page rate was approximately $3.50 to $5.50; publishers were charged $5 to $7 per finished page.

Funnies, Inc. was eventually made obsolete by the growing medium's success, allowing publishers to hire their own staffs. As Simon recalled in that same autobiography, he stopped freelancing for the company when he became Timely Comics' editor: "Soon, we were buying only The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner from Jacquet and irritating the hell ouf of him with demands for script and art changes in the hopes that he would resign the features he had helped to build."

Toward the end of 1940, Jacquet sold Goodman the rights to the characters. Business relations evidently remained cordial; in an Aug. 14, 1942, photo, Jacquet seated next to Goodman at a gala Hotel Astor luncheon Goodman hosted on for the Timely and Funnies staffs, followed by a showing of the new Disney movie Bambi. Others at the table included Torpey, Gill, Timely editor Stan Lee, and such artists/writers as Vince Alascia, Ernie Hart, Jack Keller, George Klein, Jim Mooney, Don Rico, Mike Sekowsky, and Syd Shores.

Lloyd Jacquet

Funnies, Inc. founder Lloyd Jacquet, a former World War I colonel, was an editor who worked for pulp magazine publisher Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Magazines (the future DC Comics) on some of the first comic books. These included the landmark New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine (a.k.a. New Fun Comics), which debuted in Feb. 1935 as the first such publication with original material rather than newspaper comic strip reprints. Jacquet remained through its first four issues, later becoming art director of Centaur Publishing — co-creating Amazing Man with Bill Everett there — before leaving to start Funnies, Inc.

Novelist Mickey Spillane, who began his career in comics and worked at Funnies, Inc., recalled:

"Our boss, Lloyd Jacquet, a dead ringer for Douglas MacArthur (corncob pipe and all), was a wonderful man, but could never understand living among wildcat writers and artists. All of us were pretty much freelance people, so firing us would have been a useless gesture."Template:Fn

After Funnies, Inc. ended, Lloyd Jacquet Studios continued to package comics through at least 1949, when Jacquet hired artist Joe Orlando to do work for Treasure Chest, the Catholic-oriented comic book distributed in parochial schools. Other Lloyd Jacquet Studios projects included Your United States, an educational, giveaway comic produced for publisher Fred W. Danner in 1946, with art by future DC Comics inker Sid Greene (Batman, Justice League of America).

References

Footnotes

  • Template:Fnb The Golden Age of Marvel Comics, Vol. 2 ISBN 0785107134
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