These Are SUPER!

In the annals of Comic Book history there are more than enough less-than-ethical and sketchy publishers. In my opinion, Israel Waldman deserves to be a part of that group. In the 1970’s he partnered with Sol Brodsky to form Skywald Comics. However over a decade earlier he began his career in publishing under the brands IW and Super. He had taken the opportunity to make a bulk purchase of thousands of metal engraving plates from a printer. This cache contained pages of comic books that had been done by a myriad of publishers during the Golden Age. That list included Quality, Star, Avon, Fox, Novelty Press, Chesler, Bailey, Toby and Fiction House. Starting in 1958, he reprinted this work in a line of his own comics.

It should be noted that most, if not all, of this material was still in copyright to the respective, original publishers nor had he bought any reprint rights. What I suspect is that he was banking on was the fact that most of these publishers had either gone out of business or at least ceased putting out comics.

My first encounter with them occurred when I was very young. I would guess that I was 7 or 8 years of age. The comic that my mom bought for me was a rather nondescript, juvenile one that was titled, TOM-TOM, THE JUNGLE BOY. Even though I had never heard of its characters like Koko and Kola, Mighty Atom & the Pixies or Judy & the Magic Chalk, they enchanted me. I hung onto that comic for a long while, until it was sacrificed in one of the periodic comic purges that folks would demand. In 1978 I worked in a comic shop and when a copy came through the door, I snatched it up. It has remained in my clutches ever since.

My personal recollection of that initial occasion had me getting the comic as a standalone purchase. However, I’ve come to believe that that is in error. I’ve heard that these books were issued in polypacks of 3 comics and it occurred to me that I was aware of the characters of Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal in my youth. Those had not been published since the 1940’s but IW/Super did reprint them, so it’s entirely possible that I got a pack of kiddie comics.

The multi-pack might also account for some curious practices by Waldman. Although they were numbered, none of the comics had a monthly date on their covers. Those cover dates were actually “sell by” dates for the retailer to know when to remove and return unsold books. With this strategy, the IW/Super books could endure a longer shelf life.
Another issue that the company needed to overcome was how to sell dated content to new readers. One way they were able to do this was by hiring artists to draw new, more contemporary covers, thus making the books look “fresh”. Once again the multi-pack merchandising would make the consumer limited to buying, based upon the covers that they saw within the pack. The new covers were drawn by a number of noteworthy artists which included John Severin, Joe Simon, Gray Morrow, Jack Abel, Angelo Torres and the Andru/Esposito team.

Sold in these packs, they were presumably exempt from going through the Comics Code Authority. However, some parents were still unsure of the suitability of the material without the CCA seal. Waldman had an answer for that as well. His earliest books reprinted a logo from Quality Comics that cited the comic as a “top Quality comic”. These were placed on the covers in the exact spot where a parent would expect to find the CCA seal and it looked official enough for them to pass muster. When Waldman began using the Super name he used a variation of the tactic for a similar result.

Collectors with ADD would find the numbering apoplectic experience and at first glance it appears to be rather random. Don Markstein, at his Toonopedia site, postulates a theory on Waldman’s numbering system which makes a bit of sense. Rather than numbering reflecting an individual series, it instead refers to a batch of comics sent to the printer. So all the offerings that were done in that initial batch are numbered as 1. The following batch, which may or may not include the same titles would be numbered as 2.
As a rule Waldman avoided using material that might get him in hot water. I don’t know if his stock included plates from any DC comics, but he never dared to tempt fate by using those. But on occasion he did use both Marvel/Timely and EC material.

When I was in my early teens and just discovering collecting, books like “All In Color For A Dime” and Steranko’s “History Of The Comics” made me very curious about Golden Age comics. The IW/Super books became a godsend for me and my fellow collectors. Many of the top tier artists in comics had work within those reprinted pages. Men like Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, Steve Ditko, Bob Powell, Lou Fine and Mac Raboy to name but a few. Often you could find these at second hand shops for next to nothing, as they weren’t premium companies like DC or Marvel. The Internet has had an effect on such bargain pricing. With sites like the Grand Comics Database making the contents more available to sellers, the odds of getting IW/Super books with highly collected artists for cheap, have been reduced. For example DARING ADVENTURES issue 12, which reprints PHANTOM LADY #14 is currently on eBay from prices between $33 and $174, instead of the $2 I paid for it at a comic shop in 1998. But of course PHANTOM LADY #14 is on the site for close to $3,000 so those other prices are indeed bargains in relation to that.

Pat