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Topic: Comic Book History
TODAY'S FEATURE IS BLOG #3728 - In blog #3709 titled: "My Take On: Humorama - A Division Of Martin Goodman's Publishing Empire", and blog #3727 titled: "Addendum To My Take On: Humorama - A Division of Martin Goodman's Publishing Empire" I went into the background history of that division. For those of you that haven't read those two blogs yet... Martin Goodman was the founder of Timely / Atlas / Marvel Comics. While I was looking for more info on Humorama, I came across 'Peep Show' that was affiliated with Charlton Comics. Charlton Comics? Yes, Charlton Comics! Here's just one of the tidbits of info that I came across: "The publishing of the song magazines was the biggest part of our business," Burt Levey, who served as Charlton Publishing Business Manager and Treasurer in the '50s to mid-'60s, said. Part of Levey's job was to secure permissions from the various song publishers. "50% of the company was devoted to the song magazines, 25% comics, and 25% for the rest of the magazines—confessions, detective, Real West, and the crossword puzzle books. Of course, this varied but it's an accurate ballpark figure of the business breakdown for Charlton." Here is the link to a list of magazines that Charlton Publishing printed: List Compiled by Ramon Schenk. 'Peep Show' appears to be the only mag in this genre that Charlton Publishing printed, although the list of magazines published may be incomplete. As far as I could tell... Peep Show started circa 1950 and lasted until at least 1957. I couldn't find when it ceased publishing. I had known years ago that Charlton was also into the songs magazines, which I sometimes picked up in collections that I bought that also included their comics, (see this list for Charlton's comics titles). Charlton had published 382 different comic book titles with 6,482 different issues. However, I had not known that Charlton Publishing had been in the genre of publishing that 'Peep Show' would be included in.
As for the 'Peep Show' cover pics used in this blog post... There just aren't that many of them on the web! What few I did find will be uploaded to this special Photo Album: N.E.W.S. Publishing Corporation - Peep Show - Charlton Comics. The photos used in the magazines were taken by Gary Wagner, Roy Kemp, Jack Stager, Roland Carre, Charles Kell, and others. The front covers were in color, but the interior pages were supposed to be black & white only. I haven't seen an actual copy of the magazine, so this has not been verified by me. This magazine, as well as all the others and the comic books, were printed at the Charlton plant in Derby, Connecticut.
The Charlton Building shown above, housed the three sister companies: Charlton Press, Charlton Publications, and Capitol Distribution. There was also an off-site auxiliary company, The Colonial Paper Company. The two men had started publishing the song lyric magazines in 1935. The comics started in 1945. The biggest disaster to hit the building was in 1955 when Hurricane Diane hit the area, leaving the whole 129 acres facility under 18 feet of water! The whole operation started running down in the 1980s... The cost to replace the printing presses was too much for the companies to bear, and operations started being sold off. The first 35 years of the company it thrived... The last 15 years operations went downhill. This operation at its peak had 80 publications with 250 employees. At the very end, in 1991 it had just two magazines and 8 people there. Since this blog is about the 'Peep Show' publication, and that it was run by Charlton Publishing, I'm going to end this post here. Should I come across any other 'Peep Show' or other magazines that Charlton Publishing printed... I'll do an addendum blog. I'm wondering if any of the other comics publishers also had magazines like this one, and the ones I've blogged about that Martin Goodman, owner of Timely / Atlas / Marvel Comics had? I'll be sure to blog about them when I find out... ~ Michael
BTW, You can 'follow' this blog by clicking the 'Follow' Button at this NetworkedBlogs app link! Thanks to ALL of YOU that have already clicked that button! And for those of YOU that haven't yet... I would appreciate it if YOU would!!! Note: My online 'Local Comic Book Shop' (LCBS), carries many different genres of comics, magazines, graphic novels, and comic con promotional items. Possibly even copies of the item(s) that was mentioned here today...! If I have it, you'll find under the BIG TOP of Comics, at Comic Books Circus.com, including the book 'Gotham City 14 Miles' that I am shown holding to the left. I'm 1 of 14 essayists in that book! ! Web Page Note: This blog post is written per the IE Browser standards. Chrome, Safari, Netscape, Firefox and the other browsers serve the page up slightly differently, sorry about that! The screen display resolution is best seen at the setting of 1024 x 768 on your laptop or desktop computer. Note: Your computer's resoulution may be set differently, but the above resolution is the most commonly used resolution at the time of this blog post. NOTE: All images and characters within this blog post are copyright and trademark their respective owners. Comics Creators: If you are breaking into, or already work in the comic book industry or other pop culture productions, you are welcome to email or mail us press releases, news items, and updates that you feel would be of interest to our blog readers. Including YOUR own works! To mail printed items to us for possible review, send to: Make It So Marketing Inc., PO Box 130653, Carlsbad, CA 92013 ![]() --------------- ![]() ![]() |