Below is an ad that ran in some DC Comics around December, 1962...
Yes, it's the long-forgotten DC COMICPAC!
And we all thought it was WHITMAN who invented the pre-bagged package of different comics in the 1970s, didn't we?
But, no... DC got there first...
And, apparently, just in time for the Christmas/Holiday Season, 1962...
...When GOLD KEY (which would eventually become Whitman) was merely SIX MONTHS OLD!
Oddly, while the WHITMAN comic bags tended to be ubiquitous... finding their way into every toy store, variety store, "Five-and-Ten", and department store from the mid-1970s thru the mid-1980s, I NEVER saw a DC COMICPAC anywhere... and I spent a LOT of time in various toy departments circa 1962!
...I wonder if they even continued beyond that initial tryout?
Nope! I got mine the old-fashioned way... at candy stores and newsstands!
TWO THINGS TO NOTE:
ONE: This example of a DC COMICPAC contains issues of SUPERMAN, LOIS LANE, JUSTICE LEAGUE... and JERRY LEWIS? (Click to enlarge!)
Now, nothing against good ol' Jer, but if you were playing a game of "WHICH ONE OF THESE FOUR DOESN'T BELONG?", which title would YOU pick?
Wouldn't ACTION, JIMMY OLSEN, SUPERBOY, or WORLD'S FINEST be a better 4th selection for this Superman-based package?
When WHITMAN did it, you would not have found BROTHERS OF THE SPEAR or THE OCCULT FILES OF DOCTOR SPEKTOR in the same bag as MICKEY MOUSE!
Most likely it contained ONLY other Disney titles, as Warner Bros. Whitman bags would have likely contained only Warner Bros. titles - BUGS BUNNY, PORKY PIG, etc.
Packaged THREE TO A BAG, the comics inside Whitman bags were positioned to allow you to see TWO of the covers - and give you an idea of what you were getting. The "middle comic" remained a mystery, unless (like me in those bygone days) you RIPPED OPEN THE BAG, took a peek, and - if you didn't like the "middle comic" (...or ANY one of the three, for that matter), RIPPED OPEN ANOTHER BAG and created a 3-pack of three titles you actually wanted!
DC's "four-to-a-pack" at least told you which titles were inside! ...And seeing that, I would have KNOWN which packs to RIP OPEN to... er, "customize" my selection of four!
TWO: Consider that, in its COMICPACS, DC offered FOUR TWELVE-CENT COMICS... for FORTY-SEVEN CENTS!
Assuming that, in 1962, 4 x 12 equaled 48 (as it does today), that is a SAVING OF ONLY ONE PENNY!
Then again, IN THIS POST, we discussed how disastrous a THREE-CENT increase was for DELL COMICS, so perhaps that was a better deal back then...
...Until you consider that - since the comics were not sold as SEPARATE PERIODICALS, but as a packaged toy or novelty item - different states or localities would have CHARGED SALES TAX on a DC COMICPAC... actually making it MORE EXPENSIVE than buying the four comic books at your local newsstand!
Sales tax was charged on each and every Whitman bag I purchased, but Whitman bags offered a bit more than a penny in the discounting of their packaged product.
The Whitman comics in this bag were cover-priced at FIFTY CENTS EACH! In 1981, as today, 3 x 50 equals 1.50 - and the Whitman bag cost 1.09! A saving of 41 cents.
Even adjusted for inflation, Whitman's package was a better deal in terms of overall savings.
In terms of CONTENT... Well, make up your own mind!
Nevertheless, it was DC - and not Whitman, as I previously believed - who pioneered the "peg-board racked bag o' comics" for mass market outlets... and we dutifully note this here!
Just gotta ask one more question... The ad says: "Ask for them -- They're Great!"
Shouldn't it say... "Ask for them -- They're SUPER!"
Well, at least the "market" they want you to ask is "Super"!
18 comments:
While I wasn’t around in ‘62 to see the DC Comic Packs, oh boy do I remember the Whitman three-packs (which in the last days of Whitman Comics, became two packs). My brother and I always had dozens of Whitman issues around because of that wonderful marketing tool. Disney, Bugs Bunny, Pink Panther, Woody Woodpecker, and seemingly a lot of center-packed Tweety and Sylvester issues, as well as a very few (but always enjoyed) Tom and Jerry issues. Whitmans and Archies (although those were only purchased an issue at a time) were my introduction to newsstand comic books. I also had lots of the Fawcett Crest Peanuts paperbacks. Now I’m getting all nostalgic.
“Making folks nostalgic” is one of our middle names around here, Deb. …Another is “awkwardly mixing metaphors”.
The DC packs came as a surprise to me, once I began seeing those ads in later-collected 1962 era issues.
While I was never a fan of the bags, at least they kept the Whitman titles alive for about five years longer than their Gold Key counterparts. That’s something, at least.
I tended to get them in comic shops whenever I could, in the hope that Western could be convinced to expand their direct market presence. I even had a seemingly-fruitful conversation with Managing Editor Wally Green on the subject in 1982. He proposed something that (alas) didn’t came to fruition, and it was that failure to negotiate the newly rising direct market that did them in. Though Mr. Green really did give it a go. I even have an ad flyer from him (somewhere in my storage boxes) for a line of deluxe books that ultimately never happened.
For some reason, I still have two unopened Whitman bags in the depths of my comic boxes. (Not the stock Internet image I used in the post!) Just figured it would be a part of history someday.
"When WHITMAN did it, you would not have found BROTHERS OF THE SPEAR or THE OCCULT FILES OF DOCTOR SPEKTOR in the same bag as MICKEY MOUSE! [...] Most likely it contained ONLY other Disney titles..."
In the words of Huckleberry Hound, dreadful sorry, Clementine!
Eight-year-old me was depressed enough to see that my copies of MICKEY MOUSE #189 and 190—the first issues I ever bought in a three-pack—didn't have any 1930s content inside. The fact that the third comic hidden between them was O.G. WHIZ #11 was adding insult to injury! (-:
Mickey Mouse #189 is one that has a story I remember very clearly, "The Mystery of the China Santa", which shares a common plot point with an episode of "The Adventures of Superman"...smugglers using cheap statues to hide things in. Come to think of it, that's also been used in the first Phantom Blot story and a Romano Scarpa story about Christmas trees.
David:
Obviously, I wouldn’t view finding 1950s Jack Bradbury reprints in MICKEY MOUSE #189 and 1970s Jack Manning reprints in MICKEY MOUSE #190 nearly as disappointing as you would – but, if you could SEE THE COVERS through the bag, what would make you think (even as a discerning eight year old) that you’d find 1930s content inside. The covers certainly did not give that impression.
But what DOES surprise me is the O.G. WHIZ “slice of mystery meat” between the two MICKEY MOUSE “slices of bread”!
I’ve seen, and as you know from the post – ripped-open before purchase, many, many Whitman bags back in the day. And there was always an attempt to keep “like titles” with “like titles” with Disney and Warner Bros.. When there weren’t enough titles from one studio, they were combined in “like combinations” – Woody Woodpecker, Tom and Jerry, Popeye, etc. Maybe a Warner book would cross over into one of those packs now and then.
But O.G. WHIZ would have been packaged with the likes of WACKY WITCH, BABY SNOOTS, CRACKY, or something similar. I’d never seen such a title bagged with Disney. Further, I don’t recall ever seeing two issues of the same title (like MICKEY MOUSE #189 and #190) packaged with a completely different title, as you describe.
…Could it be that the contents differed on the east and west coasts? Just another thing we’ll never know.
Deb:
An oft-used plot indeed. Even going back to Sherlock Holmes. Yet, it works every time, and in every instance you cite, since I’ve read and/or seem ‘em all!
HERE’S my post on the Romano Scarpa story about Christmas trees, for anyone interested.
I am especially intrigued about seeing issues of Dobie Gillis, Sugar and Spike (both on the top row, amazingly), Fox and the Crow, and Bob Hope among the usual super-hero titles. DC was interestingly eclectic in those days before going full-tilt into the genre that now defines them almost exclusively. (Of course, we still have Looney Tunes, Scooby Doo, and the late lamented Scooby-Doo Team-Up, plus the recent Hanna-Barbera forays into "realism", but still today if you mention DC most people will think of Superman, Batman, Justice League, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and so forth--and rightly so.)
Sugar and Spike was a rarity even when the book existed as a regular, ongoing title. I seldom was able to acquire two consecutive issues. Not only was their rotation a little hard to figure out--it seemed they came out about four times a year, maybe six times--but different stores carried them at different times, so I never knew where an issue might pop up. From what comic book dealers have told me, the books did not stay on the shelves for very long--they disappeared very quickly. This holds true even today when a dealer receives back issues of S & S. There also probably were not as many copies printed as for more mainstream characters like Superman or Mickey Mouse, so that coupled with their huge popularity among those enlightened ones who knew about the books and loved them, probably accounts for why they were so hard to come across in their day.
Every once in a while those old ads make me wish I could have jumped on that bandwagon. This is one of those occasions. I miss the availability of comics, the good quality storytelling, and especially the 12 cent cover price. I have stated this many times before, but if I could pay 12 cents an issue for comic books today I would be very, very happy.
Thanks for making the Sherlock Holmes reference. If you hadn't, you know I would have mentioned it. "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" is a classic! Plus the Rathbone-Bruce film "The Pearl of Death" which is based on it. And of course one of our all-time favorite Mickey Mouse adventures that includes the debut of arguably the greatest of Mickey's villains utilizes the same basic concept, as Debbie referenced above.
Scarecrow:
You write: “Of course, we still have Looney Tunes, Scooby Doo, and the late lamented Scooby-Doo Team-Up…”
Naturally, you mean “…and the late AND VERY lamented Scooby-Doo Team-Up…”, thank you very much! :-)
Seriously, that’s a very interesting set of observations on Sugar and Spike! Yes, I would expect it to have a lower print run than Superman (and this is actually “knowable” by comparing the respective “Statement of Ownership” declarations for the same years), but the rest of the oddities I would likely attribute to the vagaries of the inconsistent and often haphazard distribution of the time – a large topic of discussion in OUR LAST POST!
I saw Sugar and Spike regularly on the newsstands of the time, but could never confirm or deny your assertions with any certainty. The main thing was, as mentioned in the previous post’s comments, is that no single store ever had everything - and that was true for whatever title you were seeking. The only comparable (meaning DC humor) title I followed steadily at the time was The Fox and the Crow (literally through to its end), and that title was available as consistently as any other title would have been under those uncertain and quite variable circumstances.
I *do* concur that Sugar and Spike “disappeared very quickly” from the newsdealers shelves and racks because it had a smaller, though very dedicated, fanbase – and was most likely ordered in smaller quantities than DC or Marvel superhero titles. Same would be true for The Fox and the Crow, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones, etc.
We all miss those revered “12-cent days” (or, if not, we SHOULD – even those who didn’t experience ‘em first hand as we did)! Only done within a more consistent and reliable system of distribution! …We can dream, can’t we?
And lastly, thanks for supplying the title of the oft-tributed Sherlock Holmes story! It simply eluded me when typing that earlier response! We all just “pick-up-one-another” around here all the time! One of many things I love about hosting this humble Blog!
Oh, and while I’m here, I should mention that, on Monday, we will have an unusual and very special Christmas-related comics post. It’s a whole story, presented within a sort of unorthodox (but fun) framing! …Hopefully, you will enjoy a great story, and tolerate my framing of it.
Joe: To be fair, the O.G. WHIZ bagged with two Mickeys was not just the first time I ever bought such a bag—but the only time I would ever find a non-funny-animal "mystery meat" sandwiched between Disney books. Maybe it was even an error!
"but, if you could SEE THE COVERS through the bag, what would make you think (even as a discerning eight year old) that you’d find 1930s content inside [MICKEY MOUSE #189 and 190]. The covers certainly did not give that impression."
Very true, but let's not forget one other important point: I was an idiot!
Well, okay, that's overdoing it, but... I was seven, without the knowledge or expectations that one might obtain from years of reading and collecting. My only Disney comics experience had been reading the 1930s Gottfredson reprints in Mickey Mouse: Fifty Happy Years and in the Abbeville Mickey book, both of which I'd obtained a few months before. I had no idea that, at that time, such 1930s reprints were incredibly unusual—almost unprecedented! For me, they were simply "what Mickey Mouse comics are like"!
Thus, when bratty kid-me asked my mom what those bagged magazines were at the comic store, and she said, "Oh, they're Mickey Mouse comic books... you just read some Mickey Mouse comics, didn't you?" ...it sounded logical (thank you, Katnip!) to roll with the presumption that even if they looked a little different, these must have some similar content in them somewhere!
Oh, well. Wrong again! (...but hey, "The Mystery of the China Santa" was still pretty good—even if I wasn't used to Mickey being a stern sort of adult detective, he still had enough kid in him to get the drop on a smuggler using with a squirtgun bluff and a gumball avalanche... that certainly gave kid-me a few ideas, all of them bad...)
David:
Even at a similar age, I was able to easily discern between the REPRINTS in the Gold Key Comics of the time vs. the NEW AND ORIGINAL stories, and not just because they were labeled with the ubiquitous “Reprinted By Popular Demand”!
But, also to be fair, I was familiar with these comics going back to some 1959 Dells in my pre-school years (Thank you, Grandma Millie!), where you were just beginning.
It’s kinda like (…and this is TRUE), when I saw my first Chuck Jones Road Runner cartoon on THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW (ABC TV, 1960), I wondered why “Beep Beep” (the Road Runner’s name) didn’t speak in rhyme, where his three sons were, and why Wile E. Coyote didn’t speak – period! …After all, that’s the way it was in THIS COMIC I HAD!
So, to me all Road Runner’s spoke in rhyme and, to you, all Mickey Mouse comics featured the enthusiastic, pie-cut-eyed, shorts-wearing, rubbery Mouse! …Until we learned otherwise!
Funny how those things go…
Why are funny animal and cartoon character comics so rare nowadays compared to superheroes? I know that they are still common in the funny papers but not as much anymore in the funny books.
Now, there’s a question and a half, Anon…
There is no “one answer”, but more “probable causes” than I’d be able to address in a week! So, I’ll try to limit my response (…yeah, as if I COULD EVER “limit my response”) to the top three as was applicable to “one-who-has-lived-through-it”, namely me!
Let’s begin with the baseline that this phenomenon began somewhere about the late 1960s – mid 1970s – and has been in effect ever since. I walked away from these things in 1972, when three prime factors conspired to ensure that I do so.
Social Attitudes: Fandoms, as they exist today, did not exist as such in 1972. Reading comic books was not “cool” (not that I ever cared about being “cool”), but was looked upon as being childish. And funny animal comics, all the more so. I’ve often mentioned “girls” as a major factor in my decision, and such was the case. You could still get girls if you weren’t “cool” – but not if you were childish!
Today, boys, girls, teens, men, women, and everyone can proudly and openly enjoy comics, with only a last vestige of ignorant derision from “those-not-in-the-know”, something which is rapidly dwindling and dying. Obviously, we are better off today – but this was but one factor that started the long and slow decline of comics in general, and funny animal comics in particular.
Availability: A link above to “OUR LAST POST” tells of the distribution issues that became increasingly worse in the 1970s. By and large, the readers of funny animal comics were of a younger age than the readers of superhero comics, and were less likely to travel distances in their respective quests.
Quality: This is the BIGGIE! To make "what could be a VERY long story" short… The quality of funny animal comics sharply and steadily DECLINED, while that of superhero comics sharply and steadily INCREASED! In the 1940s, finely crafted funny animal comics were in every way superior in quality to the rough, sketchy, and sometimes even exploitive superhero comics of the Golden Age!
In the 1950s, that gap had largely closed and, by the 1960s they achieved (in my mind) a sort of equilibrium, in which they may have done “different things” but both did those things very well – and with great creativity and imagination. Carl Barks and Jack Kirby were easily found and enjoyed.
…But, by the 1970s, you had NEAL ADAMS drawing BATMAN… and Kay Wright drawing Donald Duck! …Could any one sentence sum it up better?
In my case, the comparatively sub-standard material (vs. the 1960s comics I'd been accustomed to) from Gold Key and Charlton did a great deal to drive me away. And it clearly did the same for many more.
Oh, there have been MANY exceptions since! Gladstone/Gemstone, 2015-2018 IDW, Scooby-Doo Team-Up and more. But the balance that “once was” never returned!
At least here in the USA, funny animal comics “lost their momentum”, mostly due to publisher and creator disinterest during that critical period, and never recovered! Gold Key, Charlton, Harvey, etc. could ALL have been so much better in the 1970s, and into the 1980s, than they actually were – and that might have changed things… but, no!
That’s as best I can sum it up, without taking a week of our respective life-spans to do so! Hope it helps!
One more factor I should have mentioned in my last comment is that the very Direct Market Distribution System that saved the comic book from eventual extinction may also have been a significant factor in relegating the funny animal comic to its present existence as a permanently lower-tier product.
Since it is not the “general public”, but a dedicated legion of “fans” that populate comic book shops – vs. the newsstands, candy, and drug stores of earlier days – those shops are far more likely to order superhero comics than funny animal comics… because that’s what their core customers want.
So, ironically, what “saved” the comic book in the general sense, also helped move the funny animal comic still further out of the American mainstream.
The Wally Green flyer was posted thanks to Brent Swanson and Joakim Gunnarsson: http://sekvenskonst.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-collectors-editions-that-never-was.html?m=0
I was amazed to discover Alter Ego #156 has the transcript of a 2000 New York Comic Con panel on Gold Key that Wally Green was on. Now if only Mark Evanier can find the tape of the 2003 San Diego Comic Con panel on Gold Key he moderated.
https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=1407&zenid=f7501003b514ffa8b094f5b3e7427870
“The Wally Green flyer was posted thanks to Brent Swanson and Joakim Gunnarsson”
That’s exactly what I was referring to! Thank you, Dana.
I was working out of town at that point in 2000, so did not go to that particular New York Comic Con, but I’ll be ordering the issue of “Alter Ego”.
Also, 2003 was the last San Diego Comic Con we attended together – and my last one, period. Why don’t I remember a Gold Key Panel moderated by Mark Evanier? I cannot imagine anything that would have kept me from attending. Are you certain on the year?
HERE and HERE are Dana’s links for your viewing pleasure!
I know it was 2003 because Mark Evanier mentioned it on his blog. I know I attended the panel.
I totally believe you, Dana! But, since I was with you - and it was the last San Diego I attended, I wonder how I missed that one! ...The mysteries of life!
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