Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and forty-seventh installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
Captain America Comics launched as the second volume of an earlier Timely comic book.
True
One of the fascinating things about the early days of comics is how many decisions were made purely for the sake of saving a dollar here or a dollar there. One of these areas was in postal regulations that required companies to pay a registration fee every time they registered a new series with the post office. Companies would avoid paying that new fee by simply re-titling their series. The most amusing example of this is how EC Comics launched Moon Girl and the Prince, a sort of Wonder Woman/Princess of Mars riff...
that then changed its name to Moon Girl to become a more straightforward superhero title...
and then changed its name to Moon Girl Fights Crime to be come a crime comic....
and then changed its name to A Moon, a Girl...Romance to be a romance comic....
before finally just outright changing the name of the series to Weird Fantasy.
Similarly, reader Steven M. wrote in about Captain America Comics #1...
(I was actually already planning on doing this story, but hey, I figure I might as well give Steven some credit here, too. He didn't know when he asked that I was already doing it!)...
about why, as you can see at the bottom of the indica here, it is listed as volume TWO!
Steven wanted to know, "So I am now wondering...What happened to Captain America Comics volume 1? Did it ever exist? If not (which I assume is the case), then why did they start with volume 2?"
The reason is the same as the Moon Girl example. To save money, Martin Goodman just re-named his Readers Digest rip-off, Popular Digest, as Captain America Comics for "volume two" of the series...
This was, in part, because Goodman decided to give Captain America his own series outright rather than launch him in an anthology, so Cap needed a spot on the production schedule and he got Popular Digest's spot, which was canceled after a second issue (which came out 16 months after #1)...
Captain America Comics #1, you might notice, was also listed as a "Timely Publication," just like Popular Digest, while the series was then Timely COMICS, Inc. from #2-on.
Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo for his excellent article on Popular Digest's connection to Captain America Comics!
Thanks to Steven for the suggestion (if I hadn't already been planning to run this since I did an earlier Comic Book Legends Revealed ON Popular Digest, then I would have done it after Steven wrote in!).
_______________________________________________________________________________
Check out some other legends from Legends Revealed:
1. Did Oliver Reed Appear in Scenes of Gladiator Filmed AFTER He Died?
2. How Did a Disc Jockey’s Joke Inadvertently Lead to an Alvin and the Chipmunks Comeback?
3. Did Paul McCartney Write a Hit Song Under a Pseudonym to See if He Could Have a Hit on Talent Alone?
4. Were the “Pirates” of the Pirates of Penzance Named After Copyright Piracy? _______________________________________________________________________________
Check back soon for part 2 of this installment's legends!
And remember, if you have a legend that you're curious about, drop me a line at either brianc@cbr.com or cronb01@aol.com!
Add Comments