The Ottawa Comic Book Guy

Good day everyone. When we left our last column, we had come up to end of the Atomic Age at Charlton, which was an era of acquisitions for the partners in creating their staple of characters. They had begun to expand into various genres that make up the variety of the hobby we love, and they had begun to collect the talent that they would be known for. Before we go any farther, we need to discuss Dick Giordano's contribution to the company. Originally hired as a freelance artist in 1952, by the mid-sixties he was promoted to executive editor, replacing the very successful (for a middle of the road comic publisher) Pat Masulli. Before his promotion he had done just about every job you can think off on the artistic creative side on such titles as Fightin' Army , Annie Oakley , Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid. He was also the primary cover artist (a sample is above The Green Planet issue 1 from 1962) during his employment with the company. He was responsible for bringing Ste...

Welcome back to the Ottawa Comic Book Guy blog. This episode will (and probably the next) will feature Charlton Comics, a company that existed in one form or another from 1944 (although they didn't start doing comic books until after World War II in 1946) until 1986. Although they never quite got as big as the big two, or Gold Key/Dell, they managed to stay alive by having some great characters, great talent working for them (very cheaply) and having some serious business savvy to stay afloat during the lean times. The company known as Charlton began as a partnership of John Santangelo Sr. and Ed Levy in 1944. The founders had one of the most unusual origin story's for a partnership, they met while in prison together. Santangelo had been sent up river for a year and a day for violating the Copyright Act of 1928 and publishing sheet music without proper licensing and Levy, an attorney by trade until he was convicted of illegally appropriating trust funds. Once they were ...