The late 1950s were rampant with PLAYBOY magazine imitators. Hugh Hefner’s skin mag is one of the greatest success stories in publishing and everyone wanted a piece of the action. In 1957, Relim Publishing Company of Chicago entered the scrum with a paperback-sized PLAYBOY knock-off entitled FLING. Owned and edited by Arv Miller, FLING didn’t have much to distinguish itself…

© 2021 Ken Quattro Jimmy Jemail had been the “Inquiring Fotographer” for the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS since 1921 and would be for several decades more when on June 14, 1947, he posed his question of the day to any likely female he encountered along the Avenue of the Americas. “A widow, bemoaning her inability to find a husband, exclaimed,…

©2020 Ken Quattro [Special thanks to Wayne Smith and Stephen Lipson] Canada has always had a complicated relationship with the United States. Inexorably linked to its neighbor to the south by geography, language and cultural commonalities, Canada has borne the linkage with both gratitude and resentment. Stronger economically, militarily and possessing a far larger population, the US understandably casts a…

©2020 Ken Quattro “For three days last week, Yale students watched with interest as two ice-cream venders [sic], a Good Humor man and a Humpty Dumpty man, jockeyed for position outside the university post office, a choice sales spot. Finally the argument became so heated that police told the venders [sic] to move along. A handful of undergraduates rushed into…

©2020 Ken Quattro Definitions: Nikkei are Japanese immigrants of any generation. Nisei are second generation Japanese immigrants who are citizens of another country. Sansei are the third generation of Japanese immigrants who are citizens of another country. __________________________________ Most American comic strip fans opening their newspaper on Monday, June 28, 1943, and reading the Superman strip for that day, would…

©2020 Ken Quattro PROLOGUE: Comic book history has mostly been viewed from the perspective of the male reader. As a consequence, male comic fans, (and I include myself) have a blind spot. If a comic or a genre falls outside our realm of interest, we discount it. Romance comics rank at the top of that ignoble list. The artists who…

©2020 Ken Quattro Jerry Siegel’s letter to Josette Frank was cordial, friendly and personal.   “Hope Stanley was pleasantly surprised by the acceptance of his synopsis. The check which I sent to DC to be forwarded to him has probably already reached him.” [Jerry Siegel letter to Josette Frank, June 1, 1942]   Although Siegel had gotten the name of…

©2020 Ken Quattro Cincinnati is one of those cities pollsters love to cite as representative of America as a whole. It sits at the bottom end of Ohio, perhaps the most mid-American of all states. While nominally a northern town, it is separated from Kentucky only by the Ohio River, and shares not only its southern weather, but many of…

©2020 Ken Quattro In times past, before comic shops and conventions, comic book fans had over means of finding back issues. Often it was a kid-to-kid transaction brokered over a soda or outside a candy store. Other times, though, when a specific issue was desired, someone with a larger inventory was required and that’s where magazine exchanges came in.  …

©2020 Ken Quattro Even before the United States entered the fighting during World War II, it was abundantly clear to those paying attention that the country lagged behind its potential adversaries in one crucial aspect of the coming conflict. The enemy had leading this effort, a man with a doctorate in philosophy and a reputation as a failed novelist, who…