THE CHARLTON COMPANION: A History of the Derby, Connecticut Publisher and Its Comic Books by Jon B. Cooke is a fascinating read even though I never got into Charlton’s output as a kid or a teen. Its offerings were much closer to DC and Marvel than, say, Harvey Comics or Gold Key but the look and quality of the printing were off-putting, as was the lettering (I learned from Cooke that for years the company avoided paying letterers and simply typed directly onto the finished pages). Nevertheless, this was fascinating — Charlton turns out to be more colorful than, say, Quality Comics.
Company founder John Santangelo was an Italian immigrant who broke into publishing by printing songbooks, a hugely popular field a century ago. His business was more profitable than most due to the simple expedient of not paying royalties; he was eventually caught, served some time and paid up from then on. He was a generally sharp operator; after a flood wrecked the company’s offices and printing press he slashed pay rates for freelancers without mentioning all the money they’d received as relief from the government
As the songbook market slowed, Santangelo turned to all sorts of other options: music magazines, skin magazines, paperbacks and of course comics. Love stories by the ton
Horror anthologies such as The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves.
Superhero books such as Steve Ditko’s Captain Atom and Blue Beetle, a short-lived line that inspired Watchmen (Dick Giordano, the former Charlton editor who convinced Moore to come up with new heroes instead, says in hindsight he wishes Moore had used the Charlton characters as they’d have a much higher profile now). And war comics, racing comics, kaiju comics such as Konga and Gorgo … While the pay rates were crap, that left Santagelo and his crew open to using a lot of newbies (Len Wein, Steve Skeates, Denny O’Neil and others who’d go on to bigger and better things) and several interviewees said they enjoyed the freedom that went with the low rates. Though I don’t see many examples of creative freedom involved — even Ditko’s heroes aren’t radically different from DC or Marvel. Was “creative freedom” just a euphemism for “I could turn my story in and never have to change anything”? Which a number of the creators freely admitted they were doing.
Charlton could have been much bigger than it was. It had an advantage in that as part of a bigger publishing company they had their own printing presses in house; over the years though, that meant it was more expensive for them to upgrade the presses than DC or Marvel, who outsourced. And Santangelo didn’t like expensive; he was cheap. One of the many anecdotes mentions one hallway that was almost unusable because it was stuffed with old, worn-out printing plates; rather than sell them and free up space, Santagelo was determined to wait until the scrap metal price rose.
A colorful company to read about, even if the comics turned me off.
All rights to images remain with current holders. Captain Atom and Blue Beetle covers by Ditko, the other two are uncredited.
