Charlton Comics was an American comic-book publishing company that existed from 1945 to 1986, having begun under a different name: T. W. O. Charles Company, in 1940. It was based in Derby, Connecticut. The comic-book line was a division of Charlton Publications, which published magazines (most notably song-lyric magazines), puzzle books, and briefly, books (under the Monarch and Gold Star imprints). It had its own distribution company (Capital Distribution).
Charlton Comics published a wide variety of genres, including crime, science fiction, Western, horror, war, and romance comics, as well as talking animal and superhero titles. The company was known for its low-budget practices, often using unpublished material acquired from defunct companies and paying comics creators among the lowest rates in the industry. Charlton was also the last of the American comics publishers still operating to raise its cover prices from 10 to 12 cents in 1962.
It was unique among comic-book companies in that it controlled all areas of publishing – from editorial to printing to distribution – rather than working with outside printers and distributors, as did most other publishers. It did so under one roof at its Derby headquarters.
The company was formed by John Santangelo Sr. and Ed Levy in 1940 as T. W. O. Charles Company, named after the co-founders' two sons, both named Charles, and became Charlton Publications in 1945.
History
Early years
In 1931, Italian immigrant John Santangelo Sr., a bricklayer who had started a construction business in White Plains, New York, five years earlier, began what became a highly successful business publishing song-lyric magazines out of nearby Yonkers, New York. Operating in violation of copyright laws, however, he was sentenced in 1934 to a year and a day at New Haven County Jail in New Haven, Connecticut, near Derby, where his wife and he by then lived. In jail, he met Waterbury, Connecticut, attorney Ed Levy, with whom he began legitimate publishing in 1935, acquiring permissions to reproduce lyrics in such magazines as Hit Parade and Big Song Magazine. Santangelo and Levy opened a printing plant in Waterbury the following year, and in 1940, founded the T.W.O. Charles Company, eventually moving its headquarters to Derby. Charlton purchased the company Song Lyrics, Inc., which published Song Hits magazine and was owned by Lyle Engel in 1949.
Following the adoption of the Charlton Comics name in 1946, the company over the next five years acquired material from freelance editor and comics packager Al Fago (brother of former Timely Comics editor Vincent Fago). Charlton additionally published Merry Comics, Cowboy Western, the Western title Tim McCoy, and Pictorial Love Stories.
The company used a second-hand press originally used for printing cereal boxes. These large presses were very costly to both stop and start, which only happened twice a year when they had to be cleaned, and so they started publishing comics as a mean to keep the presses going. After the entry into the comic business, the company's first comic book was Yellowjacket, an anthology of superhero and horror stories launched September 1944 under the imprint Frank Comunale Publications, with Ed Levy listed as publisher. Zoo Funnies was published under the imprint Children Comics Publishing; Jack in the Box, under Frank Comunale; and TNT Comics, under Charles Publishing Co. Another imprint was Frank Publications.
In 1951, when Al Fago began as an in-house editor, Charlton hired a staff of artists who included its future managing editor, Dick Giordano. Others (staff or freelance) who eventually worked with Charlton included Vince Alascia, Jon D'Agostino, Sam Glanzman, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, Bill Molno, Charles Nicholas, and Sal Trapani. The primary writer was the remarkably prolific Joe Gill. The same year the company created an in-house comics department, where comics would make up 25% of Charlton.