PM
January 1935
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]
Robert L. Leslie and Percy Seitlin [Editors]: PM [An Intimate Journal For Art Directors, Production Managers, and their Associates]. NYC: The Composing Room/P.M. Publishing Co., January 1935 [Volume 1, No 5]. Original edition. Slim 12mo. Dry Mat stamping sample wrappers. 24 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. The dry mat stamped wrappers faintly worn along spine edge, otherwise a fine copy.
Hard to find issue due to the bibliographic gold of “Color Comic News McClure Newspaper Syndicate” by M. C. Gaines and a four-page newsprint comics insert. This article preceded “Narrative Illustration: The Story of the Comics” and “Good Triumphs Over Evil: More About the Comics”written by Gaines for Print (Vol. 3, Nos. 2-3, 1942 - Fall 1944) by nearly a decade.
Produced with Dry Mat stamping samples these stapled wrappers remain an underrated example of American small press book art as well as a powerful statement of the American Functional Design ethos of the 1930s.
5.5 x 7.75 with 24 pages of information on printing, typography, etc.
Contents: Color Comic News McClure Newspaper Syndicate by M. C. Gaines (father of William Gaines): 4-page insert printed on newsprint; Frontispiece; Editorial Notes; Stereotype Methods of Today; Mountains of Paper! Rivers of Ink!; Copy for Color Gravure advertising; Graphic Arts Firms - Their own stories; Things to remember about ink; Unmailed letters from a Prod Mgr.; AIGA Announcements.
”Maxwell Charles “M. C.” Gaines (born Maxwell Ginsburg, 1894 – 1947) was a pioneer of the early comic book industry. In 1933 he hatched the first four-color saddle-stitched newsprint pamphlets of comic strip reprints, known as “premiums” or “giveaways,” first published as Funnies on Parade. Gaines (a Bert Lahr look-alike) was responsible for maneuvering two teenagers from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, to newly installed publisher Harry Donenfeld at National Comics (DC) in 1938, urging Donenfeld to publish their character and playing a central role in the onset of Superman. He then formed a partnership with Donenfeld and his accountant Jack Liebowitz, creating a sister company to DC called All-American Comics and introducing Wonder Woman, the Green Lantern, and Hawkman. Relations between the partners eventually soured, and Gaines was bought out for half a million dollars and left to start his own company, Educational Comics (EC), at 225 Lafayette Street. At first he published reprints of Bible stories in comic book form, then expanded to a hodgepodge of undistinguished titles, some aimed at young children under the “Entertaining Comics” logo, among them Tiny Tot, Dandy, and Animal Fables." The bland company was limping along when, in 1947, Max Gaines was drowned in a freak boating accident in front of his home on Lake Placid, and the company fell into the hands of his reluctant twenty-five-year-old son Bill.” [Drew Friedman’s Heroes of the Comics]
But wait—there’s more: “Gaines, despite having just a few years earlier participated in the publication of a pioneering comic book of newspaper strip reprints, 1934's Famous Funnies, did not yet think of himself as a comic book publisher. Moreover, his association with McClure was not in the editorial department. His job was rounding up printing jobs to keep McClure’s color presses running as many hours a day as possible. To this purpose, he had hired young Mayer to paste up newspaper comic strips in magazine format pages for Dell Publishing Company to produce as Popular Comics, The Funnies, and The Comics. Gaines knew Harry Donenfeld, a somewhat shady character who operated a printing company, Donny Press, that published “spicey” (coy sex) magazines, and Donenfeld, Gaines heard, was taking over a comic book publishing company, National Allied Publishing, a shoe-string enterprise run by a picturesque and imaginative ex-cavalry officer, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, who was just then on the cusp of launching a new title, Action Comics.” [R. C. Harvey, Who Discovered Superman?]
PM magazine was the leading voice of the U. S. Graphic Arts Industry from its inception in 1934 to its end in 1942 (then called AD). As a publication produced by and for professionals, it spotlighted cutting-edge production technology and the highest possible quality reproduction techniques (from engraving to plates). PM and A-D also championed the Modern movement by showcasing work from the vanguard of the European Avant-Garde well before this type of work was known to a wide audience.