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In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover how an early DC comics character was sued for libel for an unusual reason!
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and twenty-sixth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment’s legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
The DC character, Scribbly, led to the writer/artist getting basically sued for libel.
STATUS:
True Enough for a True
As a quick aside, let me note the amazing work that CBR’s image artist, Abshar, did on this one. I didn’t give him much to work with (not a lot of great Scribbly images out there, especially not that would work for this topic) and he NAILED it. Great work, Abshar!
An interesting aspect of the early days of the comic book industry is that there really weren’t many people out there who knew what they were doing. A big part of that was that it was SO difficult at first to make any money in comics. Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was one of the most forward thinking people in the entire history of comic books and all he got for his troubles was so much debt that he ended up having his own company taken from him right before Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938. Up until that point, most of the money in comic books had been in the world of reprinting established comic strips (original comics WERE starting to make money, don’t get me wrong, they just weren’t nearly as successful as the reprinted comic books). Doing original stuff was seen as, in effect, a cover band at a bar saying, “We’re going to play some of our own stuff tonight,” in other words – almost always a REALLY bad idea. In effect, “Oh, you think you’re going to come up with something better than Dick Tracy?” “Oh, you’re just going to do a better comic than Joe Palooka? Good for you.”
The success of Superman changed everything, as people realized that there WAS money in original characters in comic books. One of those people who realized this was Max Charles Gaines, one of the most important figures in comic book history, as it was Gaines who first pushed the idea of comic books period. Gaines, though, was thinking REPRINTED comic books and through his work at the McClure Syndicate and at Dell Comics, Gaines worked in the world of newspaper comic strips and then turning those comic strips into comic books.
Throughout this period, Gaines employed Sheldon Mayer, who actually started working for Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson and was thus involved in the very first original comic books there were. Again, though, the money wasn’t there, so Mayer went to work in the world of reprinted comics. Mayer’s main duty for Gaines at Dell was taking the newspaper comic strips and cutting and pasting them so that they would fit into the comic book format. However, there wasn’t always enough comic strips to fill in all of the pages of the comics, so Mayer was allowed to do short comics to fill in the gaps.
Thus, in 1936’s Popular Comics #6 (about a half of a year before Detective Comics #1 came out), Mayer debuted his kid cartoonist character, Scribbly (who was obviously based on Mayer)…
After the success of Superman made it clear that original comics WAS where it was at (and that Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was right all along), Gaines used his comic strip syndicate connections and a deal with National Comics’ Jack Liebowitz to launch All-American Comics, which published as sort of a part of National Comics at first. Gaines brought Mayer with him and sure enough, in the midst of All-American Comics #2 (a mixture of popular reprints that Gaines gained the licensed rights to, and original content), Mayer brought Scribbly with him to All-American Comics…
The feature continued for the next five years, with a comical superhero, Red Tornado, becoming a major part of the feature, as well.
However, the strip nearly never MADE it to National/DC, as it was almost sued out of existence very early on!
Early on, Mayer worked his old boss, cartoonist Ving Fuller, into the Scribbly continuity as Ving Russell…
In his journal in May 1937, Mayer wrote “Now I must be a big shot – I have a real lawsuit on my hands – Ving Fuller, my old boss – the guy who taught me all I know about cartooning, and whom I used as a character in my strip ‘Scribbly’ – because I thought he’d get a big kick out of it, is suing the publishers, and me, for libel! I’m going nuts! Hereafter, if I have to use characters from real life, I’m going to disguise them so that no one will recognize them!…In the meantime, all the work I have done on Scribbly for the next three issues on the magazine, has to be scrapped & done over again, leaving out Ving, who is an important character. – I am starting a brand new continuity, and will probably be up all night for the next two months or so.”
Luckily, a couple of weeks later, Mayer wrote, “Gave Ving $100 – He won’t sue.”
So Mayer rebooted Scribbly, starting his origins as a boy cartoonist all over from scratch.
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that’s it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don’t even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it’s fair enough to still thank him, I think.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that’s fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don’t mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
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