Magazine Management

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Magazine Management Company
)
Magazine Management Co., Inc.
Cadence Industries
SubsidiariesHumorama
Marvel Comics

Magazine Management Co., Inc. was an American

comic books and black-and-white comics magazines to the mix. It was the parent company of Atlas Comics, and its rebranded incarnation, Marvel Comics
.

Founded by

shell companies, Magazine Management served as an early employer of such staff writers as Rona Barrett, Bruce Jay Friedman, David Markson, Mario Puzo, Martin Cruz Smith, Mickey Spillane, and Ernest Tidyman
.

Subsidiaries of Magazine Management included

digest-sized magazines of girlie cartoons; and Marvel Comics. The company also published black-and-white comics magazines such as Vampire Tales, Savage Tales, and Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction
that utilized primarily Marvel writers and artists.

History

Founded by

pornographic magazines
.

One division of the company was the

Marvel Comics Group. As one-time Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas recalled, "I was startled to learn in '65 that Marvel was just part of a parent company called Magazine Management."[3]

In late 1968, Goodman sold all his publishing businesses to the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation, which made the subsidiary Magazine Management Company the parent company of all the acquired Goodman concerns. Goodman remained as publisher until 1972. Perfect Film and Chemical renamed itself Cadence Industries and renamed Magazine Management as Marvel Comics Group in 1973, the first of many changes, mergers, and acquisitions that led to what became the 21st century corporation Marvel Entertainment.[4][5]

Culture

As writer Dorothy Gallagher reminisced in 1998,

At Magazine Management, magazines were produced the way Detroit produced cars. I worked on the fan-magazine line. On the other side of a five-foot partition was the romance-magazine line. And across a corridor were the financial staples of the organization, the men's magazines — Stag, For Men Only, Male — for which, at one time or another, Mario Puzo, Bruce Jay Friedman, David Markson, Mickey Spillane and Martin Cruz Smith wrote, until they became too exalted and rich to do it anymore. I'm almost forgetting the comic-book line, where Stan Lee [co-]created Spider-Man, known to every connoisseur of classic comics. ... [Th]e decor was insurance-company blah: grayish white walls and foam-tile ceilings, overhead fluorescent fixtures, gray metal desks. Except for the executive offices, which faced Madison Avenue and had carpets and windows, the space was divided into jerrybuilt bull pens with head-high partitions. Editors got a glassed-in area in each bullpen.[2]

Author Adam Parfrey, in his book about men's adventure magazines, described how,

Most scribes laboring for Martin Goodman's Magazine Management firm and other repositories of adventure magazines spoke of feeling like well-compensated slaves of a very particular style ('man triumphant') that was not their own. This was not the style with which editor Bruce Jay Friedman felt most comfortable, and when editing publications for Martin Goodman he unsuccessfully tried to talk him out of running advertisements for trusses, an ad signalling the magazine's target audience: blue-collar yahoos. It would be years before he could raise his head at industry cocktail parties, when his acclaimed examples of 'black-humor fiction' were seen as appropriate material for a hipper, more monied crowd.[6]

Titles published

Comics magazines

Humor magazines

  • Best Cartoons from the Editors of Male & Stag, Magazine Management—published at least from 1973 to 1975)[7]
  • Cartoon Capers—published at least from vol. 4, #2 (1969) to vol. 10, #3 (1975)[7]
  • Cartoon Laughs—confirmed extant: vol 12, #3 (1973)[7]
  • Humorama titles

Men's-adventure and erotic magazines

Magazine Management's publications included such

The Adventures of Pussycat (Oct. 1968), that reprinted some stories of the sexy, tongue-in-cheek secret-agent strip that ran in some of his men's magazines. Marvel Comics writers Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Ernie Hart, and artists Wally Wood, Al Hartley, Jim Mooney, and Bill Everett and "good girl art" cartoonist Bill Ward contributed.[8]

Launched pre-1970

Male vol. 26, #3 (March 1976)
  • Action Life — ran 16 issues, Atlas Magazines[9]
  • Complete Man — published June 1965? to April 1967?, Atlas Magazines/Diamond[10]
  • For Men Only[2][11] — confirmed at least from vol. 4, #11 (Dec. 1957) through at least vol. 26, #3 (March 1976)
Published by Canam Publishers at least 1957), Newsstand Publications Inc. (at least 1966–1967), Perfect Film Inc. (at least 1968), Magazine Management Co. Inc. (at least 1970) [12]
  • Male[2] — published at least vol. 1, #2 (July 1950) through 1977[13]
  • Male Home Companion[citation needed]
  • Stag[2] — at least 314 issues published February 1942 – Feb. 1976
Published by Official Communications Inc. (1951), Official Magazines (Feb. 1952 – March 1958), Atlas (July 1958 – Oct. 1968), Magazine Management (Dec. 1970 to end) [14]
  • Stag Annual — at least 18 issues published 1964–1975
Published by Atlas (1964–1968), Magazine Management (1970–1975)
1977 issue of Celebrity
  • Men published by Magazine Management.

1970s and later

  • FILM International — covering R- through X-rated movies[11]

Other magazines

References

  1. .
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Gallagher, Dorothy (May 31, 1998). "Adventures in the Mag Trade". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 17, 2009.
  3. ^ a b "Stan the Man & Roy the Boy: A Conversation Between Stan Lee and Roy Thomas". Comic Book Artist. No. 2. Summer 1998. Archived from the original on February 18, 2009.
  4. ^ Nadel, Nick. "The Strange Business History of Marvel Comics". Comics Alliance. AOL. Archived from the original on 19 March 2012. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
  5. .
  6. )
  7. ^ a b c Michigan State University Libraries: Reading Room Index to the Comic Art Collection Archived 2008-08-29 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ Evanier, Mark (June 15, 2005). "The Marvel Age of Huge Breasts". P.O.V. Online (column). Archived from the original on March 29, 2010.
  9. ^ Action Life at the Magazine Data File.
  10. ^ Complete Man at the Magazine Data File.
  11. ^ a b "Sexy Magazines: Title List: F". Time Warp Collectibles. Archived from the original on February 11, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) Additional on July 24, 2010.
  12. ^ For Men Only (1954) at the Magazine Data File.
  13. ^ "First Copyright Renewals for Periodicals", University of Pennsylvania Library. WebCitation archive.
  14. ^ Stag (1950) at the Magazine Data File.
  15. .
  16. ^ Slide, p. 243