{"id":5667,"date":"2009-06-29T02:55:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T02:55:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-28T03:07:01","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T03:07:01","slug":"gale-storm-and-charltons-approach-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/29\/gale-storm-and-charltons-approach-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Gale Storm — and Charlton’s approach to photo covers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In last week’s post on celebrity comics appearances<\/span><\/a> \u2014 and some of my earlier work to index them \u2014 I mentioned that there were a lot more photo-covers throughout comics history than readers of today’s comics might imagine. Gale Storm<\/a>, <\/span>who passed away at 87 this weekend, is proof of this, appearing in and on the covers of more comics than most TV stars of the last generation.<\/p>\n

Started as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy<\/span> in 1952, Storm’s popular My Little Margie<\/a><\/span> series bounced back and forth between CBS and NBC \u2014 even airing for a while on CBS’ radio network in original episodes made just for audio with the same stars. After the show left the air in 1955, she starred in The Gale Storm Show<\/span> on CBS and then ABC \u2014 making her a prime-time fixture for most of the 1950s. She appeared on the comics racks, too \u2014 Charlton<\/span>‘s My Little Margie<\/span> ran 54 issues from 1954 to 1964 \u2014 longer than either TV series combined. (Overstreet<\/span> values the final issue, featuring Margie fawning over The Beatles<\/span>, over any issue of the series but the first.) Charlton would do at least 70 Margie comics, including issues in two spinoff titles. Dell<\/span>, meanwhile, had the rights to The Gale Storm Show<\/span>, where Storm appeared on the cover of Dell Four Color<\/span> #1105<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Which brings me to a couple of points: First, yes, the photo cover data is included in the new DVD version of The Standard Catalog of Comic Books<\/span><\/a> \u2014 though how quickly you can search for individual names depends entirely on your computer, since it’s in PDF form. Second, looking at the covers of Storm’s comics \u2014 may she rest in peace \u2014 reminds me of something I noticed doing research for the Catalog: You can see just from the photo covers how widely publishers in the 1950s and 1960s varied when it came to such things as their technical abilities and studio cooperation. Dell’s photo covers were usually first rate \u2014 promotional stills reproduced fairly sharply in good color, with few artifacts from cropping.<\/p>\n

\"\"Other publishers fell somewhere down the scale \u2014 until you get to Charlton, which, sadly for My Little Margie<\/span> collectors then and now, shows they were either only getting black-and-white stills, didn’t have the ability to strip color separation images together, or both. See for yourself by taking a look at the Grand Comics Database’s cover matrix for Margie<\/span><\/a> \u2014 the early issues, while the TV show was still running. Stills reused; images worked into art covers in some novel ways; and all in black and white. (One might imagine they simply didn’t have the requisite images \u2014 that’s life for magazine editors then and now. But you’d have to imagine that if anyone at the Hal Roach Studios or the networks were paying attention to the comics, the stick figures of Margie<\/span> #7<\/span> might have been a tip-off!)<\/p>\n

I’m an old fan of TV comics \u2014 years before my first pro comics writing work, I developed an I Love Lucy<\/span> series that never appeared, running aground at its publisher on licensing issues. They’re a reminder of a different time \u2014 and that comic books inspired by stars like Gale Storm once had quite a long run in the world of comics. And while photo covers today are more of a sales tool for variants, they were once standard operating procedure for a lot of publishers. Some procedures were just more sophisticated than others!<\/p>\n

[Image kudos to the GCD<\/span><\/a>!]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In last week’s post on celebrity comics appearances \u2014 and some of my earlier work to index them \u2014 I mentioned that there were a lot more photo-covers throughout comics history than readers of today’s comics might imagine. Gale Storm, who passed away at 87 this weekend, is proof of this, appearing in and on … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[109,81,86],"class_list":["post-5667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-celebrity-comics","tag-charlton","tag-dell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5671,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667\/revisions\/5671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}