American Comics Group

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American Comics Group (ACG) was a New York City-based comic book publisher which operated during the Golden and Silver Age of comic books. ACG published one of the first horror comics titles, Adventures into the Unknown.^[2] Another of ACG's claims to fame was the character of Herbie Popnecker, who starred for a time in Forbidden Worlds. Herbie would later get his own title and be turned into a "superhero" called "The Fat Fury".

Founded by Benjamin W. Sangor (1889-c. 1953),^[3] ACG was owned or co-owned by Fred Iger from 1948 to 1967.^[4] Iger also owned part of DC Comics. Iger's father-in-law, Harry Donenfeld,^[4] head of National Periodical Publications (later known as DC Comics), was also a co-owner in the early 1960s (though Donenfeld was severely incapacitated and out of the business after an accident in 1962).^[5] ACG was distributed by Independent News Company, which also distributed (and was part of the same company as) DC.

History

Origins

The company evolved out of a company owned by Sangor. In the mid-1930s, Sangor and Richard E. Hughes began to produce a short-lived prepackaged comics supplement for newspapers. In 1939, the Sangor Shop (as it was informally known) began producing comics for Sangor's son-in-law Ned L. Pines. The Sangor Shop produced the characters and stories of The Black Terror, Pyroman, and Fighting Yank for Pines' Nedor Comics and produced most of the comics for Pines until 1945.

Independent publishing

In 1943, ACG started to publish their own work (under such publisher names as B&I Publishing, Michel Publications and Regis Publishing). They acquired the St. Louis, Missouri-based comics publisher Creston Publications in 1943, making Creston into an ACG imprint.^[6] By 1948, they were publishing comics under the name of American Comics Group. Their titles were typical of the times, including horror, crime, mystery, romance, funny animals, and the like. In 1948, they began publishing the long-running horror title Adventures into the Unknown. This was the first of a trilogy of notable ACG horror/supernatural titles, also including Forbidden Worlds (1951–1967) and Unknown Worlds (1960–1967). A distinctive trait of ACG's horror comics and supernatural stories was that ghosts were invariably colored light green.

In 1949, ACG began publishing two long-running romance titles, Romantic Adventures (later changed to My Romantic Adventures), and Lovelorn (later changed to Confessions of the Lovelorn). Both titles lasted into the 1960s.

The company survived the 1954 Senate subcommittee hearings on the dangers of comic books, even retaining their somewhat diluted horror title Adventures into the Unknown. But 1955 was a tough year for ACG, as the four long-running humor titles Cookie, Giggle Comics, Ha Ha Comics, and The Kilroys were cancelled.

Almost all stories after 1957 were written by editor Richard E. Hughes under a variety of pseudonyms. Besides the Fat Fury, other ACG Silver Age superheroes included Magicman (starting in Forbidden Worlds #125), Nemesis in Adventures into the Unknown (starting with #154), and John Force, Magic Agent, in his own title in 1962, then later in Unknown Worlds (#35, 36, 48, 50, 52, 56), with a few stories in Forbidden Worlds (#124, 145) and Adventures into the Unknown (#153, 157).

Closure and dissolution

By 1967, the company had ended publication, except for its commercial comics division, Custom Comics (established in 1950), which lasted until the early 1980s doing work for a variety of clients such as Montgomery Ward, Tupperware, and the United States Air Force.^{[citation needed]}

Roger Broughton

In the 1980s or so, Canadian entrepreneur Roger Broughton obtained the rights to the ACG materials from Fred Iger,^{[citation needed]} and started doing reprints of Herbie and other characters under his various (Avalon, Sword-in-the-Stone, A+, ACG, Charlton) imprints. Broughton also licensed Herbie to Dark Horse Comics for a 12-issue reprint series,^{[citation needed]} but only two issues were published. In 2008, Dark Horse produced several archive reprints of ACG superhero stories. This includes reprinting all the Herbie stories in three volumes, and single-volume reprints of Nemesis and Magicman.

Notable titles published

• Adventures into the Unknown (174 issues, Fall 1948 - Aug. 1967)
• Cookie (55 issues, Apr. 1946 - Sept. 1955)
• Forbidden Worlds (145 issues, July/Aug. 1951 - Aug. 1967)
• Giggle Comics (99 issues, Oct. 1943 - Jan. 1955) — acquired from Creston Publications
• Ha Ha Comics (99 issues, Oct. 1943 - Dec. 1954/Jan. 1955)
• Herbie (23 issues, Apr./May 1964 - Feb. 1967)
• The Kilroys (54 issues, June/July 1947 - June/July 1955)
• Lovelorn (later changed to Confessions of the Lovelorn) (114 issues, Aug./Sept. 1949 - June/July 1960)
• Romantic Adventures (later changed to My Romantic Adventures) (138 issues, Mar./Apr. 1949 – Mar. 1964)
• Soldiers of Fortune (12 issues, Mar./Apr. 1951 - Jan./Feb. 1953) — acquired from Creston Publications
• Unknown Worlds (57 issues, Aug. 1960 - Aug. 1967)
• Wrangler Great Moments in Rodeo (50 issues, 1955 - 1966)

In other media

The July 29, 1952, episode of the Suspense TV series, called "The Crooked Frame", which is about the cancellation of a comic, opens with someone looking through the black-and-white original artwork for covers of a number of ACG comics.^{[citation needed][original research?]}

Notes

References

• Vance, Michael. Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group (Greenwood Press, 1996) ISBN 0-313-29678-2.
• American Comics Group at the Grand Comics Database

External links

	Comics portal
	New York City portal
	Companies portal

• American Comics Group at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on April 7, 2012.
• Herbie at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on April 7, 2012.
• Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on April 7, 2012.
• ACG page at International Catalog of Superheroes
• American Comics Group page by Ramon Schenk
• Grand Comics Database ACG title cover galleries:
  • Adventures into the Unknown
  • Cookie
  • Forbidden Worlds
  • Ha Ha Comics
  • Herbie
  • Unknown Worlds