Funnies, Inc
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Funnies, Inc. is an influential American comic book packager of the 1930s-1940s Golden Age of comic books. Founded by Lloyd Jacquet, it supplied the contents of some of the most significant early comics, including that of Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), the first publication of what would become the multimedia corporation Marvel Comics. The Funnies, Inc. office was located at 45 West 45th Street in New York City, near Times Square.
The first Marvel comic
Funnies, Inc.'s first actual sale was to pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman. As Everett recalled, Funnies, Inc., sales manager Frank Torpey "had a friend, Martin Goodman, who was in the publishing business, and Frank talked Martin into going into publishing comics...." For what would be called Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), Funnies, Inc. created a set of features that included two nascent star characters: Burgos' original Human Torch and Everett's Sub-Mariner, expanding an origin story Everett had created for the never-released Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1. Among the other characters introduced was Gustavson's The Angel, a modest hit who would appear in more than 100 Golden Age stories. Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, eventually used Timely Comics as the umbrella name for his comic-book division.
Other early companies that bought material from Funnies, Inc. include Centaur, Fox Feature Syndicate, and Hillman Periodicals. For the Novelty Press division of the Premium Service Company, writer-artist Joe Simon created Blue Bolt and Basil Wolverton devised Spacehawk.
Simon said that his Funnies, Inc. rate for a completed comic-book page — written, drawn and lettered — was $7. For comparison, he recalled that at Eisner-Iger — where Eisner wrote the features and created characters, hiring novice artists — the page rate was approximately $3.50 to $5.50; publishers were charged $5 to $7 per finished page.
Funnies, Inc. was eventually made obsolete by the growing medium's success, allowing publishers to hire their own staffs. As Simon recalled, he stopped freelancing for the company when he became Timely Comics' editor: "Soon, we were buying only 'The Human Torch' and 'Sub-Mariner' from Jacquet and irritating the hell out of him with demands for script and art changes in the hopes that he would resign the features he had helped to build".
Toward the end of 1940, Jacquet sold Goodman the rights to the characters. Business relations evidently remained cordial; in an Aug. 14, 1942, photo given to attendees and widely published by the comics press in the 2000s, Jacquet was seated next to Goodman at a Hotel Astor luncheon Goodman hosted for the Timely and Funnies staffs, followed by a showing of the new Disney movie Bambi. Others at the table included Torpey, Gill, Timely editor Stan Lee, and such artists/writers as Vince Alascia, Ernie Hart, Jack Keller, George Klein, Jim Mooney, Don Rico, Mike Sekowsky, and Syd Shores.
After Funnies, Inc. ended, Lloyd Jacquet Studios continued to package comics through at least 1949.
