NATIONAL COMICS #3 QUALITY 1940 'BILLY WRIGHT' COLLECTION CGC 8.5 WHITE PAGES!

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National Comics #3 Quality, 1940 from the famed 'Billy Wright Collection' (COA included) artwork by Will Eisner, Lou Fine, George Tuska classic 'Uncle Sam' cover a superb comic - deep vibrant colors, sharp corners, clean and bright with that 'just printed' look and unbelievable page quality - only blemishes I noticed are on the lower tips of the front cover WHITE/OFF-WHITE paper CGC 8.5 (Very Fine Plus) Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing company that operated from 1939 to 1956 and was an influential creative force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of comic books . Notable, long-running titles published by Quality include Blackhawk , Feature Comics , G.I. Combat , Heart Throbs , Military Comics , Modern Comics , Plastic Man , Police Comics , Smash Comics , and The Spirit . Most of their titles were published under the " Comic Magazines " imprint. Notable creators associated with the company included Jack Cole , Will Eisner , Lou Fine , Gill Fox , Paul Gustavson , Bob Powell , and Wally Wood . Quality Comics was founded by Everett M. "Busy" Arnold , a printer who saw the rapidly rising popularity of the comic book medium in the late 1930s. Deducing that Depression-era audiences wanted established quality and familiar comic strips for their hard-earned dimes, in 1937 the enterprising Arnold, formed the suitably titled Comic Favorites, Inc. (in collaboration with three newspaper syndicates : the McNaught Syndicate, the Frank J. Markey Syndicate, and Iowa's Register and Tribune Syndicate). His first publication was Feature Funnies , which cannily mixed color reprints of hit strips (including Joe Palooka , Mickey Finn , and Dixie Dugan ) with a smattering of new features. In 1939, Arnold and the owners of the Register & Tribune Syndicate's parent company, brothers John Cowles, Sr. and Gardner Cowles, Jr. , bought out the McNaught and Markey interests. Arnold became 50% owner of the newly formed Comic Magazines, Inc., the corporate entity that would publish the Quality Comics line. That year Quality released Smash Comics #1 (Aug. 1939), the company's first comic book with exclusively new material. Initially buying features from Eisner & Iger , a prominent "packager" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium, Quality introduced such superheroes as Plastic Man and Kid Eternity , and non-superhero characters including the aviator hero Blackhawk . Quality also published comic-book reprints of Will Eisner 's " The Spirit ", the seven-page lead feature in a weekly 16-page, tabloid -sized, newsprint comic book, known colloquially as "The Spirit Section", distributed through Sunday newspapers . The name Quality Comics debuted on the cover of Crack Comics #5 (Sept. 1940; see at right). "Seemingly never an official publishing title," the Connecticut Historical Society noted, "the Quality Comics Group is a trademarked name (presumably taking its name from Stamford's nickname of 'the Quality City') encompassing Comic Favorites Inc., E.M. Arnold Publications, Smash Comics, and any other imprints owned by Arnold". A 1954 federal document noted that the Quality Romance Group, owned by Everett M. and Claire C. Arnold, with an office at 347 Madison Avenue, in New York City, published two titles as Arnold Publications, Inc., two titles as Comic Favorites, Inc., and 14 titles as Comic Magazines, Inc. By the mid-1950s, with television and paperback books drawing readers away from comic books in general and superheroes in particular, interest in Quality's characters had declined considerably. After a foray into other genres such as war , humor , romance and horror , the company ceased operations with comics cover-dated December 1956. Many of its properties were sold to National Periodical Publications (now DC Comics ), which chose to keep only a few titles running, such as Blackhawk and G.I. Combat . Over the decades, DC revived other Quality characters, including Plastic Man as well as a group of other characters that form... read more

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