Sunday, January 10, 2021

Beck & Costanza Bring Mickey Marks to Canada

Robin Hood & Co. 33 In the Groove text

In the inventory of comic book writer Mickey Klar Marks' papers at the University of Southern Mississippi there are stories noted as sold to "Bech and Cortaza" and "Bill and Cortazar" (with the collection's transcriber putting a "(?)" after those names). To comics fans, as SangorShop has pointed out, this is obviously "Beck and Costanza" written in the records themselves.

The C.C. Beck-Pete Costanza Studio supplied scripts to Canadian publisher Anglo-American in the mid-40s (importing American artwork wasn't allowed). Otto Binder's scripts for AA may or may not have gone through the studio. But per her records, Mickey Marks' text pieces certainly did. They were published anonymously. Three formed a series about private detective Britt Nielson.

There's a text piece called "The Gold Seal" sold to Beck & Costanza in 1946 that I can't track down. Marks also sold two untitled comics stories to them in 1945 for a series called Dink, but if these ever came out (under a different series title, perhaps?), who can tell? Just to confuse things, there was a Dink series by Milt Hammer at the U.S. publisher Novelty, cheek by jowl at times with Marks' credited text pieces there.

Britt Nielson text pieces by Mickey Klar Marks
published at Anglo-American
(all anonymously)

THREE ACES Feb/46  51  Hear No Evil
THREE ACES Sep-Oct/46  54  The Plastic Madonna
ROBIN HOOD AND CO. Oct-Nov/46  33  In the Groove

Miscellaneous text pieces 

FREELANCE Apr/46  31  Vermont Comes to Texas
ROBIN HOOD AND CO. Jun-Jul/46  31  The Wrong Signal
GRAND SLAM Aug-Sep/46  54  "Daisy" Rafferty

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