One thing the acquisitions (almost without exception, by the way, they were "reading copies," beat-up but readable remnants of an earlier age) led me to do was try to codify in my brain some of the ins and outs of the output of one of my favorite publishing companies. Well, the indicia read, "Published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc.," but later in the announcements almost invariably came the phrase, "Designed and produced by Western Printing & Lithographing Co." So what the heck?

Well, as we know, Dell was (for many years) the distribution company that handled comics from Western. Moreover, another arm of Western was clearly "K.K. Publications, Inc." Wikipedia says K.K. was named for Disney Studios character-merchandising head Kay Kamen, but there are Disney comics from Western and non-Disney comics from K.K. among the comics I picked up yesterday.

It seems to me that it was in 1961 that Dell and Western broke their relationship; I know I've tracked it via the Tarzan title. In any case, for this brief blog posting, I'm not going to look it up. But in the group that I bought, Around the Block with Dunc & Loo (a John Stanley creation) and Ghost Stories (which clearly has at least one [horror] story by Stanley) follow the split but carry the Dell imprint.

I also tried to get something of a handle on the doggoned Whitman imprint, largely used as something of a packaging tool for reprints of earlier comics (both from Dell and Gold Key imprints). The earliest ones I acquired yesterday were 15-centers published in 1972 and 1973. Whitman titles then went to 20 cents, then 30, then 35, then 40, then 50, with the latest dates on the 50-cent ones I bought coming in at 1982.

And then there was the matter of the consarned cover number codes. Some are fairly easily deduced, but others ...

Well, here's what we have of the coded comics, and we can see -- generally speaking of the Gold Key titles -- that the last three digits are the last number of the year followed by the two digits of the month of that year. So 102 is 1971 February, and 910 is 1969 October, and 911 is 1979 November, so you need to know what decade you're in. But those first five digits? I'm not so sure. They're apparently tied to the title, but Ripley's is the same title. And as for Whitman, who knows? Anyway:

Gold Key:

10027-802 Mickey Mouse #116 (Feb 68)

10053-102 Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #33 (Feb 71)

10058-702 Tom and Jerry #234 (Feb 67)

10058-908 Tom and Jerry #246 (Aug 69)

10058-910 Tom and Jerry #247 (Oct 69)

10058-110 Tom and Jerry #260 (Oct 71)

10115-510 Merlin Jones as The Monkey's Uncle (1965)

10208-908 Ripley's Believe It or Not! #15 (Aug 59)

10257-105 Baby Snoots #4 (May 71)

90148-911 Flash Gordon #26 (Nov 79)

90208-810 Ripley's Believe It or Not! #82 (Oct 78)

Whitman:

90058-110 Tom and Jerry #337 (1960 date, 50 cents)

90062-110 Woody Woodpecker #194 (1981 last copyright, 50 cents)

90069-110 Popeye the Sailor #164 (1981 last copyright, 50 cents)

90140-202 Porky Pig #104 (1981 last copyright, 60 cents)