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Publisher: Holyoke
Years in Operation: 1942 - 1948
Disclose Detail
Country: Flag United States Web Site: Brands: 0 Indicia Publishers: 2 Series: 18 Printings: 84 Disclose Notes: Holyoke was originally a printer, and was owned by Sherman Bowles. It became a publisher by taking over both titles published by Frank Z. Temerson's Helnit Publishing Co. Helnit's editorial staff (most notably principal artist Charles Quinlan) came with the titles and continued to produce both books. Slightly later, Holyoke also acquired Blue Beetle from the now-defunct Fox Publications and continued it with slightly different contents, some produced by the editorial staff inherited from Helnit.

Holyoke lost the Helnit books after cover date January 1943. Temerson would resume publishing them himself several months later. They retained Blue Beetle until 1944, at which point Victor Fox regained control of Blue Beetle through court action. Holyoke essentially relaunched the series two months later as Sparkling Stars, consisting of Blue Beetle's backup features which had never been published by Fox.

The so-called "Holyoke One-Shots" are included here mostly by convention. They are really repackaging of early Temerson material (from Helnit, Tem and possibly other companies). They have absolutely no title, printing, publication or copyright information printed on them, and may well have been produced by someone other than either Temerson or Holyoke. However, Mike Tiefenbacher pinned the name on them several decades ago and it has stuck. The two "Veri Best" titles are also unconfirmed as Holyoke, but at least one of them seems to reprint Holyoke material.

Site visitors may also want to look at the publisher entry for Temerson / Helnit / Continental, which goes into more detail about those companies and several others that were or were thought to be related to Temerson and Holyoke:

http://www.comics.org/publisher/129/

This essay built on research by Frank Motler, Bob Hughes, Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., Hames Ware, Henry Andrews and other GCD and Digital Comic Museum contributors.
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