Private company

I. W. Publications

Defunct American comic book publishing company

I.W. Publications (also known as Super Comics) was a short-lived comic book publisher in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The company was part of I.W. Enterprises, and named for the company's owner, Israel Waldman. I.W. Publications was notable for publishing unauthorized reprints of other publishers' properties.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1958Founded1
  • HeadquartersNew York City1
Human Fly 10
Photo: Ross Andru (pencils) & Mike Esposito (inks), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons4

I.W. Publications (also known as Super Comics) was a short-lived comic book publisher in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The company was part of I.W. Enterprises, and named for the company's owner, Israel Waldman. I.W. Publications was notable for publishing unauthorized reprints of other publishers' properties. Usually these companies were already out of business.2

The story

Following the publication of Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and the 1954 comic book hearings of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, many comic book publishers closed down shop in the years 1954–1956. Other than I.W., no new publishers debuted in 1958. Comics historian Don Markstein explained the company's methods:

Waldman was able to sell them cheaply because in many cases, he was able to supply the letterpress plates they were printed from, and thus avoid paying for new ones. How a man who gives little evidence of being interested in comics before emerging as an extremely low-end publisher, came to have such production materials is simply that he bought out defunct publishers' storage facilities, purchasing physical materials only and ignoring intellectual property rights. In many cases, he dealt with Eastern Color Printing, which did most of America's comics, for materials their publishers had left behind when they went out of business.

The company started publishing in 1958, with comics originally published by Avon Comics, Fiction House, Magazine Enterprises, and others. Many of these comics had the tagline "A Top Quality Comic." After releasing a great quantity of comics in 1958, the company went on hiatus until 1963, when it again released a number of comics up into 1964. During the latter half of the company's existence, it published comics under the "Super Comics" name. Many of these titles were reprints of Toby Press, Avon, Magazine Enterprises, and Quality Comics. Many of these titles had the tagline "Super Comics Seal of Quality."

I.W. Publications went out of business in 1964. Waldman would later be involved with the short-lived black-and-white comics magazines publisher Skywald Publications in the 1970s.

From Wikipedia’s article on I. W. Publications, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Subsidiaries and ownership

Parent company

  • I.W. Enterprises

From Wikidata.1

Timeline

  1. 1958Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4