Everett M. "Busy" Arnold

Growing up in Rhode Island, where his habit of talking in class earned him the admonishment "busybody" from teachers, and the subsequent nickname "Busy" from classmates, Everett M. Arnold graduated from Brown University with an economics degree in 1921, years later receiving the Brown Alumni Association's Brown Bear Award for service to his alma mater. He found work with the printing press manufacturer R. Hoe and Company, and later spent 12 years as the Eastern sales representative for New York City's Goss Printing Company. There he sold presses to Waterbury, Connecticut's Eastern Color Printing (future publisher of the first American comic book, Famous Funnies #1, May 1934), and to the McClure Syndicate in Baltimore, Maryland.

Circa 1930, either Arnold persuaded Buffalo, New York printer Walter Koessler to invest in a color plant in order to print comics, or vice versa (sources differ). In either event, Arnold became vice president of Koessler's Greater Buffalo Press and learned publishing as the company began printing a large number of color comic newspaper sections. In 1936, Arnold gave either financial or other, unspecified help to the New York City-based Comics Magazine Company, founded by John Mahon and Bill Cook, former employees of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications, the primary forerunner of DC Comics. The duo published the premiere issue of The Comics Magazine (May 1936), using inventory content from National Allied's submissions. The original features (as opposed to color comic strip reprints, as Famous Funnies published) included the Doctor Occult spin-off Dr. Mystic the Occult Detective (unrelated to the Mr. Mystic that later ran in newspapers), by future Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Other titles included Funny Pages, Funny Picture Stories, Detective Picture Stories and Keen Detective Funnies. Daniel R. Hanna Sr., publisher of Ohio's Cleveland News, printed the interiors, with Cleveland's Penton Press printing the covers and handling binding and shipping. But the company — which would evolve into Centaur Publications — would have no hit title.

Comics

Arnold's companies became highly successful during comics' World War II boomtime, the period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books. Helping Arnold were wartime paper-quota laws, under which publications begun before the war received far higher allotments than those begun afterward. Postwar, he kept up with changes in taste, renaming Military Comics as Modern Comics (beginning with issue #44, Nov. 1945), turning the superhero series Crack Comics into Crack Western (with #63, Nov. 1949) and changing Kid Eternity into Buccaneers (with #19, Jan. 1950). He bought out the Cowles' brothers interest for $140,000 in 1950; during their 13-year partnership, the Cowles had earned nearly $1.8 million on their original $1,000 investment.

Among his philanthropic efforts around this time, wealthy alumnus Arnold paid the Brown University tuition of college football player Joe Paterno, who attended from 1946 to 1950 before going on to become the College Football Hall of Fame coach of Penn State University.

During the 1950s, Quality Comics followed the prevailing comics trends away from superheroes to a wide range of genres. This included a single horror title, Web of Evil, that nonetheless made Arnold's otherwise wholesome company a target, like many other comics publishers, as a supposed factor in juvenile delinquency, as charged by Dr. Fredric Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent and Congressional hearings led by Senator Estes Kefauver. Together with his staff's individual departures as time went on, Arnold in 1956 closed his company, selling most of its properties to DC Comics. The final Quality titles, including Heart Throbs #46, Robin Hood Tales #6, and Yanks in Battle #4, were cover-dated December 1956.

Comics historian Jim Steranko wrote that, "Arnold was, without a doubt, one of the most generous comic publishers. He was always very fair with the artists and believed in sharing wealth. He often delivered an extra bonus to his men in appreciation for their work and loyalty. He was, perhaps, the only publisher who paid his men what they were really worth."