Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson

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Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson: biography

January 4, 1890 – January 1, 1968

Later career

Wheeler-Nicholson suffered from continual financial crises, both in his personal and professional lives. “Dick Woods” artist Lyman Anderson, whose Manhattan apartment Wheeler-Nicholson used as a rent-free pied-à-terre, said, “His wife would call [from home on Long Island] and be in tears…and say she didn’t have money and the milkman was going to cut off the milk for the kids. I’d send out 10 bucks, just because she needed it”.

The third and final title published under his aegis would be Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated Dec. 1936, but eventually premiering three months late, with a March 1937 cover date.

Detective Comics would become a sensation with the introduction of Batman in issue #27 (May 1939). By then, however, Wheeler-Nicholson was gone. In 1937, in debt to printing-plant owner and magazine distributor Harry Donenfeld — who was as well a pulp-magazine publisher and a principal in the magazine distributorship Independent News — Wheeler-Nicholson was compelled to take Donenfeld on as a partner in order to publish Detective Comics #1. Detective Comics, Inc. was formed, with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfeld’s accountant, listed as owners.

The major remained for a year, but cash-flow problems continued. DC’s 50th-anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great cites the Great Depression as “forc[ing] Wheeler-Nicholson to sell his publishing business to Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz in 1937”. Comics historian Gerard Jones describes the events differently:

As National Allied Publications went from strength to strength without him, Wheeler-Nicholson “gave up on the world of commerce thereafter and went back to writing war stories and critiques of the American military” in addition to straight “articles on politics and military history”.

Quotes

Golden Age comics creator Sheldon Mayer on Wheeler-Nicholson: “Not only the first man to publish comic books but also the first to stiff an artist for his check”.

Other works

  • Book: Wheeler-Nicholson, Maj. Malcolm, Are We Winning the Hard Way? (Crowell Publishing, 1934)
  • Book: Wheeler-Nicholson, Maj. Malcolm, Battle Shield of the Republic (Macmillan, 1940)
  • Book: Wheeler-Nicholson, Maj. Malcolm, America Can Win (Macmillan, 1941)

Action Comics and National Periodical Publications

Shortly afterwards came the launch of what would have been his fourth title, National Allied Publications’ Action Comics, the premiere of which introduced Superman, a character with which he was not directly involved; editor Vin Sullivan chose to run the feature after Sheldon Mayer rescued it from the slush pile.

National Allied Publications and Detective Comics, Inc., soon merged to form National Comics, which in 1944 absorbed an affiliated concern, All-American Publications. Liebowitz then consolidated National Comics, Independent News, and related firms into National Periodical Publications, the direct precursor of DC.

Family

Actress Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (sometimes credited as Dana Wheeler Nicholson), who has appeared in movies including Fletch and Tombstone, such TV series as Sex in the City, Friday Night Lights and Law & Order: Criminal Intent and the soap opera All My Children, is the daughter of Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s second son, Douglas. Interview with granddaughter Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson Brown, “He Was Going to Go for the Big Idea”, Alter Ego #88 (August 2009).