Collection MS 447 - Laing Comics Collection

Dell Publishing got its start in pulp magazines and then created the branch of Dell Comics. It was popular from 1929 to 1974. At its peak it was considered one of the largest and most successful comic publishers in the world boasting in 1953 to be selling over 26 million comic per month. This is largely due to the comics scare in the early 1950s led by psychologist Fredrick Wertham. Instead of adopting the Comics Code in 1954 Dell created their own slogan for parents that "Dell Comics are Good Comics". The Gilbertson Company published adaptations of famous novels into comics including those by authors Walter Scott Robert Louis Stevenson and Mary Shelley. By the time of the Comics Code in 1954 these comics were the only ones largely unregulated because they came from literature and were deemed educational rather than creating child delinquents.