In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn how DC put out a Teen Beat comic without knowing that was already the name of a teen magazine
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and thirty-eighth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first legend in this installment's legends. Click here for the second part of this installment's legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
DC had to change the name of its Teen Beat comic book magazine because that was already the name of a teen magazine.
STATUS:
True
As print magazines become less and less of a thing in modern times, it is hard for modern readers to understand just HOW big print magazines were in the past. Print magazines were basically like the internet before there was an internet (while regular mail was, you know, like e-mail). It was a vibrant community of people with shared interests coming together to celebrate those shared interests. In the 1960s, people realized that the teen market could very much sustain a number of magazines, and they started putting out a TON of them. Sixteen magazine had already debuted in the late 1950s...
but then Tiger Beat debuted in 1965, and that led to an EXPLOSION of new teen magazines...
There was so much attention being paid to these teen magazines that even DC Comics started to pay attention and it was determined in late 1967 that DC would put outs its own teen comic magazine!
In a great interview with the always informative Bryan Stroud, former DC staffer Barbara Friedlander explained how DC came to have its own teen magazine, "Now Teen Beat was a big magazine at the time. I had no idea, because I didn’t read that kind of stuff and I think it was Sol Harrison’s idea. And he said, “Barbara, you’re going to do this and Jack [Miller, a DC editor], you’re going to do this.” It was a family thing. For twelve cents you got really top credits of all the best stuff and then you have wonderful people that you interview."
And so in late 1967, DC's Teen Beat debuted...
It was pretty funny, since its lead feature, "Are the Monkees splitting up?" wasn't a real news story, but rather just a sort of, "I dunno, they COULD!" sort of thing...
But here was the problem, which Friedlander alluded to...there already WAS a magazine called Teen Beat at the time!
Friedlander continued, "So, Teen Beat was already on the stands. I had no idea. And we had put our own Teen Beat together. That was the first issue. And Irwin [Donenfield, DC's editorial director at the time] came screaming in and called us idiots. He said, “You can’t use this. Think of another name.” I said, “Okay. Teen Beam.” I mean, how difficult is that?
So the second issue was re-named Teen Beam...
Friedlander got to interview actual bands like it was a legit magazine, like Herman's Hermits...
She recalled, "The second one was a bust, because it didn’t get any promotion. I think at twelve cents, people could have afforded it. I had the same connections as Photoplay and all that. I had called everybody. The agents and everyone. I was being sent all kinds of publicity and stuff like that and the article could write themselves. A lot of people worked on it. And Jack went with me to the Waldorf Astoria where I interviewed Herman’s Hermits. They were always throwing me into doing stuff I had no idea how to do. To ask questions and I had no idea, but I did it. Because that’s what I was supposed to do. (chuckle.)"
The issue tried to explain the name change, using its mascot, "Teeny"...
The second issue also had a wacky bit about doing baby photos for the Monkees...
and there were these occasional gag comics mixed into the issue, seemingly whatever amused Mort Drucker at the time...
That second issue was the final issue of the series, but boy, what a fascinating experiment, even if they didn't check to see if the name wasn't already being used by a similar magazine!
Thanks to Bryan Stroud and Barbara Friedlander for the amazing information!
CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed - Did the Producers of Dirty Dancing almost drastically cut out a major part of the film's plot from the movie to keep an acne cream compay willing to do a promotional tie-in with the film?
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that's it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it's fair enough to still thank him, I think.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that's fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don't mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
Here's my most recent book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books.
If you want to order a copy, ordering it here gives me a referral fee.
Here's my second book, Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? The cover is by Kevin Hopgood (the fellow who designed War Machine's armor).
If you want to order a copy, ordering it here gives me a referral fee.
Here's my book of Comic Book Legends (130 legends. -- half of them are re-worked classic legends I've featured on the blog and half of them are legends never published on the blog!).
The cover is by artist Mickey Duzyj. He did a great job on it...
If you'd like to order it, you can use this code if you'd like to send me a bit of a referral fee.
Follow Comics Should Be Good on Twitter, and on Facebook (also, feel free to share Comic Book Legends Revealed suggestions on our Facebook page!). Not only will you get updates when new blog posts show up on both Twitter and Facebook, but you'll get some original content from me, as well!
See you next time!