by 1940 skidmore had a bonafied hit with doctor dreadnaught, a grim, ghostly vengance driven corpse of a crime fighter. the book seemed to tap into the current quazi-mystical experience that was en vouge shortly after the great depression in america.                                                                                                            for whatever the reason, (as this is still a highly debated topic ) the country began to gain strength and comfort from these idealized theological power fantasy's.
soon ancient tomes like the bardo thodal and i ching, were selling like hotcakes!
more conservitive members of society were enthusiastically entrenched with the workings of  aliester crowley and his church of thelema, or the theosiphist society.......as this this type of philosophy was in essence judeo-christian based and therefore much easier to digest.
but it was the comics that made skidmore into the empire it became. soon even more of those mystical mystery men were flooding the  newstands and corner stores across america. titles like mysterio diablo and spidora were good solid sellers. adventures into weirdness was skidmore's second best seller featuring the man from the forbidden dimension, abraxas!

at this point mel skidmore was still enthusiastic about the comics. he even penned the first half dozen abraxis tales in the big (96 page, squarebound) cosmicly supercharged, equonox quarterly comics. along with the illustrations that went along with the text pieces that were then required in all comics.

what set skidmore publishing apart from the rest of the field was the sheer power of the art. with a stable of artists such as horace woodly, jack chamberlin and franz feringetti, you couldn't go wrong. soon others joined
in like "the abominable" gregg ingress and old pros such as steven dio and h.g. lieber ( who had been drawing comics since there inception in 1938) filled the ranks.

but it was the acquisition of the man known as "the chairman" jake klineberg, that set the industry on fire in 1956.

1956 was a booming time in comics. the mysterymen died out a natural death, and horror, crime and true science titles were capturing the hearts of post ww2 america.

with comics quickly recognized as a unique american art form sometimes called "the baby brother of jazz" for it's syncopated beats and visual flights of imagination and whimsy, the public loved the horror and crime books! no doubt, they sold in the millions. some minor publishers such as forsett and aac comics flooded the market. even going so far as to publish "tales of the tormented" as a weekly for a short period of time,

but those calling for censorship in the comics were most disturbed by the "true science" variety.

paranoia over a fascist plot was a strong motivational factor in banning the science comics of the mid 50's.

what started out so well with the theologically based mysterymen books and the recent best selling and critically acclaimed horror comics was soon to be forgotten, as the furor over these divisive and socialy repugnant "science" comics hit the stands and began to soar in sales.

for one thing these comics encouraged kids to distain things like sports and rugged hooliganism an favor of things like research and scientific study. it was feared that a nation of eggheaded intellectuals would soon inherit the earth. whats more is that this line of thinking would render the heart felt and beloved metaphysical beliefs of most Americans merely a moot point, if one were inclined to pursue this line of thinking to it's logical conclusion.

everyone seemed to have a different opinion about it and the debate raged on until the eventual ban on all science comics in 1955.

a short lived title...."the cosmic crusades" [ a group of scientifically advanced knight templars thrust into space] was published by skidmore as some kind of appeasement to public opinion, but the kids hated it and it only lasted 3 issues. being neither fish nor fowl, it is now known as skidmores greatest failure and nearly bankrupt the company. after this mel skidmore became disillusioned with comics and started to spend more time with the cereal box division of his printing and publishing empire.

1963 was the year that mel skidmore hired a brash young writer named manley s! melmon. in 63 and 64 he was still learning the ropes, but by 1970 he would virtually own the industry with his defiant "Science Hero" comics.

but first you must know about the short and ill fated comics code and it's eventual collapse in 1966.( giving birth to the now coveted, creators code that still rides on the inside covers of bootleg Skidmore comic books to this day)

magazine articals like 'something funny is going on in the comics' in the ladies home urinal companion and 'who's laughing now?' in bitter homes and publishing,  began to appear, deriding comics. it's interesting to note that mundane and utterly banal, slick magazines were in their death throws anyway and had nothing to lose by demonizing comicbooks who were now selling in figures they could only dream of.

in fact on the cover of what turned out to be the final issue of timely, an old skidmore pin-up of doctor dreadnaught smashing the laboratory of his arch foe professor nemesis was repourposed...with the headline ...."what ever happened to all americas heroes?......why the comics aren't fun anymore."

never the less do-gooder groups and knee jerk politically correct conservatives aligned behind closed doors with the powers that be, to concoct a general atmosphere of anti-intellectualism that pervaded thru out the nation.

but with the on set of 1966 that became of little concern. scientific thought had gained a grudgingly respect in thoes short months of ww3 by perfecting and weponizing atomic energy. what had once been only a safe and effective fuel source had now become a massively destructive weapon. a weapon that cut our time at war down to months after the fire bombing of hiroshima, and nagasaki again and finally rome. the real cause of all of humanity's problems.

after the war america seemed nostalgic for the simpler times and comics went right along with the trend by re-inventing the old heroes of the mysterymen days. mysterio diablo jr. was first presented in showboat comics 58  feb. 1966.
although religated to the back pages for nearly a decade, doctor dreadnaught was still dead and well in adventures into weirdness. and over in, into oblivion comics a new thinly disguised scientific hero was gaining popularity. his name was adam o'blivion.

science was still a respected tabu in the comics field and it was still technically illegal to have the word science on the title of a comic.

in ways this created better writers, as they learned  circumlocution and disguise scientific based fact into the innocuous terror tales of the literally dieing horror comics and coyly intruduced them into the new mysterymen books. a talented writer like bill tso could make an incredible mister richter comic read like a geological text  book if you learned how to read between the lines.

but the writer most responsible for the eventual collapse of the comics code was our guy, world's greatest comicbook writer, manely s! melmon. in a throw away issue of sub-zero and frosty he introduced a diminutive hero that would turn a nation if not the world on it ear. the hero started out as a villain, in accordance to the mood of the times. melmon took that old chestnut of an idea.......the science-villain, and worked it into something more than what it ought to be, that character was, the human genome.
melmon packed the strip with so many indisputable scientific facts that no one could argue. after a few appearances in mystic knights of the mystery school, were it was explained that genome was merely a misunderstood spirit from the realm of light, skidmore publishing hit the jackpot again with the new, entirely creditable human genome #1.

the comics code nearly had kittens! under their watch comics had gone from the upper eshelons of art to the pits of despair. books like tru-adventures of douglas mcarthur and vince lombardi's tales of victory were deemed to be cutting edge. they did have a crime element woven into them if you looked hard enough, but kids began shuning them in droves once "the science rebellion" started.

turns out that the old cronies of the distribution arm of the comics universe were not going to be told what and what not to distribute to a free society by a nefarious self appointed group of censors, the 1960's were in full swing and there were still billions of dimes to be made off of the comics! as it worked out every publisher (except dolt comics) abandoned the code and soon senate hearings were looking into this, inquiring about funding for such an enterprise (turns out dolt comics thru a subsidiary was behind all the unnecessary censorship and anti-trust lawsuits drove them out of business shortly in 1968}



when the old code failed after being vastly discredited, several top named artists and writers began what we now know as the creators code. as jake klineberg once exclaimed, 'we already had the stamp there on the cover, we were used to it......well, we had to fill it up with something!" and thus the creators code was born.

and it is in this atmosphere that our story really begins, with the comics code in shambles and special non-descpript black buses

showing up and whisking away censors to secret government re-education facility's located in a hollowed out mountain underneath of west virgina, the comics industry began to flourish again!