Aragon Magazines Gillmor Magazines Medal Comics Media Publications S. P. M. Publications Stanmor Publications Timor Publications
Key Publications was an American
comic-book company founded by Stanley P. Morse that published under the
imprintsAragon Magazines, Gillmor Magazines, Medal Comics, Media Publications, S. P. M. Publications, Stanmor Publications, and Timor Publications.
His titles often changed publishers from one issue to the next as he dodged creditors or changed partners, and would sometimes have cover art taken from a story from a different issue as deadlines were missed. If he came up a story short, he would simply reprint something. If he couldn't get an artist for a particular slot, he'd have his editor cut up and rearrange the art from an old story to make a new one.[1]
During the 1950s boom in
horror comics, Morse "produced several acutely vile horror comics", wrote one historian,[8] and "some of the grossest and most vile" of the time, concurred another.[1] Interviewed for a 2008 book on 1950s horror comics, Morse said, "You did what you had to do — what moved 'em off the racks. ... I don't know what the hell I published. I never knew. I never read the things. I never cared."[8]
Artist
Steve Ditko, the future co-creator of
Spider-Man, began his professional comics career at Key in early 1953, illustrating writer Bruce Hamilton's
science-fiction story "Stretching Things" for Key's Stanmor Publications, which sold the story to
Ajax/Farrell, where it finally found publication in Fantastic Fears #5 (Feb. 1954).[9][10] Ditko's first published work was his second professional story, the six-page "Paper Romance" in Daring Love #1 (Oct. 1953), published by Key's Gillmor Magazines.[11]
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abcWatt-Evans, Lawrence (Summer 1997).
"The Other Guys". The Scream Factory (19). Archived from
the original on April 22, 2009. Reprinted as "The Other Guys: A Gargoyle's-Eye View of the Non-EC Horror Comics of the 1950s". Alter Ego (97): 22. October 2010.