Everett M. "Busy" Arnold - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Growing up in Rhode Island, where his habit of talking in class earned him the admonishment "busybody" from teachers, and the subsequent nickname "Busy" from classmates, Everett M. Arnold graduated from Brown University with an economics degree in 1921, years later receiving the Brown Alumni Association's Brown Bear Award for service to his alma mater. He found work with the printing press manufacturer R. Hoe and Company, and later spent 12 years as the Eastern sales representative for New York City's Goss Printing Company. There he sold presses to Waterbury, Connecticut's Eastern Color Printing (future publisher of the first American comic book, Famous Funnies #1, May 1934), and to the McClure Syndicate in Baltimore, Maryland.

Circa 1930, either Arnold persuaded Buffalo, New York printer Walter Koessler to invest in a color plant in order to print comics, or vice versa (sources differ). In either event, Arnold became vice president of Koessler's Greater Buffalo Press and learned publishing as the company began printing a large number of color comic newspaper sections. In 1936, Arnold gave either financial or other, unspecified help to the New York City-based Comics Magazine Company, founded by John Mahon and Bill Cook, former employees of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications, the primary forerunner of DC Comics. The duo published the premiere issue of The Comics Magazine (May 1936), using inventory content from National Allied's submissions. The original features (as opposed to color comic strip reprints, as Famous Funnies published) included the Doctor Occult spin-off Dr. Mystic the Occult Detective (unrelated to the Mr. Mystic that later ran in newspapers), by future Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Other titles included Funny Pages, Funny Picture Stories, Detective Picture Stories and Keen Detective Funnies. Daniel R. Hanna Sr., publisher of Ohio's Cleveland News, printed the interiors, with Cleveland's Penton Press printing the covers and handling binding and shipping. But the company — which would evolve into Centaur Publications — would have no hit title.