Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Curtis Magazines


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. Consensus agrees with the nominator that the premise of and information in the article is apparently incorrect, and that as such the article can be deleted. This is without prejudice to then creating a redirect or dab page in its stead, which is an editorial decision.  Sandstein  18:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Curtis Magazines

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The subject of this article has never existed; the article is based on unreliable sources and original research. This is an incredible mess which is steadily contaminating other Wikipedia content. Forty years ago, magazine distribution in the US was handled by a variety of national and regional distributors, one of which was Curtis Circulation. Magazines were sold returnably, and returns, unsurprisingly, had to be processed through the distributors who originally circulated the magazines. Magazines often identified their distributors on their covers, to make handling returns more efficient, and frequently the identification was done with an easily visible logo. The use of such logos was rendered obsolete/unnecessary as use of the UPC became common; the UPC effectively identified the distributor in a scanner-readable form. In the 1970s, Marvel Comics published a line of magazines, with a wide variety of publisher logos, indicia, etc. A common feature of all these magazines was that they all carried the logo of their distributor, Curtis Circulation. Somehow the belief has developed that this logo actually indicated an actual line or "imprint" of publications, "Curtis Magazines", even though that label was never used on the magazines themselves, or had any relevant contemporaneous usage. (There was a real Curtis magazine line from Curtis Publishing, flagshipped by the Saturday Evening Post, but it was fading away if not entirely shut down at the time.) Curtis Circulation and Marvel Comics eventually shared the same corporate parent, but were independent businesses, and the Curtis logo appeared regularly on magazines from many different publishers, as well as on other Marvel magazines not included in this pseudo-line. The Wikipedia article compounds this misconception with gross factual errors. The article says, foir example, that "the Marvel name did not appear on the magazines until 1981", it is evident from the covers shown for individual Marvel magazines that this was not the case, and that the magazines were regularly identified as being part of a Marvel publishing line File:MonstersUnleashed01.jpg File:VampireTales.jpg. The article is an unsalvageable mess. If we stripped out all the OR, synthesis, and unreliably sourced claims, all that would be left is a haphazardly selected list of magazines published by Marvel's corporate parent -- some not by Marvel itself -- not even including a full set of Marvel's own magazines. Better to blow this away and, if anyone cares to write an accurate article, write one about the rather different line of magazines that actually existed. I know there are quite a few websites which talk about these "Curtis Magazines". None are reliable on this point, most are SPS, most apparently postdate the WP article. The article cites no relevant contemporaneous sources for the "Curtis" line's existence, and I can't find any after long searching. This is some sort of comic collectors' misconception that Wikipedia is helping to spread. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 17:31, 16 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Having only done a little bit of copy editing on this article and not having written any portions of the text as far as I can remember, I've never looked that closely at this article before. It certainly looks as if Hullaballoo Wolfowitz is making valid points.


 * Three things, two of which are background, the other of which is for discussion. First, as Hullaballoo no doubt suspected, the Grand Comics Database has no publisher, publisher's brand or indicia for this Curtis. Indeed, GCD, which uses the indicia data, attributes various of the b/w magazines to different publishing names: Marvel Monster Group (Brand)  for Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed and some others, and Marvel Magazine Group  for selected issues of Bizarre Adventures and Savage Sword of Conan. But mostly, GCD gives the publisher as plain ol' Marvel or Marvel Comics Group.


 * Second, the Cadence Industries article refers to the distributor Curtis Circulation that had originated as the circulation department of Curtis Publishing Company, publisher of the Saturday Evening Post. As I said, just background.


 * The one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is that Curtis logo in the top-right corner spot where Marvel traditionally had its company logo. That indicates that the publisher wanted to communicate a brand identity to the reader; the publisher would not have had to do that for the retailer. On the other hand, early Marvel comics had "IND" on covers, indicating they were distributed by Independent News, so perhaps the Curtis logo on the covers means nothing more than that.


 * Overall, a good call by Hullabaloo. There may be a Marvel magazines article to be done, but this isn't it. Support. --Tenebrae (talk) 17:57, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. As the original creator of the article, I have since learned that the information I had was wrong. There was a recent discussion on the GCD mailing lists about Curtis, where it was confimed that there was no Curtis line and nobody at Marvel referred to the Curtis seal magazines as anything other than Marvel. So I have no objection to this article's deletion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pc13 (talk • contribs) 23:15, 16 May 2012
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. &#9733;&#9734;  DUCK IS JAMMMY &#9734;&#9733; 13:25, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: Shouldn't the article be corrected and cleaned up? Maybe it links to something like Marvel black and white magazines of the 1970s? In part I am concerned that Wikipedia has had this misinformation in it since 2005 and correcting the information seems more likely to undo the spread of misinformation than simply deleting it. Rangoondispenser (talk) 17:52, 20 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, → TheSpecialUser TalkContributions* 04:26, 23 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete for lacking reliable sources. LibStar (talk) 07:14, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:17, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Marvel Comics - The information above by Hullaballoo Wolfowitz would be good to have collected and written up as a subheading in the Marvel article, which we could redirect the current Curtis article to. This would also prevent the 'Curtis Magazines' article from popping up again in the future.-- Stv  Fett erly  (Edits)  14:37, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - The original content creator accepts the nominator's rationale as valid. No need to overthink this. Carrite (talk) 19:03, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Redirect per Stvfetterly. Imaginary topics shouldn't get articles unless they're covered in-depth by sources, but when non-RS sources mention something frequently, it becomes a likely search target.  Since there's an obvious related topic in Marvel Comics, redirecting is the best route.  Nyttend (talk) 05:24, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem with this otherwise rather plausible approach is that Curtis Magazines would be better redirected to Curtis Publishing Company, which actually published a line of Curtis magazines. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:28, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep and just rename it Obviously this is a real thing, jut the wrong name, and some information needs to be corrected. Call it Magazines printed by Marvel Comics or Magazines printed by Marvel Comics to get around the Comics Code Authority.  There are many blue links in the article, linking to articles for these various notable magazines.  If nothing else, most of the content could be made into a list article.  List of magazines published by Marvel Comics  D r e a m Focus  09:19, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration.  D r e a m Focus  09:23, 29 May 2012 (UTC)


 * A lot of pages link to this one.  Were all the magazines made by Marvel published through Curtis Circulation?  Were they officially called Curtis Magazines?  Anyone have one where they can look inside the first page and see what information is at the bottom?  Whoever it list as the publisher or copyright holder, should have their name on this article.   D r e a m Focus  04:08, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. Possibly redirect, but it seems to me that Hullaballoo makes the right call on this one. Putting the info he gives into the Marvel article does seem reasonable (if it's not there already).Marikafragen (talk) 05:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The other information perhaps should go there. But what about the list part of the article?  Shouldn't there be a list of all notable publications of them?  Most of them are blue links to actual articles.    D r e a m Focus  16:07, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Not that other Defunct imprints of Marvel have their own articles.
 * MC2
 * 2099
 * Age
 * Books
 * Knights
 * Music
 * UK
 * Absurd
 * Amalgam
 * Curtis Magazines
 * Epic
 * Malibu
 * New Universe
 * Paramount
 * Razorline
 * Star
 * Tsunami

These are all listed in the Marvel Comics template, along with other imprints which are not defunct, and other things they have published. There is no doubt that these magazines exist, and some sold quite well. We just need to find the proper name to categorize them in. A rename is the most reasonable option.  D r e a m Focus  16:07, 30 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Deadly Hands of Kung Fu 22 has the CC for the publisher on its cover, that meaningless apparently. I looked the thing through, and it doesn't say who published it anywhere in the issue, nor on the cover.  It does have J Jameson running his newspaper and making a reference to Peter Parker.  So its certainly Marvel.  A list of Marvel publications that aren't included in the many existing articles I think is in order.  Or a list of publications that didn't have Marvel listed on them, but was done by them.   D r e a m Focus  16:19, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I haven't looked into this too deeply, but why not make it a disambiguation page with one entry leading to Curtis Publishing Company and the other saying something along the lines of "A non-existent imprint of Marvel Comics" - ensuring that HW's excellent summary (which I assume can be fully verified) is covered in that article. If this is simply deleted it will only be likely to be re-created by some misguided fan. —S MALL  JIM   13:39, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.