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Series: Captain Billy's Whiz Bang

- Attribution History

Years in Print: 1919 - 1936

Detail

Publisher: Flag

Fawcett Country:

United States Language: English Issues: #1 - #214 (214 Issues)

Continued From: none

Continued In: none Disclose

Tracking Notes: Disclose

Notes: While a World War I Army captain, Wilford "Captain Billy" Fawcett's experience with the Army publication Stars and Stripes gave him the notion to get into publishing. His bawdy cartoon and joke magazine, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, became the launchpad for a vast publishing empire embracing magazines, comic books and paperback books.

The title Captain Billy's Whiz Bang combined Fawcett's military moniker with the nickname of a destructive World War I artillery shell. According to one account, the earliest issues were mimeographed pamphlets, typed on a borrowed typewriter and peddled around Minneapolis by Captain Billy and his four sons. However, in Captain Billy's version, he stated that when he began publishing in October 1919, he ordered a print run of 5,000 copies because of the discount on a large order compared with rates for only several hundred copies. Distributing free copies of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang to wounded veterans and his Minnesota friends, he then circulated the remaining copies to newsstands in hotels.

The publication, delivered in a 64-page, saddle-stitched, digest-sized format, soon saw a dramatic increase in sales. By 1923, the magazine had a circulation of 425,000 with $500,000 annual profits. With the rising readership of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Fawcett racked up more sales with Whiz Bang annuals, and in 1926, he launched a similar publication, Smokehouse Monthly. The popularity of Whiz Bang peaked during the 1920s. It continued into the 1930s, but circulation slowed as readers graduated to the more sophisticated humor of Esquire, founded in 1933. It had an influence on many other digest-sized cartoon humor publications, including Charley Jones Laugh Book, which was still being published during the 1950s.

The earliest issues contain no cartoons, only jokes. It is currently not known when cartoons first appeared in the magazine.

Format

Publication Type: Comic Books

Color: color covers; black and white interior

Dimensions: digest

Paper Stock: glossy cover; newsprint interior

Binding: saddle-stitched

Publishing Format: was ongoing series

Format Notes:

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Sample Issue Image

Issue #	Publication Date	Pages	Content Items	Issue Images Count
#1	October 1919	?	0/0/0
#2	November 1919	?	0/0/0	None
#3	December 1919	?	0/0/0	None
#4	January 1920	?	0/0/0
#5	February 1920	?	0/0/0
#6	March 1920	?	0/0/0	2 Issue Images total
#7	April 1920	?	0/0/0
#8	May 1920	?	0/0/0	None
#9	June 1920	?	0/0/0
#10	July 1920	?	0/0/0
#11	August 1920	?	0/0/0
#12	September 1920	?	0/0/0	None
#13	October 1920	?	0/0/0
#14	November 1920	?	0/0/0
#15	December 1920	?	0/0/0
#16	January 1921	?	0/0/0
#17	February 1921	?	0/0/0
#18	March 1921	68	0/0/0	2 Issue Images total
#19	April 1921	?	0/0/0
#20	May 1921	?	0/0/0
#21	June 1921	?	0/0/0
#22	July 1921	?	0/0/0
#23	August 1921	?	0/0/0
#24	September 1921	?	0/0/0
#25	October 1921	?	0/0/0

Issue #

Publication Date

Pages

Content Items

Issue Images Count

October 1919

0/0/0