| Club Chesler Universe |
| Total Entries 62 |
| Representative Yankee Doodle Jones |
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In 1935 or 1936, Harry Chesler established a studio in Manhattan to supply comic-book content to publishers testing the waters of the emerging medium. The “Chesler shop”, as it was informally called, was the first such “packager”, later to be followed by companies including Eisner & Iger and Funnies Inc. Chesler employees remembered him as a tough but warm boss who always wore a hat and smoked a big cigar. Artist Joe Kubert recalled Chesler paying him $5 a week, at age 12 (c. 1938) to apprentice at his studio after school.[3] Similarly, artist Carmine Infantino remembers that, c. 1940, he was paid by Chesler “a dollar a day, just [to] study art, learn, and grow. That was damn nice of him, I thought. He did that for me for a whole summer” while Infantino was in high school. Chesler’s later imprints included Dynamic Publications, Harry “A” Chesler Jr. Publications, and Harry “A.” Chesler Feature Jr. Syndicate. The covers of many of his 1940s comics bear the phrase “Harry ‘A’ Chesler Jr. Features Syndicate, N.Y.”. or “Harry ‘A’ Chesler, Jr. World’s Greatest Comics”. Comic-book historians sometimes label all such imprints informally “Harry A Chesler Comics.” His shop employed “a growing group of men who produced scores of strips [and] entire books (often first issues) for nearly every publisher,” including Chesler’s own Star Comics, Star Ranger, Dynamic Comics, Punch Comics and Yankee Comics. The studio also “[p]roduced the early issues of MLJ Publications Zip Comics, Pep Comics and Top-Notch Comics, Captain Marvel, Master Comics,” as well as features for Centaur Comics. Alumni of the Chesler Shop “went on to form the nuclei of various comics art staffs” for a number of different early comics companies; they include Jack Cole, Jack Binder, Otto Binder, Charles Biro, Mort Meskin… ~ Harry “A” Chesler – Wikipedia
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