I'm short of news this week as I've had my nose to the grindstone, trying to make sense of a number of mysteries surrounding Scion, the paperback and comic publisher active in 1948-54, during which time they produced 500 novels and over 100 comics.
This is my "between projects" project as I'm still waiting on the arrival of printed copies of HIGH SEAS AND HIGH ADVENTURES and news on my next planned book. I hadn't planned on writing about Scion (in fact, I'd had my eyes on a different publisher entirely), but... you know me... I'm easily distracted. I was simply poking around trying to find the familial connection between two of the company's directors and, before I knew it, I was writing up my notes and delving ever deeper into their history.
I had a broad outline of the company as I'd written about Scion a couple of times, for Golden Fun and for Paperback Parade in 1988 and 1992 respectively. I've learned an awful lot more in the past thirty years, so I'm trying to make this as definitive a history as possible, answering such questions as: why didn't the man in the cellar write enough books? and what was Jim Holdaway doing in those cellars? Which Scion author was an ex-jailbird? What was the company's connection with the London Mystery Magazine? Which editor ran off with his secretary to Canada?
These and many more questions will eventually be answered. I still have a lot of writing to do and I've got to get my hands on many more cover scans if I'm to do the book in a similar style to BEYOND THE VOID. I want to illustrate it as fully as possible, so I'm looking for books and magazines published by Scion, Milestone, Ken Publishing, Gannet Press, Teal Publications. Anything but science fiction as I think I have the great majority of those already as that was where I started collecting these old Fifties paperbacks, back when you could get hold of them at a reasonable price... indeed, back when you could get hold of them full stop.
I thought you might like a look at a trade advert that Scion published in 1951. Unfortunately it came from a bound book, so the two pages don't quite join up. (If they had, I would probably have kept the ad for the book!)
I'm off now to see if I can do some "back of a fag packet" maths and work out how much profit Scion made on Vargo Statten.
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