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)[reply]

Curtis Magazines[edit]

Curtis Magazines (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)
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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 [1] [2] [3].
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 [4] [5] [6].
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)[reply]

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) [7] for Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed and some others, and Marvel Magazine Group [8] 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)[reply]
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. ★☆ DUCKISJAMMMY☆★ 13:25, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, →TheSpecialUserTalkContributions* 04:26, 23 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Dream Focus 09:23, 29 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not that other Defunct imprints of Marvel have their own articles.

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. Dream Focus 16:07, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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.
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