Before the Major came along, such comic “books” as existed were nothing more than reprints of the comic strips from the daily newspapers. This changed in 1935 when the Major began publishing his innovative comic books, Fun Comics and New Fun Comics, which featured original artwork and stories. What could possibly motivate someone to launch an untested new idea at the height of the Great Depression, when a staggering 25 percent of the American populace was out of work, and furthermore to do so in a new and unfamiliar medium—comic books—that had yet to reveal its potential? It was an enormous risk, and it would take its toll on the Major and his family.

The Major’s inspiration to create the modern comic book was the result of the combination of a unique moment in history, his own natural gifts as a successful writer of adventure stories, his education and unconventional background, his early military exploits, and his marriage to his aristocratic Swedish wife who inspired and encouraged him. All these elements would come together in a fateful “aha!” moment. And just as the Major was lighting the spark, fate appeared in the form of a crude drawing of a male figure on brown paper, signed by two young men from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. The drawing was the first appearance of a character who would go on to become one of the great fictional creations of the 20^th century: Superman.

Wheeler-Nicholson had the distinction of discovering Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1935, right at the beginning of his initial efforts to push the boundaries of the medium of comics. The Major, as publisher and editor, nurtured the creative side of the two younger men, often providing character ideas and possible story lines. The two boys from Cleveland responded with a prolific outpouring of stories and artwork including such now-forgotten action heroes as Slam Bradley. Jerry Siegel forever after would insist that without the Major’s help they would never have made it into print. Wheeler-Nicholson saw the potential of Superman from the very beginning and—contrary to the inaccurate version that has been widely disseminated by modern comic-book historians—he was instrumental in nurturing the concept of Superman all the way from its conception to its realization in Action Comics. The major’s eldest daughter, Antoinette Harley, says that with his educational background her father immediately identified Superman with the philosophy of the Nietzschean ideal, and that it was this intellectual insight, coupled with his own background as a highly successful writer of adventure stories and his long-held belief in the power of the graphic communication of comics, that crystallized into the eventual debut of Action Comics and Superman in 1938.

*****

Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was born in 1890, at a moment when the world of the past—the Civil War and its aftermath—was giving way to a world of new inventions, new philosophies, and new lands out West where vast fortunes could be made. His life began in the mountains of East Tennessee, where his grandfather, Dr. Christopher Wheeler, a Massachusetts-born cavalry officer and surgeon, had moved the family to the town of Jonesborough at the end of the Civil War. Here Dr. Wheeler established his medical practice and founded a newspaper, the Herald and Tribune, still in existence today. At the turn of the 20^th Century, Malcolm’s young, recently widowed mother, pursuing a livelihood in journalism, took him and his brother Christopher to the Pacific Northwest. Young Malcolm spent his boyhood in Portland, Oregon, at the time a barely respectable seaport, and on a horse ranch in Washington State, just across the Columbia River. It was here that he took the first steps in the pursuit of writing and journalism.

As a young reporter he was privy to the inner workings of the newspaper business, and like other young people of the period, was fascinated by the appearance of the comic strips. This was a new artistic medium and a new way to tell a story. Obviously this early exposure struck a chord, because it continued to surface again and again in his professional life.

Although the Wheeler-Nicholsons were not wealthy, Malcolm grew up in a household that was filled with books and a constant stream of visitors, with many of the influential thinkers of the day including senators, judges, journalists, and writers. Given his natural intelligence and his mother’s encouragement of his creativity and artistic talents, Malcolm grew up with an unconventional point of view.

This unconventional view of life was honed, strangely enough, by his military career. In 1909, at the age of 19, Malcolm was sent to Manlius Military Academy in upstate New York, graduating into the U.S. Cavalry. He moved quickly through the ranks, becoming at 27 one of the youngest majors in the Cavalry. Along the way he saw action in Mexico, chasing Pancho Villa while in command of Troop K of the 9th Cavalry’s famed African-American Buffalo Soldiers under the authority of General “Black Jack” Pershing. He saw action in the Philippines fighting the fierce Muslim Moros, and by 1917, when most American soldiers were being sent to the trenches of France, he was on a diplomatic mission as a liaison and intelligence officer to the Japanese embassy in the far reaches of Siberia, to mediate in the fight between the Cossacks and the Bolsheviks. He had spent time in London and Paris and seen the cultures of Mexico, the Far East and Russia and Siberia. The major’s sophisticated and highly creative mind was deeply impressed by all these varied experiences.

At the end of WWI, the Major was sent to the École Supérieure de Guerre in Paris in 1920, just at the beginning of the Jazz Age. There he met the beautiful Swedish aristocrat Elsa Sachsenhausen Bjorkböm, and after a romantic courtship they married in Coblentz, Germany, under the crossed swords of his fellow officers.

The Major had been growing increasingly concerned for some time about what he perceived as administrative and strategic problems in the Army. In frustration, and chafing under the authority of military life, he decided to go over his superiors’ heads and write an open letter to President Warren Harding criticizing the Army’s command chain—a court-martial offense for a serving officer. The newspapers of the day, including the New York Times, ran the sensational story and there was talk of a Congressional investigation.

Given the Major’s knowledge as an intelligence officer, there were obvious concerns about what might be made public. Entering his darkened quarters at Fort Dix late at night, the Major was fired at by a guard watching from an upstairs window. He was left bleeding on the ground for some time before any help arrived, and the circumstantial evidence pointed to an assassination attempt. In an unlikely twist of fate, the bullet entered his temple above his ear, missing his brain. After his recovery, a court-martial ensued, and despite his mother’s persistent public lobbying on his behalf with newspapers, senators, and even Teddy Roosevelt’s family, he was placed back in the ranks, meaning he could never expect to advance. Soon after, he was discharged from the Army and was now free to pursue his literary career.

His first two books are indicative of the dual paths his professional life would follow from that point on—The Modern Cavalry (1922), a classic military-strategy book that is still quoted in military journals today, and Death at the Corral (1929), a western mystery published in hardcover. In his pulp-fiction adventure stories, he displays an almost cinematic sensibility, typically setting up a scene in panorama before zooming in to begin the action. His writing is visual and immediate, and it is not surprising that he was also interested in the potential of the graphic medium of comic books. In hindsight it is impossible to say whether the comics influenced his writing or whether it was a natural gift that led him to the comics.

The Major and his wife were drawn to the bohemian society of Greenwich Village and were soon part of a social set of artists and writers from which Wheeler-Nicholson would draw the talent for his first foray into publishing. He began his publishing career in 1925 with the establishment of Wheeler-Nicholson Inc., a newspaper syndicate. An advertisement in “Literary Market Tips” from the May 1926 issue of Author & Journalist asked for “short stories, … humorous sketches …, jokes, epigrams, humorous verse and drawings.” Several months later, in July, he wrote in the same trade paper, “The announcement states that it will attempt to raise the quality of syndicated material by buying freshly written material in the open market as does any other periodical.” From the very beginning of his publishing career he pursued original material. Besides publishing, he also wrote scripts for such cartoon strips as “Ambitious Ambrose” and “Hi-Way Henry,” drawn by the German cartoonist Oscar Hitt. (It is interesting to note that the Major was thereby also at the forefront of what would become the merchandising/licensing industry, as several popular toys were generated from these early strips.)

Besides the tremendous output of pulp fiction that he wrote during this period, the Major was also envisioning the modern graphic novel, and it was at this time that he published the first comic strip version of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island. Like many creative people, the Major was not particularly interested in the business side of publishing, and without the right partner he found himself unable to simultaneously manage his enormous creative output and also run a business. His initial syndication efforts failed, but he was more than successful with his adventure stories. Although he and Elsa enjoyed the roaring ’20s in New York, the moment they could afford to go back to Europe they sailed for France with their growing family of four children. They found themselves in a fairy-tale chateau in the countryside near Paris in Vic sur Aisnes, where Elsa was able to be with her family once again.

The Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 took what fortune they had with it, and the Wheeler-Nicholsons were forced to return to New York. They soon found themselves, like so many others, in dire straits. The Major decided that the only way to survive was to follow his creative vision. He returned to syndicating comic strips but quickly realized the potential of newly formatted comic books. He believed that what the American public needed at such a dark time was the comic book, with its simple humor and its archetypal heroes—and, crucially, not just reprints of lowbrow comic strips but innovative and artistic graphic versions of literary classics.

            Douglas Wheeler-Nicholson, his son, remembers this period of time well: “I remember particularly my brother Malcolm and me in the study at 16 Avalon Road with the Old Man looking at the comics issue that had the (rather racy I thought for a 10-year-old) serialization of She by H. Rider Haggard, and also the strip “Pelion and Ossa” relating to two Greek mountains and their cultural significance. The Old Man was quite clear on his perception of the potential for graphic storytelling. It is not difficult to recall because it was the subject of many conversations both directly with Malcolm and me but also in our presence, with others. We heard him speak about it dozens of times over the years from about 1934 to the very end in early 1938. We heard him expound variations on the theme to friends, to people in his office, and in family discussions at the dinner table. We sat with him looking at the early comic books and heard him explain where he hoped to take the ideas in the future.

“The gist of his vision was that graphic storytelling was an unexplored and potentially important form of communication and education. He prophesied the comic book as a new kind of literature, but was also taken with its potential for education. He saw it as a means of getting ideas to the general public in a way that books alone could not. He was fascinated with the interaction of pictures and words as a complement to the use of each separately. He was clear on the point that the newspaper world of “comics” was a jumping-off point for a totally separate discipline. His intention was to expand from original stories in magazine form (comic books) to book-length publications presaged by his serializations of classics in graphic form (Ivanhoe, Treasure Island), i.e., graphic novels.”

Given his earlier attempts to publish comic strips for the newspapers, working with artists like Hitt and the well-known playwright N. Brewster Morse, and his desire to make the comic book into something more than the “funnies,” it seemed an obvious step to him that his comic books should consist of original artwork. That it would be cheaper to produce was an added advantage, but he was never afraid to spend money he didn’t have if he thought the idea was good enough. With the appearance of New Fun in early 1935 and its mixture of educational material (“Pelion and Ossa”) and classics (Ivanhoe) along with the funnies there is a natural progression in the Major’s ideas. This culminated in Detective Comics with the adventure stories in picture form that were reminiscent of the pulp fiction he knew so well. Thus it was in the midst of the economic darkness of the 1930s that the ideas of the Major and the two kids from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, met and created a new, never-before-seen kind of hero. In the figure of Superman, the Major saw the ideal representative of hope, Nietzsche’s Übermensch, literally the “super man,” who could lift the American spirit out of the depths of the Great Depression and a new art form was born.

Nicky Brown

Ian Wheeler-Nicholson, Editorial Contribution