Cupples & Leon

Cupples & Leon was an American publishing company founded in 1902 by Victor I. Cupples (1864–1941) and Arthur T. Leon (1867–1943). They published juvenile fiction and children's books but are mainly remembered today as the major publisher of books collecting comic strips during the early decades of the 20th century.

In Manhattan, the company was initially located in the Presbyterian building at 156 Fifth Avenue and, during the 1920s, at 449 Fourth Avenue.

Victor Cupples had previously worked with the publisher Houghton Mifflin, and Arthur Leon had been with Laird & Lee Publishers. In 1902, Cupples and Leon ran the New York agency for the George W. Ogilvie Company and other Chicago firms. They also were the advertising managers for Jamieson-Higgins' Four O'Clock magazine. The duo saw that Grosset & Dunlap and A. L. Burt (New York), Donohue (Chicago) and Altemus (Philadelphia) were selling juveniles at varying prices from $1.25 to 25 cents. After talks with Edward Stratemeyer, the two men published a juvenile that sold for 50 cents but appeared to be worth more. Cupples & Leon published the American editions of the UK children's weekly story paper Chatterbox, founded by John Erskine Clarke, prompting a UK researcher of Chatterbox to comment:

In 1913, they were publishing Roy Rockwood's Dave Dashaway series and other aviation juveniles. Scouting was another focus of their serial novels, along with their Motor Boys series. In 1914, they published Grimm's Fairy Tales, illustrated by Johnny Gruelle.

In 1903, Cupples & Leon collected such strips as The Katzenjammer Kids. Alphonse and Gaston, Happy Hooligan, On and Off the Ark, Poor Lil Mose and The Tigers. Their major competitor in books of comic strip reprints was Frederick A. Stokes, who died in 1939.

To reprint comic strips, the company offered, for 25 cents, a square-bound paperback format of 52 pages of black-and-white strips between flexible cardboard covers. Between 1906 and 1934, Cupples & Leon published more than 100 titles in that format. They collected Bringing Up Father, Little Orphan Annie, Mutt and Jeff, Reg'lar Fellers, Smitty, Tillie the Toiler and other leading strips of the 1920s and 1930s. They produced at least 18 reprint collections of Mutt and Jeff daily strips, in 10" x 10" softcover books from 1919 to 1934. They also published two larger hardcover editions, Mutt and Jeff Big Book (1926) and Mutt and Jeff Big Book No. 2 (1929). They left the comic strip reprint field in 1934, concentrating on their juvenile lines, just as the modern day comic book was introduced that same year with Famous Funnies. Leon estimated the company sold more than 35,000,000 copies of its comics reprints.

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