Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson
| Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
January 4, 1890 or January 7, 1890 (sources differ) Greeneville, Tennessee |
| Died | 1965 (aged 74-75) Long Island, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Publisher |
Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson (January 4, 1890 or January 7, 1890 – 1965) was an American pulp magazine writer and entrepreneur who pioneered the American comic book, publishing the first such periodical consisting solely of original material rather than reprints of newspaper comic strips. Long after his departure from the comic book company he founded, Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications would evolve into DC Comics, one of the U.S.'s two largest comic book publishers along with rival Marvel Comics.
He was a 2008 Judges' Choice inductee into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was born in Greeneville,Tennessee. His father, whose surname was Strain, died in 1894, after the birth of his second son, Malcolm's brother Christopher. Another sibling, a sister, died in 1894, when Malcolm was four. Their mother, Antoinette Wheeler, afterward moved to New York City, became a journalist, and later joined a start-up women's magazine in Portland, Oregon. By this time she had changed her last name to "Straham", a variant of "Strain", and upon marrying teacher T. J. B. Nicholson, who would become the boys' stepfather, reverted to her maiden name and appended her new married name. The brothers were raised in "an iconoclastic, intellectual household" where his family entertained such guests as Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling.
Wheeler-Nicholson spent his boyhood both in Portland and on a horse ranch in Washington State. Raised riding horses, he went on to attend the military academy The Manlius School in DeWitt, New York, and in 1917 joined the U.S. Cavalry as a second-lieutenant. According to differing sources, he rose to become either "the youngest major in the Army", the youngest in the Cavalry, or one of the youngest in the Cavalry. By his account, he "chased bandits on the Mexican border, fought fevers and played polo in the Philippines, led a battalion of infantry against the Bolsheviki in Siberia, helped straighten out the affairs of the army in France [and] commanded the headquarters cavalry of the American force in the Rhine". His Cavalry unit was among those under John J. Pershing's command that in 1916 hunted the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. The following year, he served under Pershing fighting the Muslim Moros in the Philippines, and served with a Cossack troop in Siberia. Subsequent outposts included Japan; London, England; and Germany. After World War I, Wheeler-Nicholson was sent to study at Saint-Cyr in Paris, France.
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