Toby Press
| Status | defunct (1955) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1949 |
| Founder | Elliott Caplin |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Publication types | Comic books |
| Fiction genres | Licensed characters, romance, war, Westerns, Adventure, Funny animal |
| Imprints | Minoan |
Toby Press was an American comic-book company that published from 1949 to 1955. Founded by Elliott Caplin, brother of cartoonist Al Capp and himself an established comic strip writer, the company published reprints of Capp's Li'l Abner strip; licensed-character comics starring such film and animated cartoon properties as John Wayne and Felix the Cat; and original conceptions, including romance, war, Western, and adventure comics. Some of its comics were published under the imprint Minoan. Some covers bore the logo ANC, standing for American News Company, at the time the country's largest newsstand distributor.
It is unrelated to the book publisher Toby Press, acquired by Amazon.com in 2010.
Elliott Caplin entered the comic-book field as editor of True Comics for the Parents Magazine Institute. Some years later, he founded Toby Press with reprints of his brother Al Capp's popular newspaper comic strip Li'l Abner, a satire built around hillbilly archetypes. The first Toby comic-book series was Al Capp's Li'l Abner, which began with issue #70 (May 1949), picking up the numbering from Harvey Publications' Li'l Abner Comics. It ran 28 issues, through #97 (Jan. 1955) Toby's second title was the three-issue Al Capp's Dogpatch Comics, numbered #71, followed by #2–3 (June–Dec. 1949). These issues reprint Li'l Abner strips that the newspaper syndicate United Feature had published in the omnibus comic-book Tip Top #112–114 (Nov. 1946 – Jan. 1947). Following through 1952 were Al Capp's Shmoo Comics #1–5 (July 1949 – April 1950); Al Capp's Wolf Gal #1–2 (1951–1952); and a series of pocket-sized, 6.75 × 3.5-inch, one-shot comics produced as premiums for Oxydol and Dreft detergents: Al Capp's Shmoo in Washable Jones' Travels; Al Capp's Daisy Mae in Ham Sangwidges also Cousin Weakeyes, and Al Capp's Li'l Abner in The Mystery o' the Cave!!
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