Welcome to the Standard/Better/Nedor page! AC Comics presents the Golden Age to a modern audience with it's superb, high quality reprints. Painstakingly recreated from the original comics, these wonders of modern technology preserve the creative legacy of the great American art form, the comic book! The book at left is an example of the many books that you can buy with reprints from publisher Standard/Better/Nedor in our Online Store. As is the case with many AC reprint books, there is text included in Golden-Age Greats Vol. 13.... an interview with Jerry Robinson, one of the best artists ever to work for Nedor.

As the comic book began to show signs of being a money-maker and the decade of the 1930's came to a close, existing magazine publishers began to take note. Among the first to branch out into four-color fantasy were the pulp magazine houses. One of the most successful of those was Ned Pines' Better Publications, purveyors of adventure pulp fiction since the 1920's. Not one to let an opportunity pass him by, Pines initially tried his hand at comics in November of 1939, with the first issue of Best Comics. Utilizing an experimental sideways-opening format, Best proved a failure, but by the next spring, Better (known at various times as Nedor, Standard, and finally Pines Publications) was back with more enduring fare.

February, April and June of 1940 would see the release of the titles Thrilling, Exciting and Startling Comics respectively, echoing successful Pines pulps with identical titles. General interest anthologies to start with, all three soon began to rely heavily on costumed, super-powered characters that were doing well with other publishers. The dark, dramatically-costumed Black Terror proved their longest-running hero, starring in Exciting, his own title, and the Better star-showcase, America's Best, until 1949. A few others, like the Doc Savage-inspired Doc Strange, Fighting Yank, and Pyroman had respectable runs. Unfortunately, unexciting artwork (often provided by the small Editorial Artist's Syndicate shop) and pedestrian scripts kept the Better line from achieving great success; through the super-hero era the line's sensational Alex Schomburg covers were often the comics greatest selling points. Schomburg did almost all the Better covers between 1941 and 1950- a prodigious output. At right is one of his Fighting Yank covers.

A few creative bright spots appeared toward the end of the 1940's, as artwork from freelancers like Jerry Robinson, Mort Meskin, George Tuska, Ruben Moriera, Mort Lawrence, Gene Fawcett, Artie Saaf and a few others began to appear alongside that of art director Ralph Mayo, and his young assistant, Frank Frazetta. Beyond supercharacters, Better had considerable success with a number of funny animal titles, like Coo Coo, Goofy, Barnyard and Supermouse among them, and several long-running reality-based adventure comics, Real Life Comics and It Really Happened. As the 1950's dawned, Better (now Standard) tried new genres, including crime, horror, jungle, glamour, romance and Western, without much success. Throughout this period, it's most successful comic was a licensed Dennis The Menace; and they briefly produced the Mighty Mouse comic book. By 1959, Pines got out of the publishing business, and one of the most pulp-inspired comic lines of the Golden Age was only a memory. In the 1990's, AC Comics revived a number of Better heroes and made them recurring characters in it's Femforce/Paragon comic book universe, where they continue to appear in new stories. Included are The Black Terror, Miss Masque, The Fighting Yank, American Crusader, Princess Pantha, Tygra, Pyroman and others.

Originally published by Standard/Better/Nedor Publications were stories with art by Jerry Robinson, Mort Meskin, Ruben Moriera, George Tuska, Mort Lawrence, Ralph Mayo, Frank Frazetta, Alex Toth, Maurice Whitman, Artie Saaf, Gene Fawcette, H.C. Kiefer, George Evans, Alex Schomburg, Ken Battefield, Nick Cardy, Everett Raymond Kintsler, Will Elder, Mort Drucker, Dan DeCarlo, John Celardo, Al Camerta, Bob Butts, Ken Bald, Rafael Astarita, Graham Ingels, Stan Ashe, Murphy Anderson, Jack Alderman, Vince Fago, Paul Norris, Bob Okser, Don Perlin, Max Plaisted, Kin Platt, Charles Quinlan, Pete Riss, Don Rico, George Roussos, Mike Sekowsky, John Severin, Howard Sherman, John Spranger, Lin Streeter, Emil Gershwin, Fred Guardineer, E.E. Hibbard, Andre Le Blanc, Bob Lubbers, Sheldon Moldoff, Jim Mooney, Pete Morisi, Bill Ward, Clem Weisbecker, Elmer Wexler, Al Williamson, Wally Wood, and Sam Cooper.

Look for our Men of Mystery Spotlight Special focusing entirely on stories from this classic comic book publisher available NOW in our Online Store. This book also has text on Nedor.