Camera Comics

(Above) Volume 1, Issue 1 of Camera Comics, October 1944.
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(Above) Volume 1, No. 3 of Camera Comics, October 1944.
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(Above) Volume 1, No. 4 of Camera Comics, December 1944, with a story about Eadweard Muybridge.
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(Above) Volume 1, No. 5 of Camera Comics, Summer 1945.
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(Above) Volume 1, No. 6 of Camera Comics, Fall 1945.Click image for larger view.

(Above) From Volume 1, No. 1 - Opening spread of the story of Matthew B. Brady.Click image for larger view.
(Above) Volume 2, No. 7 of Camera Comics, Winter 1946.Click image for larger view.

(Above) Volume 2, No. 8 of Camera Comics, Spring 1946.Click image for larger view.

(Above) Volume 2, No. 9 of Camera Comics, Summer 1946.Click image for larger view.

(Above) Story series about Jim Lane, Insurance Investigator.
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(Above) Story series about Kid Click, boy photographer.
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(Above) Story series about Linda Lens, pro photographer.
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(Above) “Make a Pistol Grip for Your Camera,” a “how-to” article that is very strange.
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HERE’S A STRANGE COMIC BOOK FOR YOU. Thanks to my friend and snapshot collector Robert Jackson, who sent me these comics from his collection, I can now share them with reader’s of Accidental Mysteries.

These comic books were published between July 1944 and 1946 by the U.S. Camera Publishing Company, apparently as a way to build interest in the growing hobby of photography. With on-going cornball series like Jim Lane, Insurance Investigator and Kid Click, the publishers were making sure that they were strategically hitting all areas for the growth of photography. Yep! I want to be an insurance investigator and follow people with my camera! Also, Linda Lens was a female professional photographer—very progressive for the day.

While these comic books were obviously targeted to kids, there was always some more adult articles, like how to build a pin hole camera, or how to make wooden “pistol grip” for your camera—a way to make rapid fire pics. This pistol grip device is especially odd— a low-tech approach to a high tech (for the time) device.