The Harvey Comics Companion (hardback) (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781629331744)

Harvey Comics - the name conjures up images of characters such as Casper, the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich, the Poor Little Rich Boy adorning small TV sets alongside the spine of their comic books.

But the Harvey story was much, much more. A company started by Alfred Harvey in 1941, he soon brought in his brothers Leon and Robert to establish a comic book company that got its start in the Golden Age with a number of superhero titles including their first star, The Black Cat.

Harvey continued on with a number of genres including war, romance and horror and was a leading publisher of gag comic books and newspaper comic strip reprint books including Joe Palooka, Sad Sack, Blondie and Dick Tracy.

When the Comics Code Authority cracked down on comic books in the 1950s, Harvey fortuitously acquired the publishing rights to Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios animated cartoon characters and later owned the characters outright including Baby Huey, Little Audrey and Herman & Katnip.

As time went on, Harvey added to their stable of characters with Little Dot, Little Lotta, Stumbo, Hot Stuff, Spooky, Wendy, and many more.

Comic book and animation historian and Harvey expert Mark Arnold finally tells the complete story of Alfred Harvey's amazing company in The Harvey Comics Companion