Editors Press Service (EPS; later known as Atlantic Syndication) was a print syndication service of columns and comic strips that was in operation from 1933 to 2010. It was notable for being the first U.S. company to actively syndicate material internationally. Despite surviving for more than seven decades, EPS was never a large operation, characterized by comic strip historian Allan Holtz as a "hole-in-the-wall outfit."[1]
Editors Press Service was founded in 1933 by Joshua B. Powers in partnership with The Evening Post Publishing Company, to provide Latin American newspapers with comics strips, cooking features, and other material, in exchange for ad space that Powers would in turn sell to U.S. companies. Powers was reportedly a former U.S. government agent whose beat was South America.[citation needed]
Chilean political figure Carlos Dávila was associated with EPS from its foundation in 1933. Sebastian Tomas Robles, son of Peruvian composer and ethnomusicologist Daniel Alomía Robles, was a staff cartoonist for EPS beginning in 1933.
Cartoonist Mort Leav began his professional career in 1936 with EPS, supplying illustrations in the period 1937 to 1940 for articles syndicated to South Americannewspapers.[2]
From 1936 to 1940, Editors Press published the weekly comic bookWags in the U.K. (partnering with T. V. Boardman) and Australia.[3]Wags #1 (Jan. 1937) is notable for featuring the debut of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.[4][5] She was created by Jerry Iger, who ran his own small studio, Universal Phoenix Features (UFP), and who commissioned Mort Meskin to produce prototype drawings of Sheena.[6]
Comic strips syndicated by EPS at various points in the 1940s included Captain Wings, Doctor X, and Olly of the Movies.
After a long hiatus which last from the 1950s through most of the 1980s, Editors Press got back into comic strip syndication in the 1980s and '90s. Starting in 1989 they began syndicating a Tom and Jerry strip, produced mostly by Kelley Jarvis,[7] which ran until 1994. At that point the company picked up The Flintstones by Karen Machette, which it inherited from the McNaught Syndicate.[8] Editors Press syndicated The Flintstones until 1998.
In 2004, the Evening Post Publishing Company sold Editors Press Service to the Universal Press Syndicate (UPS), which renamed it Atlantic Syndication.[9]
Olly of the Movies by Julian Ollendorff (c. 1938 – c. February 1946) — inherited from Consolidated News Features, which had inherited it from the McNaught Syndicate, where it had debuted January 22, 1934[1]
^"1961 Timeline, October 2: The Flintstones spins off into newspapers in a new comic strip illustrated by Gene Hazelton and Roger Armstrong." American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960–64 by John Wells, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2012, Page 43.
