''Treasure Chest'' (full name for most of its run: ''Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact'') was a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

-oriented

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

series created by

Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Day ...

publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

George A. Pflaum and distributed in

parochial schools A parochial school is a private primary or secondary school affiliated with a religious organization, and whose curriculum includes general religious education in addition to secular subjects, such as science, mathematics and language arts. The wo ...

from 1946 to 1972. Its inspirational stories of

sports Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...

and

folk hero A folk hero or national hero is a type of hero – real, fictional or mythological – with their name, personality and deeds embedded in the popular consciousness of a people, mentioned frequently in folk songs, folk tales and other folklore; an ...

es,

saint In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of Q-D-Š, holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and Christian denomination, denominat ...

s, school kids, Catholic living, history,

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

and similar topics were drawn by artists that included such prominent figures as EC's

Reed Crandall Reed Leonard Crandall (February 22, 1917 – September 13, 1982) Reed Crandall
at ...

Graham Ingels Graham J. Ingels (; June 7, 1915April 4, 1991) was a comic book and magazine illustrator best known for his work in EC Comics during the 1950s, notably on ''The Haunt of Fear'' and ''Tales from the Crypt'', horror titles written and edited by Al ...

and

Joe Orlando Joseph Orlando (April 4, 1927 – December 23, 1998) was an Italian American illustrator, writer, editor and cartoonist during a lengthy career spanning six decades. He was the associate publisher of '' Mad'' and the vice president of DC Comics, ...

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is an American comic book publishing, publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Co ...

Joe Sinnott Joseph Leonard Sinnott (; October 16, 1926 June 25, 2020) was an American comic book artist. Working primarily as an inker, Sinnott is best known for his long stint on Marvel Comics' ''Fantastic Four'', from 1965 to 1981 (and briefly in the la ...

, and

DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...

Murphy Anderson Murphy C. Anderson Jr. (July 9, 1926 – October 22, 2015) was an American comics artist, known as one of the premier inkers of his era, who worked for companies such as DC Comics for over fifty years, starting in the Golden Age of Comic Books in ...

and

Jim Mooney James Noel Mooney (August 13, 1919 – March 30, 2008) was an American comics artist best known for his long tenure at DC Comics and as the signature artist of Supergirl, as well as a Marvel Comics inker and Spider-Man artist, both during wh ...

. Other features included literary adaptations and such typical comics fare as

cartoon animal Talking animals are a common element in mythology and folk tales, children's literature, and modern comic books and animated cartoons. Fictional talking animals often are anthropomorphic, possessing human-like qualities (such as bipedal walkin ...

humor strips.

Publication history

Created by

Dayton Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Da ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

George A. Pflaum and debuting March 12, 1946, as ''Treasure Chest of Fun & Facts'', ''Treasure Chest'' was distributed in

and published biweekly throughout the school year until the 1960s, when it became monthly and doubled the number of pages. It was available solely by student subscription, and delivered in bulk to classrooms. Initially, the covers were of the same paper stock as the interiors; comic books' more typical slick covers were added in 1948. Six-issue summer editions were published in 1966 and 1967. Beginning with Vol. 4, #1 (Sept. 7, 1948), the title changed to ''Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact'', with the final word now singular. A source notes that with Vol. 23, #1 (Sept. 7, 1967), the title changed a final time, exchanging the ampersand for "and", although Vol. 21 No. 1 (Sept. 9, 1965) and featuring "The Champ is Back" as the cover story uses the ampersand in place of the word "and". Many very early issues were cover-titled simply ''Treasure Chest'' without the otherwise ubiquitous subhead. Sometime during the 1960s, ''Treasure Chest'' began to be published by T.S. Dennison. In 1964, a ten-part serial in Vol 19 #11-20 told the story of a presidential campaign vying for the nomination of fictional Governor of New York Timothy Pettigrew. The character's face was hidden throughout the series, and in the final chapter, it was revealed that Governor Pettigrew was black. The final issue was dated July 1972.''Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact''
at

Don Markstein's Toonopedia Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...

Archived
from the original November 8, 2011. Retrieved 2011-03-04. Pflaum also published the magazines ''Junior Catholic Messenger'', ''Our Little Messenger'', and ''Young Catholic Messenger''.

Features and contributors

A long-running series, "Chuck White" (later "Chuck White & His Friends"), created by Capt. Frank Moss, featured the son of a mixed marriage, Catholic and

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

, and even in its early days casually depicted such relatively daring concepts as racially integrated friendships. Series contributors after Moss included writer Max Pine and

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

artists

Frank Borth Frank M. Borth III (April 1, 1918 – August 9, 2009) was an American comic book artist. Biography Borth was born and raised in Cleveland, eventually graduating in 1940 from the Cleveland School of Art, where he majored in illustration."New Sea A ...

and, in the 1960s,

Fran Matera Francis A. "Fran" Matera (December 9, 1924 – March 15, 2012) was an American comic strip artist best known for his King Features Syndicate adventure strip '' Steve Roper and Mike Nomad'' from 1984 to 2004. In addition to his extensive experie ...

. A nonfiction historical feature about the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, "

This Godless Communism "This Godless Communism" was an American propaganda comics feature that appeared in ''Treasure Chest'', a biweekly, subscription-only comic book distributed in parochial schools from 1946 to 1972. Designed to inform students of the then-prevalent ...

", drawn by

Reed Crandall Reed Leonard Crandall (February 22, 1917 – September 13, 1982) Reed Crandall
at ...

, debuted in vol. 17, #2 (Sept. 28, 1961) and appeared in every second issue through #20. Others who worked on ''Treasure Chest'' included writer-editor Bob Wischmeyer, writers Ruth Barton, Frances E. Crandall, Helen L. Gillum, Arch Ward, and Berry Reese, and artists or writer-artists Wilbur G. Adam,

Bernard Baily Bernard Baily (April 5, 1916 – January 19, 1996)
at the

, E.A. Jurist (possibly comic-book writer Ed Jurist),

, Clara Elsene Peck,

Bob Powell Bob Powell (né Stanley Robert Pawlowski; While gives Stanislav Pavlowsky, and gives Stanislav Pavlowsky, Bails and Ware note: "family name corrected by his son, Seth R. Powell July 2006." October 2, 1916

, Sid Quinn,

, and Ozella Welch.

References

External links

* * {{cite web, url=http://archives.lib.cua.edu/findingaid/treasurechest.cfm, title= ''Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact'' Comic Book Collection , publisher=

The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private university, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution ...

, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110216071635/http://archives.lib.cua.edu/findingaid/treasurechest.cfm , archivedate=February 16, 2011, url-status=live

Publication history

Features and contributors

References

External links

Further reading