otional item to customers who bought Phillps Toothpaste.
From the Eastern Color Printing Company, M. C. Gaines would move on to the McClure Syndicate, the same company which had given Widenberg and Gaines permission to reprint their comic strips in Funnies on Parade. There he would again make comic book history. It was in 1938 that Harry Donenfeld, publisher of National Comics, was about to launch a new comic book to be called Action Comics. In need of comic strips for his new magazine, Donenfeld approached Gaines to see if he had anything which Action Comics could use. Among the comic strips which the McClure Syndicate had rejected was one by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster called Superman. Gaines did not particularly care for the comic strip, but his assistant Sheldon Mayer thought otherwise. Since the McClure Syndicate would not publish Superman, Mayer persuaded Gaines to recommend the strip to Donenfeld. Donenfeld then showed Superman to National editor Vince Sullivan, who thought that it would be successful with children because it had a lot of action. Siegel and Shuster were paid ten dollars a page by Donenfeld for the first Superman story. Having tried to sell the character to a number of newspaper syndicates and failed, they sold the character outright to National for $300. Fortunately for Donenfeld, but perhaps unfortunately for Siegel and Shuster, Superman proved to be a phenomenal success. M. C. Gaines and his assistant Sheldon Mayer were then responsible for directing National to its most successful character of all time and what many consider to be the world's first superhero.
Of course, M. C. Gaines' association with National Comics. would not end with Superman. In 1939 Jack Leibowitz, Harry Donenfeld's partner at National, wanted the company to publish more magazines; however, Donenfeld felt that National was already publishing enough comic books. Leibowitz then formed a partnership with M. C. Gaines to create All-American Comics Inc., a publisher which could rightfully be called National's sister company. All-American was a separate company from National, with its own offices and its own staff, but its magazines bore the DC imprint and National characters appeared in All-American comic books and vice versa. Accompanying Gaines from the McClure Syndicate was Sheldon Mayer, who became the editor of the new line.
The first comic book published by All-American Comics Inc. was All-American Comics, in April 1939. Not only was it the first comic book published by the new company, but it was also the first reprint anthology book to bear the DC imprint. The first issue featured reprints of Skippy (star of the first comic book dedicated to a single character) and Mutt and Jeff newspaper strips. Eventually All-American Comics would use original material, including a superhero comic strip called Green Lantern. Also in April 1939 All-American Comics Inc. published Movie Comics. Movie Comics had a unique format. Motion picture stills were tinted and presented in comic strip fashion. Unfortunately Movie Comics did not prove to be popular and it was cancelled within a year.
While All-American Comics Inc. was just getting started, National was seeking to repeat the success of Superman with more superheroes. Their first attempt, a character called The Crimson Avenger who appeared in Detective Comics, had proven less than successful; however, their second attempt, a character called Batman who also appeared in Detective Comics, proved to be a smash hit. Clearly superheroes meant good business for comic book companies, so M. C. Gaines decided that All-American Comics Inc. would publish its own superhero magazine. Gaines looked to writer Gardner Fox to provide material for the new book. Among the artists who worked on it were Harry Lampert and Stan Asch. The end result was Flash Comics #1, January 1940, arguably one of the most important comic books of the Golden Age of comics. Flash Comics featured what were to become some of All-American's most popular characters: The Flash, Hawkman, and Johnny Thunder. With the 