Centaur Publications

In 1936, comic-book entrepreneur Everett M. "Busy" Arnold gave financial or other unspecified help to that New York City-based firm, founded by John Mahon and Bill Cook, former employees of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications (the primary forerunner of DC Comics).

This two-page feature was by future Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and was part of their Doctor Occult continuity, with the name changed for trademark consideration.

This was the beginning of a serial that introduced the villain Koth, and the Seven, that continued into DC's More Fun Comics #14–17 (issues also designated as vol.

That comic-book series featured the first masked hero in American comics, writer-artist George Brenner's the Clock, in the November 1936 issue.

By January 1938, Ultem was bought out by Joe Hardie, Fred Gardner, and Raymond Kelly's Centaur Publications, Inc., which had been publishing pulp magazines since at least 1933.

Centaur ceased publication four years later, primarily due to poor distribution, but in that period had created several colorful characters, including Bill Everett's Amazing Man.

[citation needed] R. A. Jones was approached by a small book publisher, Westerntainment,[5] to do a prose novel about the Centaur characters with the idea that the story take place in their original time period.