The blog TV Tropes, in an undated entry, gives a short history of Charlton, a low budget printer/publisher. Charlton’s printing presses had been used originally to print cereal boxes. Charlton cut corners by using plastic printing plates rather than standard metal plates. It operated on the cheap for its whole existence from 1935 to 1986, when it finally shut its doors (and retired its overworked printing presses.) Wikipedia describes the origin of the business by telling that John Santangelo Jr and Ed Levy met while in prison. Santangelo had been publishing song-lyric magazines, violating copyrights, and was sentenced to a year in prison. Levy was a lawyer, whose crime is not listed. They both had sons named Charles, which created their first company name, T.W.O. Charles Company, later changed to Charlton.
Charlton went into comic books in the '40s, and published
Yellowjacket Comics, which featured an unusual hero, Yellowjacket, who could get bees to help him. Note: Yellowjacket was beaten to comic books by Red Bee, from Quality Comics. Also, as has been pointed out, a yellowjacket is not a bee, but a yellowjacket costume was bright yellow, and looked better in comic books printed using plastic printing plates.
From
Yellowjacket Comics #5 (1945). Artwork, pencils only, attributed by the Grand Comics Database to Ken Battefield.
