Fawcett Publications was an American publishing company founded in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota by Wilford Hamilton "Captain Billy" Fawcett (1885–1940). It kicked off with the publication of the bawdy humor magazine Captain Billy's Whiz Bang and expanded into a magazine empire with the first issue of Mechanix Illustrated in the 1920s, followed by numerous titles including True Confessions, Family Circle, Woman's Day, and True. Fawcett Comics, which began operating in 1939, led to the introduction of Captain Marvel. The company became a publisher of paperbacks in 1950 with the opening of Gold Medal Books. In 1953, the company abandoned its roster of superhero comic characters in the wake of declining sales and a lawsuit for infringement by the Captain Marvel character on the copyright of the Action Comics character Superman, and ended its publication of comic books. It was purchased by CBS Publications in 1977 and subsequently underwent dismantling and absorption by other companies. Captain Billy's Whiz Bang At the age of 16, Fawcett ran away from home to join the Army, and the Spanish–American War took him to the Philippines. Back in Minnesota, he became a police reporter for the Minneapolis Journal. While a World War I Army captain, Fawcett's experience with the Army publication Stars and Stripes gave him the notion to get into publishing. His bawdy cartoon and joke magazine, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, became the launchpad for a vast publishing empire embracing magazines, comic books and paperback books. The title Captain Billy's Whiz Bang combined Fawcett's military moniker with the nickname of a destructive World War I artillery shell. According to one account, the earliest issues were mimeographed pamphlets, typed on a borrowed typewriter and peddled around Minneapolis by Captain Billy and his four sons. However, in Captain Billy's version, he stated that when he began publishing in October 1919, he ordered a print run of 5,000 copies because of the discount on a large order compared with rates for only several hundred copies. Distributing free copies of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang to wounded veterans and his Minnesota friends, he then circulated the remaining copies to newsstands in hotels. With gags like, "AWOL means After Women Or Liquor", the joke book caught on, and in 1921, Captain Billy made the highly inflated claim that sales of Whiz Bang were "soaring to the million mark." The book Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals notes: Few periodicals reflect the