Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson

Early life and military career

Malcolm was born on January 7, 1890, in Greeneville, Tennessee. His father, Lew O. Strain, died after the birth of his second son, Malcolm's brother Christopher. Another sibling, a sister named Caroline, died in 1894, when Malcolm was four. Their mother, Antoinette Wheeler-Strain (née Wheeler), afterward moved to New York City, became a journalist, and later joined a start-up women's magazine in Portland, Oregon. By this time she had changed her last name to "Strahan", a variant of "Strain", and upon marrying teacher Thomas J. B. Nicholson, who would become the boys' stepfather, reverted to her maiden name and appended her new married name. The brothers were raised in "an iconoclastic, intellectual household" where their family entertained such guests as Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling.

Wheeler-Nicholson spent his boyhood both in Portland and on a horse ranch in Washington state. Raised riding horses, he went on to attend the military academy The Manlius School in DeWitt, New York, and in 1917 joined the U.S. Cavalry as a second lieutenant. According to differing sources, he rose to become either "the youngest major in the Army", the youngest in the Cavalry, or, as per the family, one of the youngest in the Cavalry, at age 27, By his own account, he "chased bandits on the Mexican border, fought fevers and played polo in the Philippines, led a battalion of infantry against the Bolsheviki in Siberia, helped straighten out the affairs of the army in France [and] commanded the headquarters cavalry of the American force in the Rhine". His outposts included Japan; London, England; and Germany. After World War I, Wheeler-Nicholson was sent to study at Saint-Cyr in Paris, France.

The major's public criticism of Army command in an open letter to President Warren G. Harding, and his accusations against senior officers, led to countercharges, hearings, and a lawsuit against West Point Superintendent General Fred W. Sladen. Wheeler-Nicholson also was a victim of a shooting that his family called an Army-sanctioned assassination attempt and the Army called the mistake of a guard who mistook Wheeler-Nicholson for an intruder at another officer's home. It left him hospitalized with a bullet wound. Following this, Wheeler-Nicholson in June 1922 was convicted in a court-martial trial of violating the 96th Article of War in publishing the open letter. Although he was not demoted, his career was dead-ended. He resigned his commission in 1923. His $100,000 lawsuit against Sladen was dismissed by the New York State Supreme Court the following year.

Writing career

Wheeler-Nicholson wrote nonfiction about military topics, including the 1922 book Modern Cavalry. He also wrote fiction, including the Western hardcover novel Death at the Corral. By 1922, Wheeler-Nicholson had begun writing short stories for the pulps. The major soon became a cover name, penning military and historical adventure fiction for such magazines as Adventure and Argosy. He additionally ghost wrote six adventure novels about air hero Bill Barnes for Street & Smith Publications.

Concurrently, in 1925, he founded Wheeler-Nicholson, Inc. to syndicate his work, which included a daily comic-strip adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, with art by N. Brewster Morse.

Later career

Wheeler-Nicholson suffered from continual financial crises, both in his personal and professional lives. "Dick Woods" artist Lyman Anderson, whose Manhattan apartment Wheeler-Nicholson used as a rent-free pied-à-terre, said, "His wife would call [from home on Long Island] and be in tears... and say she didn't have money and the milkman was going to cut off the milk for the kids. I'd send out 10 bucks, just because she needed it".

The third and final title published under his aegis would be Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated Dec. 1936, but eventually premiering three months late, with a March 1937 cover date.

Detective Comics would become a sensation with the introduction of Batman in issue #27 (May 1939). By then, however, Wheeler-Nicholson was gone. In 1937, in debt to printing-plant owner and magazine distributor Harry Donenfeld – who was as well a pulp-magazine publisher and a principal in the magazine distributorship Independent News – Wheeler-Nicholson was compelled to take Donenfeld on as a partner in order to publish Detective Comics #1. Detective Comics, Inc. was formed, with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack Liebowitz, Donenfeld's accountant, listed as owners.

The major remained for a year, but cash-flow problems continued. DC's 50th-anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great cites the Great Depression as "forc[ing] Wheeler-Nicholson to sell his publishing business to Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz in 1937". However, wrote comics historian Gerard Jones:

In early 1938, Harry Donenfeld sent him and his wife on a cruise to Cuba to 'work up new ideas'. When they came home, the major found the lock to his office door changed. In his absence, Harry had sued him for nonpayment and pushed Detective Comics, Inc. into bankruptcy court. There a judge named Abe Mennen, one of Harry's old Tammany buddies, had been appointed interim president of the firm and arranged a quick sale of its assets to Independent News. Harry gave the major a percentage of More Fun Comics as a shut-up token and wished him well.

Wheeler-Nicholson "gave up on the world of commerce thereafter and went back to writing war stories and critiques of the American military" in addition to straight "articles on politics and military history".

While studying at the École Supérieure de Guerre in Paris, France, after World War I, Wheeler-Nicholson met Elsa Sachsenhausen Björkbom. They were married in Koblenz, Germany in 1920. Their first child, Antoinette, was born in Stockholm, Sweden, his wife's home, in February 1921. Antoinette married on April 11, 1945, when Wheeler-Nicholson and his wife lived in Great Neck, New York, on Long Island.

In 1923, their second child, daughter Marianne, was born. Son Malcolm was born in November 1926, in Rye, New York, son Douglas in 1928, and daughter Diane in 1932. Douglas married on September 2, 1955, by which time Wheeler-Nicholson and his wife were living in Bayside, Queens, New York City. The major died on September 21, 1965, in New York City and was buried at Nassau Knolls Cemetery in Port Washington, New York.

Actress Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (b. 1960) is the daughter of Wheeler-Nicholson's son Douglas.