Superior Publishing was a comics publisher based in Toronto that was active between the years 1947 and 1956.

After WWII, the Liberal government re-introduced an import ban that included US comics. As the Canadian comics publishers were allowed to reprint and repackage American comics in Canada, this lead to a boom in Canadian comics publishing as many companies sought the reprint rights to popular American comics (instead of creating original ones), and Superior was the leading company at the time to do this.

Superior acquired the rights to repackage EC Comics in 1949. Although the import ban was eliminated in 1951 (and American comics flooded over the border again to the delight of many), Superior continued reprinting and repackaging many US titles – including EC titles like Tales from the Crypt.

By 1955, the anti-horror comics sentiment had spread far and wide and Superior ceased publisher horror comics completely that year and limped along for an additional year before closing their doors in 1956 and effectively ending comics publishing in English Canada for decades.

The US edition of Tales from the Crypt #20 (the first issue of the title, incidentally) is cover dated October/November 1950, so I would surmise that since Superior had the rights to repackage EC Comics from 1949 on, that the Canadian edition was issued shortly afterward, but I’m afraid that I don’t know the exact lag time between first US publication and the Canadian repackaged edition.

John Bell has some great information about Superior over at the collections Canada website:

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/comics/027002-8400-e.html

Thanks,
Kevin