Either editing in his off hours while continuing to work at Lionel, or having left and returned to the company — a December 1944 letter that he signed places St. John in the Lionel advertising department at that time — St. John left the model-train maker in early 1945. After acquiring a reported $400,000 in start-up financing, he began publishing two comic books, "Comics Revue" and "Pageant of Comics", both reprinting comic strips. They appeared under his own name as publisher in 1947. Shortly afterward, his comic book company took on the name St. John Publications. It had offices at 545 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, and in 1950 took on additional space at 235-243 Pulaski Street in the neighboring borough of Brooklyn.