Theagenes

The baby boom is probably part of the equation, for sure. On your earlier question, the appearance of the Superhero may not have been crucial to success of the comic book industry, I do think that the superhero was crucial to comic book collecting. And if not for the appearance of a strong collecting hobby would the medium have survived much past the 60's or 70's? Or would have it gone the way of dime novels and pulps and been completely replaced by TV? The Silver Age or Second Heroic Age may have bought the medium a few extra decades of life in the US at any rate, since all the non-fantastic genres made the switch to TV. Superheros gave the medium a raison d'etre in the 60s through the 80s.

West, I think I have read too many comics. Mayebe it was visiting with legendary comics collector Ernie McGee NJ starting back in 1971. He was in his 80s then, born in 1884, began seriously collecting comics in 1914. It was his Yellow Kid complete run which Jack Herbet NYC bought from Ernie's daughters in 1976 after his death, who in turn donated that YK run upon his death to Bill Blackbeard SF, who, in turn, used it to make the 1995 Yellow Kid book Kitchen published or, Bill Blackbeard himself, another long time friend now passed on. A couple hundred treks in to his San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Or simply the years I spent traveling to major holdings of 1800s comics stuff making the OPG indexes of Vict and Plat - seeing the wealth of fable created by thousands of comics creators I never knew existed until i went on my quest once I read about 1800s comics in a 1946 Gersham Legman article For a very long time I used to believe like the many of the contrary postings I have read here. Then i saw "the light" - the light of Comics Truth I believed the mantra taught for a long time: YK first comic strip in 1895, FF first comic book in 1934. then went thru a (short) period of feeling maybe everything one thought one knew was wrong. Now, I have been a bit fascinated with the concentration on of importance attached to "super hero" comics supposedly 'saving' American comic books. To me, that remains simply silly, and not seeking to cause umbrage in any one when I uses the term. In the 20s and 30s comic strips artists were some of the highest paid entertainers in the country. I have pictures of 20,000 fans swarming to see George McManus in 1923, one might almost call it a comics festival, or some such term one might want to use. If Donenfeld had never published Action Comics #1, George Delacorte would still have entered in to his comic book publishing contracts. The later was "there" pioneering original material news stand comics periodicals since the the late 1920s. When Delacorte sold out his 50-50 partnership in Famous Funnies and began putting Popular Comics together by mid 1935, Gaines came to work for him as editor, whom in turn, hired a teenaged Shelly Mayer. Hence, there still would have been a Scribbly.... The comic "book" magazine industry would still havbe evolved with or without Superman and his "spawn" I also think the side stiched periodical comics magazine is a dinosaur slowly finally on its was out as a viable publishing format except for a very few titles as e-book delivery continues to accelerate via generational change in entertainment delivery systems. [font:Times New Roman]This was never the mantra that I was taught, nor does it coincide with my own research. If memory serves, the Yellow Kid has always been portrayed as the first regularly appearing color newspaper comic, ...that's a far cry from the first comic strip, B&W sequential art or whatever. That still holds true, until proven otherwise. Furthermore, along the comic continuum, the Yellow Kid is much closer to both newspaper comic strips and the comic book by heritage, color being an important element in that evolution from a historical perspective. Famous Funnies is still regarded as the first comic book because comic books as we know them are essentially not books, but rather periodicals. This is one of the ironic paradoxes of the genre, the other obvious one being that most comics (at least the well known, popular comics) are not really comic (in the comedic sense)[/font]. Yes, in spite of Bob's protests that the Yellow Kid wasn't the first anything, I believe just the opposite. In 1993 I presented a paper at the Popular Culture Association titled, "The Yellow Kid: America's First Comic Character Success Story." I based my position on two main points. The first was that Outcault's character clearly influenced circulation sales during the bitter Pulitzer--Hearst battles in New York City, In fact, the Yellow Kid was so popular that Hearst lured him away from Pulitzer at great expense. The second is that the Yellow Kid was the first comic character to be used successfully in merchandising a wide array of products ranging from dolls, toys, and games to cigarettes and whiskey. The breadth of merchandise featuring the Yellow Kid demonstrated for the first time that a newspaper comic character could sell products. It is true that the Brownies had enjoyed some success in this arena, but they were a children's fantasy feature in a magazine and not a newspaper comic strip until much later, and then the failed in that medium. It is certainly true that the Yellow Kid was not in the fist newspaper comic strips, but I think it is also true that he was the first newspaper comic strip super star and still deserves a seminal place in the history of our field. No doubt about that Rich. There may have been earlier strips, as we've seen in this thread, but YK is what started the popularity of the artform that it enjoyed in the 20th century, to the point where it was one of the primary forms of entertainment pre-WWII.

Have to get me one of those! Crime Suspenstories 22, eat your heart out!

Yep Howard Works is the go to site for publication info. Both stories were just published in new collections from the REH Foundation. Black Wind Blowing is in Tales of Weird Menace. http://www.rehfoundation.org/publishing/tales-of-weird-menace/ And Graveyard Rats is in the Steve Harrison Casebook. http://www.rehfoundation.org/publishing/steve-harrisons-casebook/

Is that a zombie tale, as in "Walking Dead" -like? (thumbs u The table of contents describes them as being living cadavers. That counts. Early zombie cover. (thumbs u

And all this time I thought it started with "Sex and the City." It's great to see the pulp thread getting some love again.

Those are great books no matter how you slice 'em.

Here is one with a different theme. Thrilling Mystery (September 1936) Her troubles do seem to be weighing on her. And that's another great Belarski cover.

A found a Hugh Cave story from Oriental Stories, but of course that's still FarnsworthWright.

You know, that's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. Here is a page that lists all the contents of the various volumes: http://freepages.pavilion.net/tartarus/t3.htm

Wow, *that's* a beauty! And what's with the chopped off hand motif?

What? You mean issues such as this one? ... Awesome! For those who don't know, this was the first appearance of one REH's most successful characters, "Sailor" Steve Costigan, who had more stories than Conan. Super tough book.

I had the later 70's treasury version when I was a kid and it was favorite comic. I read it over and over until it was it coverless, tattered wreck. When I got back into collecting as adult it was one of the first things I had to track down. Pure nostalgia.

Part of the reason that that viewpoint is prevailing is that it was set forth by many of the members of early fandom who lived through that time period. The Jerry Bails and G.B. Loves of the world were establishing that prevailing wisdom in the early 1960s, just over twenty years after Action 1 came out. Certainly they were more along the lines of us, collectors, and not the general public, so they had an interest in Superman above and beyond what any Joe Blow buying comics in the late '30s would have had. But every one of those collectors who I have spoken with who remember buying comics when Action 1 came out all say it had a tremendous impact on them and their interest in comics in general. Roy Bonario, our local god-father of collecting, has gone further and said that comics were the currency of youth, bartered for any number of things, and early Superman appearances had more trade value than any other comics...even pre-Superman 1. Now that's interesting. I missed that.

Alanna, In the past 15 years I 've seen just one other AMF 2/2 in low low grade, but I'm sure other collectors like Circumstances, Adam Strange, Jon Berk, etc have this buried in cold storage. BB I know Jon Verzyl had one up for auction in about 2007 or so, but other than that, I haven't seen one available either. Our own Sacentaur was good enough to sell me his dupe, otherwise I may never have had a chance at one. Sweet!

Very cool! The Clock rules.

Nothing like nailing two fairly tough REH pulps in one lot. Of course it pales in comparison to your Fight Stories hoard.

Oh yeah, good call!

These two are the gems though.

Just got in a small batch of Thrilling Mystery with some great weird menace covers.

Am I getting predictable? Speaking of REH, here's a recent pick-up that some readers of this thread might find interesting. It's from the Not at Night series, a British anthology title which reprinted stories from Weird Tales. This one from 1934 has the first appearance of Conan in book form.

Nice! Top-Notch had some great adventure-type covers. My only Top Notch:

See, this was all you had you to say: "But back to my original statement, most all you bring up is already covered in OPG. The interested party is also directed to Comic Art #3, Summer, 2003, published by Tod Hignite, now of Heritage Auction House, containing an article called "Topffer in America" by Doug Wheeler, Robert L. Beerbohm and Leonardo De Sa. Next posts coming up I took it upon myselfto scan the pages of said article. I trust they come out well enough to read here, as it has dawned on me that NO ONE reading this thread has this issue done a decade ago now. Otherwise, most all the queries directed at this writer would not have been asked in the first place." Because you're right, this is the context I was looking for. I had read your CBM pieces and the OPG essay (though it's been years admittedly), but not this article. This article does a much better job of explaining why these Platinum books matter and how they connect to the later newspaper strips of the late 1890s and early 1900s. Thank you for scanning and posting this. Again nobody questions Töpffer's influence in the history of comics art. My only doubts were as to how influential the 1842 American version was over here. The fact that it was mentioned in the Atlantic article twenty years later and reprinted on several occasions does indicate that it wasn't just a isolated curiosity that nobody saw and was quickly forgotten. This is the kind of evidence that helps validate your conclusions -- not hyberbolic statements designed to provoke superhero collectors. Again, i appreciate you scanning and posting this article because it really is much more informative the OPG essay and I hope that some of the people in this thread will actually read it and give it some consideration.

Oh come on now. Nobody's going that far (well, maybe Bob). I think it would probably be accurate to say that superheroes have dominated comic book collecting for the last 50 years. And since we're all collectors isn't it reasonable to think that maybe that's colored our judgement a little bit?