AJD

Here's another "from eBay" scan that I want to include here because of its backstory. The Lone Avenger was a popular character created by artist Len Lawson. If there is ever an award for the "worst human being associated with the comic industry" there will be a robust competition for second place but nobody will come close to Lawson for the top prize. From Wikipedia: Leonard Keith Lawson (1927 – 29 November 2003), better known as Len Lawson or Lennie Lawson, was a bestselling Australian comic book creator, successful commercial artist and photographer. However, he was also a notorious criminal who was sentenced to life imprisonment for rape and murder. He died in custody in 2003. Lawson first came to prominence as the creator of The Lone Avenger, an Australian comic book hero, whose first appearance was in the second issue of Action Comics in 1946, running for thirteen years, eventually taking over the entire comic and selling up to 70,000 copies. Lawson also created another masked Western vigilante hero The Hooded Rider, as well as Diana, Queen of the Apes and Peter Fury. In 1954, Lawson took five young models to bushland in Terrey Hills to take swimsuit photos for a calendar. He bound the women and sexually assaulted them, raping two. He was sentenced to death, which was commuted to 14 years in prison when the death penalty was abolished in New South Wales later that year. Lawson asked to continue producing The Lone Avenger in prison, but it was handed to another artist. The comic was subsequently banned in Queensland and withdrawn by its publisher. Lawson was released from prison in 1961 after serving seven years, or half, of his sentence. On 7 November 1962, Lawson sexually assaulted and murdered a 16-year-old girl whose portrait he was painting in his apartment. The next day, he took several hostages at the Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School, killing a 15-year-old girl in the ensuing siege. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Lawson attacked a female dancer who performed in a concert at Parramatta jail, seemingly as part of an escape attempt. He died in Grafton Correctional Centre in November 2003.

Great stuff @Dikko. Sorry about beating the price up on your copy of #13, but at least you can be happy that it's better than mine! Now I have to try to find the other four...

Looking at the GCD, I think it *is* the copy there. Look at the foxing spot in the R in Gordon.

The one that just sold last week on eBay will be coming to a thread near you shortly. ( ) The one shown above also sold on eBay a couple of weeks prior to that for about twice the price.

My first thought was 5.5 too. Fine doesn't seem out of the question though.

To another Planet Stories

Ah, Pogo, my first vintage run completed. Love 'em. (Hmm, my photography skills have come on a lot since then!)

Textbook VG for me.

Better than 2.5 but how much? I'd say 3.0 is about right but if the book feels nice and solid VG- quite possible.

6.0 - nice copy indeed

Wow, thank you for your dedication to the thread! Yes, that one counts, but it's a first appearance in the thread because I had that one before I started it. And yours is so nice a copy it's certainly welcome. If you want to see other war bonds covers, have a look at the gallery I set up. (Should be linked in my sig below.)

I have the first four JIM/Thor volumes and Kirby's art is great in B&W. And the run from about 115-165 is terrific reading in any format.

That does look like the glossy stock. As I said earlier, I *think* my 62 was glossy a lot of handling ago, but can't be 100% sure. If someone would like to send me a high grade copy I promise to report back! (For that matter, better send a 9 and 29 as well - we can't be too careful...)

Thanks @Scrooge - a consistent picture is starting to emerge of a switch to glossy stock in the first part of 1948. (Though WDC&S never had anything else.) I have only one Four Color below 100 and that's too low grade to be of much help. Do you think the early ones were glossy or matt? I.e. Was the pattern: gloss --> matt --> gloss or was it just matt --> gloss?

I think we should try to answer this! Let me start with some data points from my own collection: 1) WDC&S never had matt covers 2) Animal Comics #9 (Jun/Jul 1944) and #23 (Oct-Nov 1946) were printed with the matt cover stock. I don't have any of the surrounding issues to check, but we know that at least one other Dell title had the dull covers. 3) My #62 (Jan 1945) is low grade but I *think* it is on glossy paper. Four Colors 108 (May 1946), 147, 148 (May 1947), 159 and 178 (Dec 1947) all had matt stock (so presumably all of the copies in between?) but 189 (June 1948) and 199 are back on semi-gloss stock. Perhaps @Scrooge could help with this? That caused a falling out between Walt Kelly and Dell. He thought they were trying to cash in on the popularity of Pogo (could well be right, as other Dells remained 10c) and it led him to dropping all comic work to focus on the strip.

Great - a question that allows for a Marwoodesque dive into the minutiae of a subject dear to my heart. (Cue Steve: 'hey, I resemble that remark!') Yes, most Australian-printed comics had B&W interiors, many of them right into the 1980s. The Disneys were an early adopter of colour and generally had better - much better - paper quality as well. The local WDC&S series started in 1946 and issues 1 and 2 had entirely B&W interiors. From issue 3 until 72 they had the box on the cover like on my #31 below - 'WITH COLOR PAGES' (Note the US spelling, which was part of a failed attempt in some quarters to move our spelling from the British variant). What that meant in practice was that two consecutive inner wraps were four colour printed on one side, so you got this: The colour must have worked because from #73 (Oct 1952) WDC&S was entirely in colour when very few other books were. Here's my (factory miscut) #79 They also started to cost more before other comics did, moving to 1/- before most publishers moved from 8d or 9d, though they also moved to 32 pages instead of the standard 24 or 28 with the price rise, so the customer attraction to colour + extra pages evidently worked for them. Aren't you glad you asked?

Uncle Sam with hat to Uncle Sam without hat

Wow Bob, the colours on that one are amazing. I wouldn't put it under plastic either.

A minor mystery... who owns the Church copy of Wings #98? I was surprised tonight when I went to the comicpedigrees site and looked to see if the Church book I own had been uploaded. Much to my surprise I found this: The reason that was a surprise is that here is an early label 7.5 Church Wings #98 sitting in my comic room as I type, graded 9 May 2002. (The cert number lookup for the above book tells me it was graded 27 Jan 2005.) Clearly they are not the same book, and it's a bit galling to learn now that I may or may not have the Church copy. My working assumption these past few years was that my Wings 98 was one of the Church FH books purchased in the early days by Burrell Rowe, that were apparently later stored badly in a Texas garage. (Says @Robot Man here) Rob Larsen's Church list contains only one entry (no duplicate) for Wings #98 and it shows a grade of NM+ in the original listing - and 7.5 as the CGC grade. I wonder if the 7.5 is a toastier later incarnation of the high grade book listed, or whether the 2005 CGC book is the original, given the grades? And I really wonder how CGC can grade two "Church" books three years apart with any confidence in both judgements? The one remaining possibility, of course, is that there were duplicate Wings 98 copies in Edgar's collection. A few threads on the boards over the years have mentioned duplicates ("more than 100" in one case), but I can't find a list of those anywhere. So now I'm not sure, and I don't know if I'll ever really be sure, if I own a Church book or not.

Knight with sword of wood to knight with sword by Wood

On a lighter note, here's another Australian reprint comic I just picked up, with a pretty cool cover (even if it doesn't really make sense). Being printed with a landscape binding, I figured the inside would be horizontal newspaper strips, but that's not the case. Here's the splash, featuring a freezing Ms Starr in her underwear forced to burn her stockings to keep warm. Women sure had it tough in the Golden Age!

Thanks for that @Scrooge. Those are excellent war comic pages. One comment though: my French is a bit rusty (read: très terrible) but I think the comic isn't right in the way it presents the dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The latter were utterly destroyed at Midway, but while being shot down in droves, they caused the Japanese air defence weapons to be sighted lower and the escorting fighters to be at low altitudes. So although the torpedo bombers got no hits at all, and many of them failed to return from the mission, the dive bombers then got a pretty much unobstructed run at the carriers - sinking four of them and irrevocably changing the course of the Pacific War.

I just picked up a nice little collection of 'old currency' Australian Disney comics. Here are two that are going into my boxes. The first reprints the Paul Bunyan machine story and the second reprints the wonderful Tralla-La story.