AJD

Finally for this year, it's about time I mention The Phantom - the single most successful title in Australian comic publishing. Published continuously by Frew from 1948 and still going strong today ( website ). I bought issue #1750, the 2015 bumper sized annual, yesterday. Here are a few early ones, 4, 7 and 10 (again, #4 is portrait, the other two are landscape): OK, that's it for this year's Oz Day special. I'm off to cook that well-known Australian dish Jambalaya.

Here are a couple of issues of Captain Atom. #3 has the most bizarre cover I've seen. I have no idea what's going on in this picture (answers on a postcard please): #39 and 40 are at least more comprehensible. They are also in landscape format - not unusual for Australian comics of the day: Here's another landscape book. This is an Australian version of Classics Junior:

But all is not lost. I've scratched together a few interesting things for this year's update. Let's start with one of Australia's most popular home-grown supheroes. (Most popular at the time - no one has heard of him now.) The best book on Australian comics is John Ryan's Panel by Panel (long out of print but see earlier in the thread for a few pictures). Here's what he says about the Crimson Comet: "While with Edwards [publishing], John Dixon drew over 150 issues of Tim Valour, about 50 issues of the crimson Comet, many issues of Biggles..." It also says "The Crimson Comet, with tight-fitting red costume and real wings, made it's debut five months after Tim Valour and was the first regularly published comic that came close to the traditional US super-hero... With the Korean War and the McCarthy era... both Tim Valour and the Crimson Comet spent a lot of time fighting 'the reds'." Bonzer by Annette Shiel and Mick Stone gives us the origin of the CC: "John Dixon's the Crimson Comet had the wings of a giant eagle grafted onto his back by his father, a surgeon whose mind snapped after his wife was killed by a burglar". ("I shall become a bat. No, wait, I'll make my son into an eagle instead. Yeah, that'll work.") Bonzer has a checklist that says there were two series of Crimson Comet. The first ran #1 - 69 and had cover prices of 6d (sixpence = 5c) and 8d. The second series was numbered 10-42 (possibly higher) and a single issue labelled CI. The cover price of the later series was 9d or 1/- (one shilling = 10c). Here's #1, offered for sale on eBay recently: Collecting Australian comics is a challenging business. As well as poor documentation, they are just really hard to find and many exist in small numbers. The GCD only has partial coverage of the covers of some titles. Here are some other CC issues. Enjoy the production quality:

Hi everyone, happy Australia Day. The Ghost Who Hops (cannot die) welcomes you to some new posts in this thread. I had been hoping that I'd be able to dazzle with some photos from a display of Australian comics at the National Library of Australia. After drumming up press interest I assumed that the library planned something worth seeing. I was wrong. Here it is, in its entirety: Two - count them - actual golden age comics and two enlarged photocopies. At least there's a library blog post which has some more on the subject, and a few internal shots of the comics as well, here. (There are other library blog posts on comics in their collection. Here's one on Australian Doll Man reprints.) Here are a few shots of the display, just for posterity. It's interesting to see that Library of New South Wales is going to feature their Frank Johnson comics in a display. I'd like to think that me requesting them being retrieved from storage for last year's update played a role. In any case, let's hope they do better than the National Library did.

You'll get a 0.5 for that in a blue label.

QA error at CGC. Should be a green label.

don't worry Jon I think that's a boy thing!!! my son is almost 1 and he tears the lids off my comic boxes just to throw the books on the floor!! funny story though when my daughter was about 2 I took her to the LCS to see her reaction and she went and found a Garfield comic off the rack and subsequently ripped it to shreds! Thus showing that good taste in comics can be inherited. My son at age 3 coloured in some of my B&W hardcover Barks library. He didn't even stay within the lines...

That didn't ring a bell. There was a very good Australian comic called Silver Starr, but Rocky doesn't appear in the index of either standard reference on Australian comics. But I did find this via a Google search on the image: Rocky Starr-Destination Venus (AUS) - All-otr.com www.all-otr.com/R010a_RockyStarr.htm 250 × 250 - Rocky Starr-Destination Venus (AUS). This is an Australian children's show about the interplanetary adventures of daredevil Rocky Starr and his intrepid team. So I searched the television database at the National Film and Sound Archive, and found this entry: Title No: 714742 Title: ROCKY STAR Production Date: 1 January 1992 Produced as: Series Media: Television Summary: Satirical black and white TV series produced in 1992 which reinterprets the 1950's radio drama series Rocky Starr. Rocky Star (Richard Morsley), Mitch Morgan ( Stephen Fearnley) and Diana Moore ( Kerry Fox) return to earth which is being terrorised by evil alien Zog. Screened on SBS. 20 episodes of 5 minutes duration. Country of Origin: Australia Language: English The radio database had more - apparently Rocky ran for over 600 episodes. So now we know.

Since I've paid MCS for these, hopefully they won't mind me using their auction scans until they arrive.

Excellent pickup. Those issues have shot up in the last few years. Wish I'd bought them five years ago.

I picked up some cool books at the MCS auction yesterday. Australian reprints of Planet Comics. These are about as good as it gets condition wise for Australian GA comics. They were all printed on newspaper stock, including the covers, and truly high-grade is unknown for many of them. They look even better in hand than they looked on the MCS auction listing. It's also hard to find decent documentation. Between the Ausreprints site and the GCD, you can see about half of the covers of the 24 thought to be in the run.

I'd decided to start the new year slowly comics wise, take my time and make fewer but bigger purchases this year. But sometimes the comic gods care little for the plans of collectors. I was putting the original Barks run of Uncle Scrooge together back in 08/09. (Issues Four Color 386 (#1) through to Uncle Scrooge #72. The hardest to find by far was Uncle Scrooge #6. It's much less common in grade than the others. Because of a common production flaw there were only two in the census then - a 6.5 and an 8.0. Today there are still only four blue labels in total; two 8s, a 7 and a 6.5. There are also two SA 7.5s, which I'm willing to bet are trimmed to get rid of the production overhang. Anyhow, I recall joining Heritage a week after the 6.5 was auctioned and was sorry I'd just missed it when I checked the archives. Oh well, I thought, I'll just make sure I buy the next one... In the meantime I bought a VG+ that presented OK but was almost certainly trimmed copy. It filled the hole in my collection but I always wanted a better one. Fast forward almost seven years and thanks to the boards I get a second chance. Here's what will be winging its way to me soon: I feel like I just won a lottery.

Some of you might recall the trouble I had running down a nice Uncle Scrooge 6 when I was putting that run together back in 08/09. Because of a common production flaw there were only two in the census then - a 6.5 and an 8.0. Today there are four blue labels in total, two 8s, a 7 and a 6.5. There are also two SA 7.5s - I'm willing to bet they're trimmed to get rid of the production overhang. Anyhow, I recall joining Heritage a week after the 6.5 was auctioned and was sorry I'd just missed it when I checked the archives. Oh well, I thought, I'll just make sure I buy the next one... In the meantime I bought a VG+ copy which presented well but is almost certainly trimmed. It filled the hole in my collection but I always wanted a better one. Fast forward almost seven years and thanks to the for sale section on these boards I got a second chance at that book. Here's what will be winging its way to me soon: I feel like I just won a lottery.

Just for fun while I had this box out.

And now, the end is near… etc. Here’s the final lot of my bumper 2014 crop. For a variety of reasons – not least of which being the Australian dollar – I don’t expect to get anywhere near this level of buying in 2015. But, man it was fun. I had to have this one because the cover art is so striking. It doesn’t sit so badly beside my war bonds covers in any case. And it’s cheap! This one was just for fun. It’s a great book to show non-comic people, and it always gets a response. (It’s cheap too.) I picked this up from a boardie who I suspect prints these in his basement. I also decided I needed to get some of the GA greats into my collection. I started with Schomburg/Xela: and Frazetta (thanks Sha/skypinkblue for this one) and L. B. Cole Finally, not GA, but what’s not to like about Steranko? I have a small collection of his work – all the Nick Furies (first series), Captain America and this. I must get an X-Men #50 sometime… As the pig says, “that’s all folks”. I hope you liked the show. If you got 10% of the fun I had I’ll be happy.

Yep, great show here Mr AJD. Thanks guys. I should take the opportunity here to thank Mr Point Five for his part in all this. Jon has very kindly acted as a mailing house for books where sellers won't ship to "internationals". Without him this would be a much poorer show. So thanks Jon, and may the comic book Karma reward you with low BINs in perpetuity. I'd also like to thank my mum and dad.... oh, wait, that's my Academy Award speech, so you'll have a wait a bit for that one. Anyhoo, today we'll do the cartoon books. As my sig says, I've been working away at the WDC&S 1 - 100 run for a few years. Earlier in this thread I mentioned that I am now complete from 49 - 100. Here are the last two I needed to fill out that run. Both came from stellar eBay seller Blissard. This one was an upgrade. My previous copy was a freebie in with some other books I wanted, and is probably about a 2.0. (Note to self: exile it to Duff manor.) This one came out of a 6.5 slab. WDC&S books shouldn't live in slabs. This was actually my first purchase in 2014, from a boardie. And the first coverless I ever bought. But the price was right, and this book has taken off $$$ wise in the past few years. I bid on an incomplete copy with a low grade cover on eBay, but even that went for more than I was willing to pay. Another helpful boardie made me a reproduction cover for it. I know I should look at this as a frankenbook that's unworthy... etc, but darned if I don't smile every time I look at it. I also finished off the Silver Age Dell run of Peanuts books this year - all three from eBay. These aren't great reading (they're mostly not Shultz stories) but as a set of colourful and striking covers, they're right up there. OK, one more push tomorrow and we're done. It's the imaginatively titled category "other". Thanks for looking again.

Thanks for the kind words Brandon. And Ed - find some things to sell me again next year. OK, 2014 was a great year for my collection, and today we'll see my Fiction House pickups. If you look at the Class of 2013 at the start of this journal, you'll see I was collecting the GGA issues of Wings. I had one more of those to go, which I got in a Heritage auction at the start of the year: With that crossed off, I decided to move on to Planet Comics. My wife loves the Fiction House books - a point we'll come back to later - which makes them a domestically painless acquisition. I got this one from Mycomicshop. (Those guys are a class act for grading and customer service.) This was from a Heritage weekly auction. Hard to go past the 'girls in glass tubes' theme. It was cracked out of a PLOA slab. According to CGC, it has a trimmed RH edge on the cover. I think it's a very slight trim and the book looks great. In a Heritage auction towards the end of the year, I was hoping to get a Planet 71, which has a classic Whitman cover. To say I underestimated the likely cost is putting it mildly. I thought it might sell for $250, but it soared well over $1,000... Given that, I jumped onto some dealer sites to see what their Whitman covered Planets were selling for and bought three of them right away. I really wanted some of these, and I didn't want to miss them in a price spike. (I still don't have a Shock SuspenStories #6 and really kick myself for not buying one three years ago before it took off.) Anyway, Bedrock City had these two: I think that 72 is one of the best covers in the run. Metro had a Whitman Planet as well: And they also had this beauty: But probably the best pickup was getting this compensation from my wife for Christmas. This is looking over me as I type: Tomorrow we'll change gear with funny animals and cartoon books. (And, yes, we're getting towards the end.)

Nice books. All three covers are by Barks. He did most of the WDC&S covers during that period. Yep, and #140 has the first Gyro Gearloose. (thumbs u

While I'm here, three more 'odd' ECs I got this year. Piracy is a cracking good read, and the classic cover - credit to Marie Severin for the colour work on this one - makes it a must have. This is the first one of this series I've picked up. Another good read. Impact, Aces High and Piracy are the best of the New Direction titles I've read. I have a single copy of Extra and it's very mediocre. Valor is OK, but some of the stories seem to lack 'oomph' for a title that has fighting as its main theme. I haven't read any of M.D. or Pyschoanalysis, so I'm not sure about those. I'd like to find a nice Impact #1 next year. Finally, this bargain eBay pickup finished my run of Valor. Despite my comments above, it's worth picking up this reasonably priced run for the cover art alone. That's it for the ECs. We'll move on to Fiction House tomorrow.

Thanks Griff - that would be great! Today's offering is the EC sci-fi pickups for the year. These were the favourites of Gaines and Feldstein of all the EC titles, and the ones they were proudest of. I think the war titles were stronger (or maybe they've just aged better) but these books are great too. The funny thing is that I have no interest in the EC horror comics at all. I know they're why EC is as famous as it is in the history of comics, but I just don't see the appeal. I don't like horror movies either. Oh well, that just means fewer comics to have to try to find. The first Weird Fantasy. A really nice looking 4.0 bought from Ed Owens here on the boards. I'm seriously contemplating cracking out all of my ECs these holidays. I think I've bought about 40 slabs in total, and half of them have been liberated. The only thing that holds me back is the loss of value... Another Don and Maggie book. This looks great in hand, especially for the grade. (It has a long faint crease on the cover.) Another Ed Owens book. ( Ed). The perfect comic book - presents great on the FC, but a bit messed up on the back = affordability. eBay pickup - really nice, especially for the price. A surprisingly reasonably priced book from Metro. The one that got away twice. I had a couple of tries to buy a WF18 before I got this one from Ed. On eBay I had a snipe that failed to lodge because the sniper encountered one of those 'prove you're not a robot' pages- and it sold for under $50. This one cost more than that, but it's a beaut, especially now it's out of its plastic tomb. A great Frazetta PLOA book. (Purple Label of Affordability). I don't understand the aesthetic that says that a book with a couple of dots of marker is to be shunned as unworthy - but I'm happy to take advantage of it.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the new Don Rosa hardcover volumes from Fantagraphics. I got mine before Christmas and am really pleased with them. They remind me of everything I like (and a few things I don't like) about Rosa's work. Not having read some of these stories for some years now, it really struck me how the early Rosa stories were nt far removed from underground comics. The art isn't as polished as you'd normally see in a major publisher's books and the stories often have a frenetic feel to them. There's none of the careful pacing or extended setting up of a scene like you'd often get from Barks. My favourite example is Barks' Atlantis story in Uncle Scrooge #5 - it's 32 pages long but half the story is taken getting the ducks to Atlantas - and there's a great pie fight along the way. In Son of the Sun, Rosa has them on a plane on page 5, having already flagged where the quest would be on page 3. Now to be fair, early Barks wasn't classic Barks either, and Rosa's stories get better as you go along. The volumes cover the first couple of years' worth of stories, and they're head and shoulders better than the middle of the road European stories that appeared around the same time, or almost all of the post-Barks American duck stories. Also, Uncle Scrooge #219 with Son of the Sun is the reason I picked up comics again as an adult, so I well recall how exciting it was to find someone at least trying to do classic duck stories. I'm going to enjoy collecting this series. I'll find some of my highlights from the early stories and post them later.

AJD's Class of 2014 - Part III I started this year with 15 of the 24 issues of EC's Two Fisted tales, and with the vague hope of completing the run this year. I didn't expect it to happen though. Even though these aren't expensive books, finding the right midgrade copies is usually a matter of patience. The first copy I bought was #26 back in June 2008, so this was a six year job. As it happened, the remaining issues just happened to pop up at various times over the year. Job done. Incidentally, if you haven't read TFT, track down a reprint of one or two copies (any between 19 and 35 would be my recommended introduction) or of its sister title Frontline Combat (any of those, though #7 is my favourite). These are simply some of the best war comics ever. I first became aware of these through the books 'The International Book of Comics' (Dennis Gifford) and 'The Classic Era of American Comics' (Nicky Wright). Intrigued by the descriptions in those books I bought TFT 26 to check it out. The rest is history. Harvey Kurtzman's work alone is worth the price of admission. Here's what Kurtzman had to say about his approach to them: "... it was fashionable to do war comics in terms of fantasy and glamour, which I thought was a terrible immorality. They made war a happy event where American supermen go around beating up buck-toothed yellow men... but the way war really is, you get killed suddenly for no reason". OK, so onto the books. This one was a boards purchase. The first in the series (#18) is more an adventure book than a war book, so this is the first of the war themed TFT. (36 - 39 go back to the adventure stories, and really suffer in comparison.) This was the last one I got. Because I was only missing one, I bit the bullet and (over)paid Metro's asking price. An eBay purchase and a lovely book. From the same eBay seller. Not quite as nice, but still right in my wheelhouse. Another nice book from Four Color Comics. A bargain basement eBay purchase. Not so bargain basement, but still well under guide from eBay. One of my least favourite books in the series, but cheap enough on the 'Bay. My least favourite book in the run, but a nice upgrade from the boards of the .5 I had previously. We'll do the rest of the ECs tomorrow. Thanks for looking.

Happy holidays all. I was sitting with my now adult daughter today looking over the new Don Rosa hardcover volumes, and she made some comments I thought worth passing on here because of the fresh perspectve she has. I'll post my comments on the Rosa books tomorrow (Cliff notes version: well worth having), but first a little background. My daughter was born in 1990, and she grew up with a houseful of Disney comics. First of all me reading them to her, and then on her own. My hardcover Barks Library just about got worn out. Today we got talking about her all time favourite stories, and it became clear that her strong preference was for Rosa. That surprised me, because I think that Barks was a clearly superior writer (usually) and always a better artist. I just assumed she'd feel the same. Here's what she had to say: 1. Barks' stories are very much a result of a much larger and more remote world than she has ever experienced. When he sent the ducks off to exotic places, to most of the readers they were places they'd never experience (or at least assumed they wouldn't) - such as Trala La in the Himalayas. Today many of her friends have trekked in Nepal. Barks got reader interest through techniques that don't really translate as well today. 2. Rosa does physical slapstick comedy better than Barks. (Actually, I partially agree with that, and the new books reminded me of that in places). 3. The Life and Times series is wonderfully coherent in a way that Barks never was. A story would finish in one issue, and those events wouldn't impact the next issue at all. (I think that difference reflects the view of a generation reading comics decades after Stan Lee perfected the serialisation of stories.) She also made one comment that struck me as a deep truth I hadn't realised. We were talking about something that required a factual data point to resolve and she pulled out her smartphone and Googled it in seconds. She observed that she always wanted a Junior Woodchuck Guidebook - and now she has one. Talking to your kids about comics.

I set out in April 2011 to get Mad 1 - 10. Almost there now, missing just #5. Though I strayed outside the range in 2013 by buying a #22 and I weakened this year as well, picking up a 20 and 21 when they were going cheap at Heritage. I might end up going for the 1 - 23 run at some stage... Got this one from Joeypost. This is still my largest purchase $$$ wise. Heritage for this one: Bought this one from Four Color Comics. I really liked the couple of books I got from them - I just wish they had more things I want in their inventory. Heritage - from the Don & Maggie collection, cracked out (graded 5.5 by CGC). Heritage again. A fun book. Also from Heritage and a bit disappointing because the tanning is worse than it seems in a scan. At least it wasn't too expensive. Next up will be Two Fisted Tales, a run I finished this year. (See earlier post.)

Happy Christmas everyone. It's the time of year to do the AJD Class of 2014 posts. I've had a great year collecting this year. I've been on the road a lot, which left me in hotel rooms with comic browsing often the best way to kill an hour or two - oh, and extra income from the extra work. The result, as you'll see, has been a big fun year of GA collecting. For this first post, let's start with the few war bonds covers I've got this year. (You can see the rest of my theme collection here.) This one was an eBay pickup for $30. I haven't managed to find one in years of looking, and feared this one might go for multiples of guide - it didn't. Still looking for a #6 if anyone has any leads. Heritage for this one. Gotta say, the cover is about all this comic has going for it. the interior artwork and writing are mediocre at best. I found this really nice copy at Metro. Quality wise it seems like a Dell file copy, but there's nothing to indicate that. Super comics 86 Love this one. Apart from the chip out of the bottom, this is a really sweet copy - nice and tight and with great cover inks and gloss. Not a bad read either, and the cover is a nice whimsical bonds cover. Tec 101 This one is just great. Every page is a war bonds ad, with contributions from lots of well known and a few not so well known cartoonists. I've shown a couple of sample pages below. This book should be a grail for bonds collectors. War Victory nn Finally, I've wanted one of these for a long while and thought I'd better grab it before the Aussie dollar goes too much further south. A Heritage win from last week. Batman 17 Just for fun, here's a pic of the splash page, nicked from an eBay listing. That'll do for today. I'll start on the ECs tomorrow.