AJD

Courtesy of Point Five ( Jon) I'm now the proud owner of a Jet Aces #4. Now I'm also an aviation tragic as well as a comic collector, so I have many, many aviation books and mags and models around the place. The cover of Jet Aces 5 rang a bell. The aircraft is a Gloster Javelin, and since my library is pretty well indexed, it didn't take long to find the picture below: That's the third case I've found where a cover has been cribbed from a real life photo. Here are the other two: the aircraft is the Keystone XB-1. That aircraft is the RAF's Short Stirling. That photo is one of a series of colour wartime shots. Another one was the basis for a painting that graced a famous Airfix model kit boxtop: That's a painting by the great Roy Cross - a fabulous artist who is as well know to model builders of a certain age as Steve Ditko is to comic fans of the same vintage. I'm sure there are many more aircraft photo 'swipes' out there. I'll have a look through the Aces High series at some stage and see what I can find. George Evans was very careful to be accurate, and I'm willing to bet some photos were involved. It's kind of cool when two hobbies collide.

I would love to see before and after photos of those big jumps. I'm guessing books with long non-colour breaking bends going from 6.5/7.0 to 9.2/4 after a press. I have a couple that I think would press out that way.

I'll wager 400 Quatloos on the one in black.

Fantastic to see that there are copies of that first Peanuts book out in the wild. While I'm here, I bought a coverless copy recently (thanks Steve) and I want to get a repro cover made up. I can get the front and back covers from the Heritage database, but does anyone have a copy they'd be willing to scan the insides of? Even photos would be OK if they are flat, and I can maybe photoshop from there? I know it's a big ask, but it would be much appreciated.

To finish this once over lightly of an important player in Australian comic history, here are a couple of one-page gags from the comics. Most of the serials were serious matters, but the issues were padded out with 'gag' strips of widely varying quality. I quite liked this one: This one is of typical indifferent quality (but is still significantly better than the gags in some GA books I own - Blue Beetle #25 I'm looking at you specifically) And this one is just, well, So we don't leave Australia Day on that very peculiar note, the file also contained this oddity. It's a photocopied version of Prize comics that has been hand coloured using a brush and what looks to be watercolour paint. It's marked 'replica copy' and seems to have been made to have a copy in the files. Anyway, I hope you liked these, but at least a little corner of Australian GA is now a bit more available. Before next Australia Day I think I'll try to get through the 75 shelf feet of John Ryan's collection in our National Library! Hoo roo cobbers.

Probably the art that saw the most love and craft was the series of one-page vignettes of notable Australians. Here are two of them. Leon Errol and Ronald Monson

Now for some content. Some of the local artwork was clearly derivitive of US-sourced material. Batman, anyone? None of the interior artwork in these issues could rank with the best of the GA. But some of it was a reasonable standard and of a par with much American material from the early GA: And some of it was awful:

Here are a couple of the annotations inside the front covers that show that these were kept for copyright purposes: I don't know if that was Johnson's own handwriting. There aren't any letters etc. in the files to allow a comparison.

Time for the annual Australia Day for this thread. This year's treat is a look into the file copies of Frank Johnson, publisher of many Australian written and drawn comics in the 1940s and 50s. His 1941-43 files are held at the State Library of New South Wales, who kindly allowed me to photograph them to share here. Here are a selection of shots of assorted titles - sort of, which I'll explain later. The first ones are all from 1942-3. The larger comics such as the Magic Comics in this pic (bigger than standard GA size) are from 1941: More 1941 comics: These earlier ones are a bit fragile and have brittle spines, though the interior pages are supple. Must be a different paper stock. You'll notice a few little flakes here and there. I had a discussion with the librarians and they have been sent off to the preservation folks for some TLC. While these look like different titles, the covers show that they have many overlapping charcters and story lines. In fact, I think there were only a couple a month, and they are essentially the same one or two titles. In 1941-43 wartime paper shortages led to a law that you couldn't start a new ongoing series. But if you could round up enough paper you could publish a one-shot. In other words, these one shots are essentially continuations of the same 'title'. And you thought EC numbering could be confusing...

Looks beautiful. You've done a great job on that and have a wonderful collection to share.

Those GGA issues of Wings 89 - 95 were my main focus for a good chunk of last year. I got a VG #89 on eBay for $50. For slabbed 6.0 - 7.0 copies of the others I paid between $250 and $350. I certainly wouldn't pay $100 for a fair or $400 for a PGX restored... hell, I wouldn't buy a PGX book full stop.

Yup. A few here are getting completely out of hand, and becoming a bigger problem than the azz hat sellers they're fired up about. http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=7303170&gonew=1#UNREAD Just saw that. And from a member who's been around since 2005.

Whoa - what a great cover. Never seen that one before.

Here's a unique set of collector's items: I bought the covers on eBay as 'discarded cover prints' from the Dell archives. In fact, I'm pretty sure they are proof copies of the covers to the July 1944 war bonds drive issues of Dell comics. The printer's registration marks in the margins suggest that they were never intended to be a final product. Here's the front and back of the Looney Tunes #33 cover: You can see a close up of the Disney cover here.

This might be one of the coolest things I own. I bought it on eBay as a 'discarded cover print' from the Dell archives. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a proof copy of the cover to WDC&S 46. The printer's registration marks in the margins suggest that it was never intended to be a final product. I actually got it as one of five - you can see the others in the war bonds thread. The only trouble with this is how to display it? I could put the cover on some nice pages, but that would destroy the one of a kind appeal it has. I could frame it, but that would cover up the interior, which includes cool stuff like this (it is much prettier in real life - some scanner enhanced schmutz here): In any case, it was easily the best $46 I spent in 2013. (And huge thanks to Point Five for playing intermediary for this 'ships to USA only' sale.) Happy new year everyone!

Good point, hadn't thought of that. I had. Merry Christmas all.

One last 2013 comic purchase. For five years I was chasing a grail to complete a set. One came up on eBay in 2012, and I bid what I thought was 3x FMV and still came up short - not even the underbidder. Then another came along this year, and here it is: This is the last of 24 of these 1964 giveaway comics I was after. #9 is by far the toughest book in the run. I've seen just the two two in ten years of looking. I bought my first few of this series in 2003 and thought this would be quick. There were sets printed in Australia and New Zealand. The NZ issues are stapled, and have different ads on the back. The #9 above is a NZ issue. Here's a couple more. These landscape format books are half the size of regular comics: There were 17 duck books (10 pagers from WDC&S cut down to fit the format - there's about 7 pages equivalent in total, so some editing was needed), 6 MM and an adaptation of Sword in the Stone. Here's an inside page from #9, with typical Australian colouring: Here's the group shot. Oh, yeah. That's it for 2013 comic purchases. But there's one more item to come, which I think is seriously cool. But that can be a Christmas surprise. Thanks for looking.

The final "run" I'm working on is 1942 - 45 comics featuring covers with ads for War Bonds or Defense Stamps integrated into the cover artwork. You can see all of my war bonds collection in the thread I started in Gold. But here are the four I picked up this year: A boards purchase: Heritage for this one. Set a new GPA high with this one (something to avoid) but it didn't break the bank. I love this one. SP resto, but that's about half a square inch of white acrylic on the back cover. The rest of the book is beautiful, and was less than a third of the blue price: This one is the biggest $ purchase I've ever made, but I think it was worth it. Gotta hate those Japanazis:

Thanks guys. This is a vanity project, but I'm glad you enjoy them too. 2013 has been a very good year. It started with the notion of focusing on Fiction House titles. Clearly that didn't last, but I did manage to buy a goodly number of Wings GGA issues: Something of a classic here (from a ComicConnect auction): Another Heritage "7.0" - really? This one is probably my favourite (thanks again ComicConnect). With Fiction House books, getting strong colours is often more important than high grade as far as eye appeal goes. I haven't seen a better copy of this one. This year's batch included a Church collection copy And this high grade beauty.

Rounding out the funny animals, I got two more of the Donald Duck Four Colors this year: A beautiful restored copy (SP - staple reinforced.) This one proved elusive in the right eye appeal/$ combination. I'm not 100% convinced it's my long-term copy, but it's very presentable for now: The full Pogo run of Four Color 105, 148 and 1 - 16 was the first set I completed in my most recent collecting period. This year I replaced a nice #3 with a nice #3 that's also a file copy: Fiction House, war bonds covers and a long-term (but very obscure) grail to round out the year.

Sticking with the cartoon book theme, as my sig line shows, I have an ambition to collect WDC&S 1 -100. I'm 2/3 of the way there, including all but 2 of the 50-100 part of the run. Of course, that means the expensive ones are ahead of me, so roll on a big market correction for duck prices... Anyway, I got my first single digit copy this year: and some nice later ones:

A change of pace. These days I buy almost only Golden and Atom age books. But I'm determined to finish the run of Dell peanuts from the Silver Age. With these two 2013 additions, I've got 10 of 13. I'm missing the first two (Four Color 878 and 969) and the last one. I bid on a file copy of 969 last month on eBay but ended up the underbidder. This one was an eBay purchase from an antique store that 'didn't deal in comic books'. I can believe it. the book was lovingly wrapped in tissue paper (complete with a pink ribbon and a very nice hand written note) and put between two very thin pieces of card before being put in a Manila envelope. Amazingly, it crossed the Pacific Ocean and arrived looking like this. I left +ve feedback (including the stars) and sent a polite message suggesting that packing for comic books should be a bit more robust. Pretty sure these two were 2013 additions, but my record keeping failed me for once:

To round out the ECs for 2013, a couple of oddball Australian reprints of Two Fisted tales. Well, sort of. The contents of the Lion Men issue are partly EC and partly from other adventure comics of the time. This one is pure EC, with three stories (they have only 24 pages per issue and B&W interiors). It has two stories from TFT #36 (from whence the cover comes) and one from TFT 37.

Finally for the ECs this year, a couple of New Direction titles. I like to be working on one of the shorter titles as well as the longer runs. My inner completist can get some satisfaction too. I have 4 of the 5 issues of Valor. I think that #3 might be tough in mid to high grade - they seem to be much harder to find than the others. And my first Gaines file copy. (Sorry, I can't scan slabs very well.) I also weakened and bought a Piracy before I finished Valor. It's a very good read.

Also working on Mad 1- 10 (and a few beyond 10 if they particularly appeal - 22 is one of those). From a Heritage auction (and very nice for the grade): From a MyComicShop auction: Heritage again: