Yellow Kid

Just guessing, I bet it happened more than once back in the 1920's or earlier. An easy check would be to look for pulps with white backgrounds and then see if other copies of the same issue had a non-white background. I don't collect pulps, and just have a few issues as they relate to other interests, so I don't have the experience to know, but if it happened once, I bet it happened more than once.

Here is an observation I have made over the past few years about the first Buck Rogers cover in Amazing Stories--they aren't all the same. They almost are, but here is the difference. The cover started off with a nice purple background, but during the press run, the purple started to get lighter and lighter, and eventually it disappeared. I have a purple copy, and I have a white copy, and they are at the bottom of this note. I think what must have happened is that the run started off fine, the color started to run out, and Hugo must have decided that he would just keep the presses rolling to meet his contracts. The color isn't just faded, it is gone. I have watched this issue on eBay for several years now and I have seen all shades of purple and even other white issues, so I am confident that it was a production issue. It really isn't any big deal but I thought it was kind of interesting and wanted to share it with other Buck Rogers and/or Amazing Stories collectors.. I might add that this is relevant only in that Jeff spent last night here and we were looking at the covers and he encouraged me to post them.

Congratulations, Jeff! What are you going to do for an encore? We'll celebrate when you get here tonight. Rich

Pat, We fell in love with the work of David Walsh, a bowl maker in Dover, PA, who does exceptional work. We live in a cypress home in the woods so it just seemed like a natural extension to collect wooden art. We have probably bought over 100 pieces of his work over the last decade and have become good friends, each visiting the other. Dave used to sell in the Smithsonian Gallery but decided to move to eBay, avoids the big fees, and makes his work more available. Check him out on eBay searching for "Walsh Wood." If you want a professionally turned piece of art at a reasonable price (compared to big name galleries) I don't think you can do any better than David Walsh. No carvings, just turnings. Richard

Please note that in Jeff's first picture from Cross Plains that he and his group managed to find some John L. Sullivan Irish Whiskey to help them get through the week!

Thanks guys, my first love has always been the Disney books.

The cases are those plastic 11x14 picture frame with cardboard inserts to hold the picture (or comic) up against the front. They work great for oversized books and can be bought at Hobby Lobby and other similar places. Sometimes even at Wally-World. From left to right, Donald Duck linen-like, Wise Little Hen linen-like, Donald Duck Bubble Pipe one-shot, Donald Duck linen-like, Pluto Saves the Ship Large Feature Comic #7, Donald Duck Large Feature Comic #16, Dumbo Large Feature Comic #19, and Donald Duck Large Feature Comic #20. The Pluto book was actually Barks' first comic book work and he collaborated with Jack Hannah and Nick George. All of the Large Feature Comics are fairly hard to find, especially in nice condition. Even the Bubble Pipe one-shot is hard to find but the linen-like books are fairly common. I sent Jeff a good picture that is much clearer and he will probably post it while he is at Howard Days.

One reason you see this book a lot is because the old man on Daisy Ave. in Long Beach, CA, must have had over 100 copies of it, all in nice shape. The only drawback was that he stamped them with a capital G in stencil format inicating that they sold two for fifteen cents. What was amazing was that he sold his newer comics for ten cents each. Anyone have any GA books with a stenciled capital G they can post?

Let your fingers do the walking to Google and insert "How to Send Large Files for Free" and you will find sites that exist just for that purpose and will work with files from up to 2GB to 20GB depending on the host. I have sent and received very large, high resolution files locally, as well as internationally, with no problems. These sites have been around for years and are very reliable.

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.

Just out of curiosity, I just checked eBay and found 5 copies of #9, 1 copy of #29, 1 copy of #62, 6 copies of #147 (including a CGC 9.0), and 2 copies of MOC #4. This is just a one day snapshot, but it does correlate with the general observation that #29 and #62 are difficult books to find, and this is especially true in high grade.

I would agree with you on 29 and 62, but I might reverse 9 and 147. It seems like high grade copies of 9 are always available if you want to spend the money whereas the others might not be even if you won the lottery. It isn't a FC, but MOC 4 also seems to be a genuine Barks rarity unlike the other MOC's.

Bob Beerbohm just called me, in spite of the fact that I have told him that I never wanted to speak with him again, because he felt his comments about Leonard Brown and Collectors Book Store were being doubted by members of the board. I have read his comments, they are replete with erroneous information, and if anyone cares about the issue, I would refer them to the CBCA articles of the past few years by Jeff Shanks and, later, myself. Briefly, Leonard and I were partners in a mail order comic book business out of his parents house in Long Beach, CA, from about 1959-1964. He wanted to open a store, I wanted to go to grad school, so he and Malcolm Willits became partners and opened Collectors Book Store on Saturday, March 6, 1965, at 1717 N. Wilcox Ave. in Hollywood, CA. They had some tough times but things got better and better and in the 1970's, they moved into a large, former bank building at 6763 Hollywood Blvd. Their inventory flourished and the stock in the bank's time vault was incredible. As you walked in to the vault, there were bookshelves on both sides and a large table in the center. To the left were comics and to the right were pulps and movie mags. Once in a while there was a Barks painting or an Oscar or something else against the back wall. All of the comics and other material were standing upright in alphabetical order, all all of it was quality material. Lesser books were kept in a wall of boxes by the comic counter. Once when I was visiting, Leonard said, "You always liked Batman, check out that section." I found Batman #1, and then another copy, and then another copy, until I saw all twelve copies. Superman #1 was much more difficult to find, and while they would have copies now and then, they never had a large grouping of them. At one point he did buy 10 mint copies of March of Comics #20 and #41, and could have had many more but just didn't think the store needed them. What is important to remember is that in our area, there was the attic at Cherokee Books where Burt built up a good inventory when there was almost no competition, and then there was Collectors Book Store, which ultlimately became much larger and had a much greater inventory. Relative to other stores in the country, I don't think there was anything comparable. Of course over time, other stores opened from coast to coast, some becoming quite impressive, but Collectors Book Store still had no equal until after Leonard retired. I would add that Leonard was condition conscious from the very beginning, and all of the best books were kept in the vault, or in his personal collection. Remember it was his copy of WDC+S #1 that sold for over $100K a few years ago. Most of his other books were just as nice. I know of one other collector who bought the finest books possible from him and built an important collection, and none of them have been sent to CGC. I still have a few nice raw ones myself, as I am sure several other older collectors do.

Hey Bill, I am proud of you! It's a great book and the second story might even be better than the first one. Enjoy! Rich

Great additions! You've got some fun reading ahead of you.

Great additions! You've got some fun reading ahead of you.

tb-- It is great to see the facts for what we always discussed--the Duck Bubble led to such high prices that late buyers almost certainly took losses if they tried to turn their books too quickly. On the other hand, as a result of the price crash, almost all buyers since 2010 were able to resell at a profit. My hope is that the real collectors are buying now at good prices and will be able to hold and enjoy their books for a long time.

Fantastic thread! Perhaps you have become the Fourth Prince of Serendip.

That's as nice a copy as I have ever seen! Congratulations.

I was a minor baskektball star when I graduated from high school in 1962, but even that wasn't enough to overcome the stigma of also being known as a comic book collector. One day one of the coolest guys in school gave me a ride home and came in and looked at my comics. He said he thought they were really neat, but that I had to quit talking about them if I ever wanted to get into the best club. By this time Leonard Brown and I were doing a great mail order business. I was building my collection and making money without having to cut every yeard in the neighborhood so I was happy. Besides, my "reputation" led to several students selling me their collections of old comics so as far as I was concerned, there was nothing to change. The next fall I wrote about comics and how THE SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT was off base. I even cut panels out of some of my books and glued them in my paper but my professor was not impressed--please don't ask why I didn't just Xerox the pictures instead of ruining my books. She suggested that I should write on something more serious in my next paper. I was also a coin collector and was biten by the gold bug. I traded everything I had to a local dealer for a few $20 gold piecdes. Years later, in the one-panel cartoon called BERRY'S WORLD, a prosperous man sitting behind a big desk was asked the secret of his success, and he said, "I got into comics and gold before they became popular." So did I, but if they had never become popular, I would have still been happy because I was collecting what I liked.

The Gladstone Mickey Mouse series, #219-#256, reprinted some great Gottfredson stories. The current Fantagraphics reprints are up to Volume 4 and I hope they continue for a long time.

WDCS #22 has such a great cover! And it looks like you found a super copy that looks better than its grade. Congrats!

A fantastic copy of one of the greatest covers in the series! Congratulations!

tb, It was a pleasure to visit you and see your collection. Never before has the the phrase, "Quality over quantity," held greater meaning for me than while we were looking at your incredible books and original art. Finishing the evening with dinner at the Red Rock was very nice, as well.

Oops! I can see that I better not submit any more posts when I am tired and on the road.