Yellow Kid

Buster Brown was one of the first comic characters to appear in the Herald chain from coast to coast. Technology had finally caught up with the comics enabling the same comic to be published every Sunday in all of the papers. I have a set of the first 2-3 years of the L. A. Herald and the comics look like they were printed yesterday.

When you consider that Buster Brown was in the papers nearly 20 years, that means there were about 1,000 pieces of original Sunday comic art created by RFO. If 100 pieces still exist, that would only be 10% and a majority of them are from the second half of the run. I think art from the first five years, for example, is rare. One generation back, Peter was a graphic artist and the other two brothers felt that most of the family collection should reside with him. Pore Li'l Mose had about a two year run so there were only 100 pieces of original Sunday comic art created by RFO. He appeared prior to Buster Brown at a time when publishers were throwing away original art once it had appeared in the Sunday comics. This is why early Buster Brown art is rare Still, I think there are a few piece of PLM art in private collections. If you take the 10% estimate for Buster Brown art and accept that most of it is post-1910, you can lower that value for PLM art because it is both older and from a different culture. A better comparison would be the percentage of 1902 Buster Brown art that survived. There are some senior collectors with great collections of comic books virtually unknown in the hobby. The same is true for original comic art, memorabilia, etc.

It would be nice but I don't know if I am up to it given my age and health issues. At least you will get to see about 60% of it in the Heritage auctions, and maybe even more than that.

I have had a long affiliation with OSU and have donated many wonderful items to them, so I did start there. A few years ago a good friend and I visited one branch of the Outcault family to help them organize and evaluate their collection and make a photographic record of it. In the 47th edition of the Comic Book Price Guide, We described our visit in pp. 1198-1201. It was a wonderful experience.

Thanks for looking. The NYPL searched their microfilms of the paper but couldn't find BB for those dates. Sadly, someone with a razor blade probably took the originals before they were filmed. I am making a table of all of BB's 1902 appearances, and this is all I need to complete it.

Help! Can anyone tell me the title of the Buster Brown Sunday comics published on 5/11/1902 and/or 8/24/1902? Your help would really be appreciated..Thanks!

A little late, but here is an early comic character valentine from 1915. It is a mechanical die-cot just over a foot tall and all the pieces move.

Congratulations on another step down the yellow brick road. You're almost there, Andrew, it's just a matter of time. I completed my set by getting a copy of #2 from a young convention dealer, Steve Geppi, at a Chicago Con in the early 1970's. I look forward to seeing that you completed the run.

Thanks for your kind words, Frank. Over the years I have let most of my comics go, but I still have my comlete sets of early Disney comics, Barks comics, and related memorabilia. What I think is the most exciting thing is that so many other collectors have assembled complete, or nearly complete, sets and that is a real tribute to the genius of Carl Barks..

Bart was a great guy and loved comics. I always hate to lose a friend like him.

You've got some great copies of books that are very hard to find in high grade, I wish they were in my collection. The Firestone giveaways actually started with Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig in Famous Gang Book of Comics, but the company switched to Disney after the first year.

Frank, I only found the four examples of the flying horse logo, and the other three were all of the four color variety. The window of use was very tight, perhaps a month or two, so if people would check their Dell comics from that period, there could easily be more examples on books that I haven't examined.

After writing this brief note on the timeline of the Dell logo, I discovered that the first logo. a four color image of a flying horse, was also used in stencil format on Our Gang #2, so it might be considered Type 1-B.

The Buck Rogers Pop-Up Book was so popular that they also made a mini version with a single pop-up. Also, several years ago, Ray Funk talked me into making a Buck Rogers Christmas pinback that we sent to many of our friends.

Those are beautiful, early pages in great condition--sorry you didn't get them. They remind me of a quote from a great collector. Malcolm Forbes once said that he didn't regret anything he bought, only some things that he didn't buy.

Years ago, Tony Raiola used to reprint some great comic strips through his Pacific Comics Club. He did a 52-volume set of Buck Rogers that is oversized and in beautiful color that was a "must" for all Buck Rogers collectors. A leading collector, Ray Funk, noticed that one volume was missing a few panels and Xeroxed them from his tear sheet collection and gave them to me so I would have a complete collection. Ray grew up with Buck Rogers and stayed a very devoted fan throughout his life. He convinced me to buy a set when Tony still had some. Over the years I see sets on eBay and other sites and each time the price seems to drop so I buy another one. I hope someday they will serve as good trade material. Ray liked Buck so much that he spent several years on a labor of love, creating a 14-volume set of laminated pages reprinting the strips year by year, and throwing in lots of other things just for fun. He had each volume bound with a spiral holder so he could enjoy reading the pages in order. As an example, here is Volume 4 which reprints strips #200 through #251, which are the 1934 strips. His 14 volumes are one of my treasured collectibles as they were done by an early collector because of his love of the strip.

In the early days of the hobby, information was scarce on numbering and titles. Even the people who didn't like a price guide from Bob Overstreet bought a copy for the information. Just imagine that you collected early Dell Four Color comics and found the same number used more than once for different titles, it was very confusing. But dealers and/or stores starting printing price lists and the information from the various sources was integrated. The early price guides even listed the titles of the Mickey Mouse serials and in which issues of WDCS they appeared.

After the company ceased production, the Street and Smith archives were donated to Syracuse University. Subsequently, a graduate student working in the stacks discovered ten unpublished Yellow Kid Magazine covers that R. F. Outcault had created for the magazine that no one even knew were in the archives. I was invited to give a talk on RFO and the Yellow Kid as part of the special celebration Syracuse hosted in honor of the discovery . You can see the previously unknown art in the rare and beautiful section of my web site using the link below.

Here is the man that we have to thank for our favorite comics, George T. Delacorte, Jr., having lunch with Olivia de Havalind. I only have a couple of bound volumes, the oldest being Large Feature Comics #17-19, Gang Busters, Phantasmo, and Dumbo. The newest is supposed to be the last bound volume ever made, Volume 1462, and contains Alvin #27-28, Combat #39-40, Dracula #8, and Ghost Stories #36-37. A printing error on the spine read 47, but 37 is correct..

When Leonard Brown and I first met in the 1950's, he had already assembled a nice collection of the Donald Duck Four Color books. To label his books,, he wrote the number of the book relative to Trick or Treat (#26) in the upper right hand corner of the cover and stamped the cover of his books with his father's address stamp. As he upgraded his collection over the years, he sold the copy from his original set, and I took FC #408 as it was one of my favorite stories. Because of the meaning that book held for me, I never tried to upgrade it. However, lightning does strike twice, and I got this upgrade at such a great price from the guy who just recently sold me Back to the Klondike that I couldn't resist it. Here is Leonard's original book and the one I just got.

Based on what I have read, it was a combination of barroom activity, a major fight, the kidnapping of Goldie, and the breaking of the law in several ways, including not paying the taxes of his claim. Remember, this was 1952 and the social-political climate was very different. Today I think all of these pages would have been published without any changes. I might add that the complete 32-page story published in color in the Celestial Arts book looks fantastic and is a great read. If you scan it and print it on photo paper, you will have a real treasure.

Here is the unpublished art for pps. 12, 13, 14, 15, half of p. 20, and the other half of p. 20 which Carl tried to do from memory for the Celestial Arts book. Many other unpublished pages have been discovered for other Barks stories.

Years ago when I first learned that some of Barks stories had been censored, I just couldn't believe it. Then I saw a packet with about ten pages of censored material and I was even more upset as nothing seemed horrible to me. I hope that someone will post them so I won't have to try and find them tomorrow.

The book I got from you is beautiful, one of the nicest copies of this issue I have ever seen.

There are about half a dozen books that I think so highly of that I do have multiple copies of them.