The Black Hand ®

One of the best covers.

For me, the GA began ending when superhero titles started turning into goofy humor books. For instance, Top Notch turning into Top Notch Laugh.

Regardless of all that, Betty Cooper is still my choice to be stranded on a deserted island with.

That Betty

Captain Flag looks like he's about to mount the often misunderstood Black Hand who's having what could be construed these days as a playful courtship moment.

Here's my copy.

Sweet!

Back when I was actively collecting I had a large PO Box. Even though our rural neighborhood had a security mailbox, it had leaky seals on the doors and often my mail would get wet and sometimes put into a neighbors box. At the time all our neighbors were old but honest and on a couple of occasions brought purchases of expensive books to my door when they were misdelivered. Eventually the older neighbors died off and the scum moved in so I decided to get a PO Box. That worked well since I had been picking a lot of books up at the PO that had to be signed for anyway. When I was completing a Top Notch run the last book I needed, a TN Laugh 39 went missing and never arrived. It took me a while to finally find one.

Women in Tubes!

All the good old guys are passing away from the hobby.

This is one of the BR's I never could find. Love Mr. Justice.

Are there any more collectors here who knew Barry Bauman and visited his "Bat Cave" up on High Street, I believe it was. I used to take the bus there. He was a bit older so he was like a hero to me.. What a kick it was to be able to root through all those boxes of books and thumb through them. I think it was Bob Beerbohm who told me how he passed all those years ago and the circumstances that may have led to it. Sad. For me that was the Golden age of collecting, but the girls and outside events took hold and I dumped the collection I had then. The second Golden age of collecting for me came in the late nineties early 2000's, with Ebay coming in to play.

I knew Bauman back in the day, Spent some good times at his mom's house in Oakland looking through comics.

Barks. Every panel a masterpiece. Every story still reads like new. His work is ageless.

I tried putting together a complete Blue Ribbon run in the early 2000's but ended up missing about five of them. I was able to do a complete Top Notch run along with TN Laugh and Laugh Comix and then Suzie for the first 20 issues or so. That was tough, even back then, but doable. As far as Blue Ribbon goes, the reason I couldn't complete it back then was because I was too cheap to pay for higher grade copies of the issue I was missing.

I love the way she sticks out of the panels. Really cool effect.

Those are really cool!

Even though it's a reader you still have a good view of the horse.

The colrs on this one jumped out at me, so I bought it.

The Black Hand

It was fun living vicariously through Bang Zoom and this thread. The stuff that dreams are made on.

Those Montana covers were always Top Notch,

For MLJ/Archie collectors it's a grail along with Jackpot 4, Archie 1 and Pep 36.

With an incredible Will Eisner cover!

How did a cut that bad slip buy? Are the Promise books now stigmatized with people in the know if not the general buying public?