vaillant

On 9/28/2020 at 11:04 PM, SOTIcollector said:

Here's another fun SOTI-related item I just added to the collection.  Poison Peddling on America's Boulevards. It's a religious tract from the 1950's that rails against immoral comic books.

I prefer mainstream anti-comics publications to religious tracts, but this one was cheap so I couldn't resist.  This 32-page booklet attacks publications that it deems to be immoral, and pretty much conflates comic books with more adult-targeted material of the day like detective magazines.  It lumps them into one big nasty sleazy immoral they'll-rot-your-brain-and-send-you-to-hell bucket. 

I found it interesting that the author chose to obscure the titles of the real comic books displayed on the cover, replacing the titles with nonsense characters. So of course, I was dying to know what the books were.  I found one pretty easily because I recognized a character, and then I read the tract and found out what the rest of the books are because the author named the titles.

Since we have such awesome sleuths on the boards, here's a fun challenge:  how many of these books can you identify?  I'll drop hints as necessary.

These are fascinating, and they show how comics were perceived as a "danger" way before and aside of Wertham's work.
In fact, I believe in each and every country the reception of comics as children literature was so varied and different that it would be great to be able at some point to compare the views/expectations.
In Italy, for example, the anti-comics sentiment was a lot stronger at the beginning, in the 1930s, as our culture and pedagogy was still much relying on 19th century practices, and they were valued compared to children written literature or illustrated tales.
I seem to recall I already told you I have a 1939 book with a collection of articles issued concurrently to the same year congress on children literature (some may even be conferences transcription) and it's almost in general "zero tolerance" on comics.

There were comic book covers also within the article in the german "anti-Atlanticism" magazine "USA in Wort und Bild" that i sold you, right?

On 4/22/2024 at 3:29 PM, archivist said:

 

I can confirm that for Germany. If one of you travels to Germany, you'll find lots of Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck in super markets or other places with magazines but no super-heroes. They can only be found at railroad stations.

 

The publisher of Disney comics for Germany for long years has been Ehapa, I believe the diffusion has been as large as it was in France in Italy, or at least similar.
Up to date "Topolino", our leading Disney title, is still the most known and popular comics publication to the wide, generic public.

On 4/21/2024 at 2:59 AM, TheComicsPreacher said:

Soooo jealous.

Compared to the rare Temeraire issues, the "Italia Liberata" (which was actually part of a series of neo-nationalist antologic magazines) is relatively not difficult to find, in case you'll want one. No comics, these were magazines with articles and photos.
The Boccasile covers were originally RSI posters.

On 4/21/2024 at 2:54 AM, Corvonie said:

Hi @vaillant @Primetime @esquirecomics

I asked a friend of mine here about this stamp and they said you all might know.

Thanks so much for any info!

I am a bit familiar with the Italian stamps alone, mostly date ones, and this one does not seem to be an Italian stamp.
Primetime explanation seems the best one to me.

On 4/22/2024 at 3:40 PM, archivist said:

So, exclusive Batman stories too ? For over 40 years now I'm into DC Comics and the surprises still don't end - unbelievable.

 

Vaillant, thank you for all your information. WIth what you wrote I was able to open a door into an universe where I still have to find out just how big the amount of exclusive stories is. I hope somebody has a listing with all those stories. If you can point me to the profile of Marcello Vaccari, I would ask him if he has such a listing. Maybe an incomplete one, so that I don't have to start from zero.

Hi, you're welcome. As I said, Marcello Vaccari is on Facebook but I do not have his contacts. I will send you a message with his Facebook profile address, if you wish.

Update: I just learned there are indeed Superman stories from the 1960s written and drawn in Italy, also commissioned by Mondadori.
According to the site comicsbox (should be generally quite accurate), the very first Superman 1960s story done in Italy is "Cronaca Lampo", written and drawn by Leone Cimpellin, and was published on Albi del Falco #317, which is also the italian edition of "Supergirl introduction to the world", and possibly the Supergirl on cover in Italy as well, here the details:
https://www.comicsbox.it/albo/ALBIFALCO_317

Here's an old article by Marcello Vaccari on the topic (scroll down to the paragraph "Superman made in Italy"):
https://www.glamazonia.it/old/articoli/albifalco/albifalco.htm

On 4/22/2024 at 5:08 PM, MattTheDuck said:

Grabbed this copy from one of @Dale Roberts's epic sales threads

My FF #18 was from Dale as well!

On 4/21/2024 at 2:16 PM, 1950's war comics said:

this thread now has 1 million views .. amazing

“The World's Greatest Comics Magazine".
Well, maybe the current authors of the book should remember this legacy… 

On 4/19/2024 at 7:32 PM, TheComicsPreacher said:

Wait, wait, wait...I missed this yesterday. YOU are "Claudio", correct?
Kirby signed this FOR YOU??????

I would LOVE to hear THAT story....just WOW.

Yes, I visited him in his Thousand Oaks home in 1991. I don't have the picture I am sure I already posted at hand (I changed computer recently) but if I find it I will post it.
My interview was re-transcribed by Kirby Museum collaborators (due to interest from Rand Hoppe) and John Morrow just asked to re-publish it in the new translation and it should appear in a Kirby Collector issue from 2025, more likely 2026 (as they're all already scheduled).

On 4/19/2024 at 7:12 AM, TheComicsPreacher said:

This one is just nuts!!!

Indeed, one of the most interesting publications of the period. Occupied France, and Paris in particular, are mysterious multi-layered nexuses of history.
This issue has become darn rare… I noticed it was already more difficult than others when I picked the ones I sold, but while other issues surface, the early ones and this one seem to be tough!

On 4/20/2024 at 5:13 AM, Calidream'n said:

@vaillant I'm always asking my sister- in-law to keep her eyes out for anything comic/WW II related when she shops (She lives in Cenaia near Pisa) Where do you find your stuff?

• Non-Italian stuff: mostly on eBay, similar auction sites and European dealers when I can navigate the language (e.g. French or German).
• Italian stuff: everywhere, but mostly at conventions or again antiquary booksellers online (though local portals), or auction sites. Unfortunately antiquary/vintage comics shops are very rare nowadays, as most shops started in the 1990s to follow the american initial model and started to keep just new comics / new releases.
• Non-Latin based languages Countries stuff: It's a gamble indeed!

On 4/19/2024 at 4:18 AM, TheComicsPreacher said:

Agree and…I think many of us could say the same about YOU.

That is so nice of you… Thanks! 

Very Nice!

On 4/19/2024 at 1:13 AM, TheComicsPreacher said:

No? Post link pretty please?

Bathe here: 

— from 2 years ago (it seemed less!). And I hope in short I will have a new one, albeit smaller, incoming.
Or one titled Worldwide Atomic Age / Anti-Communist items .  

On 4/19/2024 at 1:10 AM, TheComicsPreacher said:

Well hello there sir - longgggg time.

pretty FF8!

Sorry to hear about the income freeze.

What I remember most about your posts is your artistic eye for unusual stuff. Hope you get to throw more funny money at funny books again sometime soon.

Did you manage to see the sales thread I did on worldwide WW2 wartime comics?

I love this thread — hard to see these days… threads like this (and members like esquirecomics) were one of the main reasons which made me decide to join the boards, over 10 years ago.

On 4/16/2024 at 7:05 AM, jimjum12 said:

It's different now. I have to be careful walking as I'm no longer sturdy. I walk like Frankenstein, not a lot of feeling on my left side, and lots of fatigue. I am now able to stand up, do limited cooking and cleaning, and dress myself, so I'm not dead weight on my family, which is a real blessing. I call it the new normal. Slow and awkward. The Church has been helpful as have friends and family, but I'm basically self sufficient now. I do miss going to work and getting that check each week. GOD BLESS...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

So good I logged in as I was wondering myself and thinking of writing you a message. In a very minimal and limited manner I can grasp your experience as I've been unwell since before Easter, I experienced vertigo due to cervicalgic pain, fall and broke a rib, and other stuff. I can only imagine how adapting to these limitations can be, as I have seen how relatively minimal limitations can hugely impact the most mundane daily tasks. And of course I do sympatize with your current "forced unemployment" being still working on my typeface design project and not having a fixed income. A big hug, Jimmy, God bless! 

On 3/22/2024 at 11:22 PM, KirbyJack said:

Well, Claudio, if you were around more, we would have more recent quotes. 

 

I do not have money to put into collecting, and also time is very little, so most is "freezed"…

On 8/16/2023 at 8:51 PM, Kromak said:

Vast majority of Disney stories were produced outside US (especially from middle 60`s and up) and very few were ever published there.

And being Kromak from Brazil he knows well, as together with us, they have been one of the producers. Brazilian authors also adopted very early the Italian created character "Duck Avenger" (by master Guido Martina) somewhat turning him into a sort of super-hero parody (which he was not mean to be, he was introduced as a commentary of the italian "fumetti neri" on the wave of Diabolik). Brazilian authors did fun and weird short stories where almost all of the characters have secret identities.
In particular, Paper Bat ("Morcego Vermelho", Red Bat in his original Brazilian conception), Fethry Duck's unlucky superheroistic alter-ego, was created in 1973 by brazilian authors Ivan Saidenberg and Carlos Edgard Herrero, based on guidelines by our own Giovan Battista Carpi (art director of the Italian Disney school until his death in 1999). 
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morcego_Vermelho

Red Bat is basically "Fethry Duck playing Batman" and he's very funny at that…
I attach an 1980s cover of our own title "Mega Almanacco" by italian master Marco Rota featuring him… I love this cover!

As an example: here's an article about the Montecchi brothers, which did a handful of Batman stories for Mondadori (they signed "Montague" to fool readers in believing the stories were orignal US ones):
https://www.giornalepop.it/fratelli-montecchi/

I attach a page from a Montecchi brothers story:
 

@archivist So, apologies for not getting back earlier. Asif (mustermark) noticed me about this but for some reason my Internet browser did not allow me to access the forums.
The technical problem now seems solved.
 

To cut a long story short: as far as the early decades are concerned (1930s and 1940s) each country has a rich and varied story on how DC Comics superheroes were initially presented and adapted (or even "recreated"), and this is often intertwined with relevant and fascinating historical events of a given time. As we get to the 1960s and past them — I speak for Italy alone — I am aware of original stories produced for the Batman (Mondadori) title in the 1960s but I have no direct knowledge of Superman ones. I believe one of the best persons to ask, as I basically remain very ignorant about DC history, is Marcello Vaccari. I do not have a direct contact of him, but if you use Facebook I can point you to his profile.

On 8/16/2023 at 6:34 PM, sfcityduck said:

Lots of original Italian stories for Disney characters that were not published in the US.  I wonder why this was so for Italy?  Maybe sort of like Polish movie posters for US films having to have been drawn by Polish artists.

Since the 1960s decline of syndicated strips, and consequently Disney comics, Italy has officially become the biggest and most acknowledged worldwide provider of original Disney comics stories.
This has been already happening for at least a decade, but after Walt Disney death the comics production was further neglected in USA, and this of course mutually reinforced the decline of the characters popularity among younger generations of readers. Italian artists (together with nordic or Dutch ones) in particular were also working for the Disney studios for stories to be published all across the world *except* in USA. Gladstone daringly started a slowly "recover" of comics tradition (and twice) in in homeland, where Disney comics originated, but we see how it went. I don't know which approach Boom studios took, IDW was interesting but in my opinion it still did not strike the adequate balance to succeed in making them once again known to the wider public.
The sporadical attempts in US publishing to try and "re-instate" a comics tradition were varied and always ended up being sort of "niche", while in Italy, nordic countries, Argentina, most of Europe, comics (along with the classic animated movies) have always been *the* staple of Walt Disney Productions.

Keep in mind that when the Italian production started, as early as the late 1930s ("Donald Duck and the mystery of Mars, the earliest Disney story entirely produced in Italy, albeit a bit weird, is from 1937), the classic syndicated production from USA was still in full bloom. But by the 1960s Italy had become the official largest provider of new stories of high quality for countries all over the world. Ironically, except USA, until Gladstone tried to change this starting in 1986.

On 3/2/2024 at 12:03 AM, The Lions Den said:

The CGC Grading Guide states that a book with a fully split spine would usually be no higher than a 1.8 and may be further downgraded if tape or extra staples were used to hold the book together... 

Thank you. Tracking this, as we'll be able to have more perspective, also from Overstreet criteria and maybe other countries?

On 3/11/2024 at 7:35 PM, Hepcat said:

That's precisely why I find the Human Torch run in this title strangely compelling. It's much less widely collected and therefore a collection of such is more unique.

My comment was from 10 years ago, however! LOL!

An interesting topic that I have found now.
Is there a consensus about on how CGC grades a full spine split and a half spine split, then?
And Overstreet criteria how did/do judge this?