Crimebuster

I received my first ever original art today. Woo-hoo! It's maybe not at quite the same level as some of the stuff you guys are posting, but it looks cool and I'm pretty stoked.

The cover of Jughead #112 (vol. 2) as well as a cool half splash:

Ah, okay, thanks. I see why OAAW #168 is listed as the first appearance now, though it still seems like a retcon to me. But Kubert did it pretty early on and it's also very explicit.

For those who don't have SSWS #157, the issue reprints the story OAAW #168 only with a short new framing sequence with the Unknown Soldier reminiscing about the first time he met Sgt. Rock. I suspected a retcon like this may have been the case, but it couldn't get any clearer than actually reprinting the entire story.

Anyway, I was planning to pick up a OAAW #168 anyway since I am beginning to collect Sgt. Rock, so it's not a huge deal for me personally. It still feels and reads to me like this is a prototype later retconned into a first appearance, rather than a tryout or a true first appearance, but so be it.

I take it that at some point Joe Kubert addressed this question? if you could expand on this, I would appreciate it, as I am trying to get information on why OAAW #168 is listed as the first appearance. What Overstreet says doesn't really sway me much, but if Kubert had something to say about this I would like to hear it.

Question for you war experts. Is OAAW #168 really the first appearance of the Unknown Soldier? I've always thought it was more of a prototype, considering it came out four years before his series began in SSWS. You know, it's an unknown soldier, not the Unknown Soldier. Having read the issue, I don't see anything in the story that leads me to believe otherwise.

However, I'm wondering if DC later retconned this into his first appearance in one of the Sgt. Rock / Unknown Solider crossovers later on, because everyone seems to be pretty convinced OOAW #168 is his first appearance. Is this the case? Did one of those crossovers have Uknown Soldier explicitly say that he first met rock in that OOAW story?

It just doesn't seem to me like the OOAW story was intended to be an ongoing character or anything. SSWS #151 feels and reads like his true first appearance to me.

Can anybody shed some light on this for me?

Girls in red dresses seem to have been a theme on at least a few of these covers.

 

One of my favorite covers of the run! of course, most of the covers after #31 or so are pretty boring, so there's not a ton of competition. But as far as the later series goes, this is one of the best.

Those red dresses do really pop:

Chalk this up to Biro just not being a very strong draftsman. The guy "pushing" him actually looks more like he's bowling the guy or maybe pitching him underhand like a softball. Which, judging by how the bad guy dies in this story, might very well be the case.

Later issues of Boy Comics are pretty easy to find, but slightly more difficult to track down is this short-lived -- and ill-advised -- spinoff:

It's all some very unfunny "funny animal" stuff. What's really weird is that Squeeks can talk and lives in an anthropomorphic world filled with talking animals, while at the same time over in Boy Comics, he's just an unusually smart trained monkey. Plus, in this title, he's kind of a person_too_unaware_of_social_graces, as these have a very violent "Tom & Jerry" quality to them. It's a head scratcher and no wonder the series only lasted a handful of issues.

DAFUQ?

 

Never seen that cover before. Even in the 40's I didn't think it was funny to smack down on the cripples.

 

 

 

Well, with most of the major league baseball players fighting overseas, pushing cripples in front of trains was one of the only sports the people on the home front really had left.

 

Seriously, though, while I certainly support the handicapped community, I don't think pushing a double amputee in front of a train is necessarily worse than, say, feeding a live woman to caged rats:

 

Actually the amputee is fleeing. He's the bad guy in the story.

Hmm. I don't think so, though there are two amputees in this story, so it's a little hard to say. But since the first amputee gets shoved in front of a train at the beginning of the story, I assumed that was the scene being depicted on the cover. The second amputee is the guy that dies by being tossed around the room like a football.

Or maybe this is just a third hard luck amputee!

 

This scan belongs to someone else but I owned a copy for over 20 years.

This reminds me, I have a question for anyone out there who owns a copy of Boy Comics #11. My copy is missing a page at the centerfold. It's not the whole wrap; someone actually cut a page out with a straight razor. it doesn't appear to affect any of the stories, though, so I assume it's either a pinup or perhaps the text story, which at the time was usually Daredevil.

Can anyone confirm what's show at the centerfold of Boy Comics #11? It would be the left page when looking at the centerfold.

I have several others and enjoy the Rocky X scifi stories in the later issues.

Rocky X was an interesting series, particulary the fact that it started off as a sci-fi adventure with Rocky and his pals careening around alien worlds -- and then somehow turned into a commie scare strip, with Rocky and his pals as government agents working in Korea to combat the Chinese menace. Now that's some flexibility for you. On the other hand, it almost kind of made sense as Rocky X's first big battle was against The Claw.

DAFUQ?

 

Never seen that cover before. Even in the 40's I didn't think it was funny to smack down on the cripples.

 

Well, with most of the major league baseball players fighting overseas, pushing cripples in front of trains was one of the only sports the people on the home front really had left.

Seriously, though, while I certainly support the handicapped community, I don't think pushing a double amputee in front of a train is necessarily worse than, say, feeding a live woman to caged rats:

It's not necessarily better, either, but... Charlie Biro!

I just got my comics from John as well. Good price, good communication and fast shipping. And they were packed well, which is nice since the post office apparently dropped a small elephant on the box; the box got squashed some but the comics inside were safe and sound. Thanks (thumbs u

I got my camera working, so I thought I'd post a few of my decidedly lower grade copies. Most of the collecting interest in Boy Comics seems to be in the earlier issues, which is understandable. But I have a soft spot for the end of the run as well, when it became more of a boys adventure series. Here's one of the very, very few covers drawn by anyone other than Charles Biro.

Boy Comics #116, with cover and interior art by the master, Joe Kubert:

i have only one, having sold my okajima copy of 20 to jamie.

 

 

Great copy!

I was just looking at this issue earlier today. The scene on the cover does take place in the comic, but in the story, Crimebuster isn't there to save the day. So the intern crushes/suffocates the girl by ratcheting the straitjacket tighter and tighter.

Charlie Biro!

That is the splash from #40.

Maurer is woefully underappreciated, same as Bill Overgard. These books make for some fun (and loooong) reading as they are typically text-heavy

Agreed on both counts

Maurer was a great draftsman, he really knew perspective and anatomy. And Biro didn't stint on the words. I particularly love Biro's introductory essays at the beginning of every story, where he ruminates on American values, the dangers of fascism and pretty much whatever the hell he happens to be thinking about. Here's a prime example of Biro and Maurer at work:

The best thing is that Crimebuster's costume is more or less a pajamas, like Super-Goof's…

One thing I love about the series is that Crimebuster, while ostensibly a superhero, is really just a very talented kid detective. Nobody else in the series wears a costume, not even the bad guys, and that's in part because Crimebuster's outfit isn't actually a superhero costume at all, it's just a hockey uniform with a cape.

Biro went out of his way to keep the series grounded, including the explanation for the costume. Basically, Crimebuster was playing in a high school hockey game when he got word that his father had been shot by Nazi agents. So he grabbed his cape -- the school he was attending was some kind of pseudo-military academy, so they had these uniform overcoats or great capes -- and rushed out to the hospital. There's another kid with him from his school who is shown donning an identical cape. Long story short, CB's dad dies, CB chases Iron Jaw and the other Nazis, CB's mother ends up dead and CB just never stops wearing the outfit. It's like he was too traumatized by the experience to take it off.

But it's not really a superhero costume, it's just his high school hockey uniform.

That eventually led to one of my favorite moments in the whole series -- or any series -- in #60. CB is set up as a chaperone to show Loover's niece around New York City. But before they head out, Loover and CB's friends hold an intervention because they want him to know that, well... he looks ridiculous. Turns out everyone thinks he looks silly in this superhero costume, but nobody had the balls to say anything. Crimebuster gets pissed off and is like, dammit, this is my outfit! But they keep hammering away at him, presenting him with a pair of pants as a present. He eventually grudgingly gives in and tries them out, the girl thinks he's cool and he decides to ditch the cape and hockey shorts for regular, grown up pants.

It's just a hilariously meta commentary on superheroes. And it's also interesting that the issue came out in 1949, right when pretty much every other superhero book was getting cancelled. For the rest of the series, CB kept wearing his "C" hockey sewater, but the rest of his outfit was just regular clothes -- and he outlasted everyone but Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman in the process.

A good pair of pants can do wonders!

I think Boy Comics are great! $3-17 are all awesome books.

 

 

 

great cover!

Awesome copy (thumbs u

This is one of the five issues I'm still missing. The war covers seem to be the hardest to get, particularly #10, but it's fun searching. And after Captain America #1 and #2, you'd think Hitler would learn to stop building offices with giant picture windows.

Like many Gleasons, BOY COMICS is somewhat unappreciated in today's marketplace.

 

As with all my GA runs, I like the early issues best - the storytelling and art are very good.

 

The early books are somewhat scarce, I think - I generally look for a nicely presenting mid-grade copy with nice paper, and yet I only have five early issues in my collection (including the 5, 6, 8, the "all time classic story" 19, and the 26).

 

In sum, very cool books that I enjoy very much. Just not an "in" title that doesn't draw a lot of attention (though Timely, as always, has great taste in comics!) nowadays.

 

I enjoyed your initial post background story, btw.

It does seem that most of the interest is on the early issues, probably due to the fact that a) they are more superheroey, b) they have some cool war covers with crossover appeal and c) around #30 Biro started getting really text heavy on the covers and as a result, the covers mostly suck for the last 85 issues or so. As I mentioned, I personally find the middle period, particularly in the #30's and 40's, to be the best. But then, I am specifically interested in the Crimebuster strip and not so much in some of the other interesting early strips like Briefer's Yankee Longago.

I'm happy to see you mention #19, as it's one of my favorite comics of all time. #9 gets a lot of attention thanks to He-She, but for my money the story in #19 takes the cake. For those who haven't read it, it's about a guy who murders a double amputee for the insurance money. What he doesn't know is that the victim put a clause in his will saying the money can only be claimed if the killer loses both of his own legs. So he has his legs amputated and, well, things go downhill from there really fast.

Culminating in one of Biro's most innovative and gruesome deaths, where an angry associate picks him up and throws him around the room like a football until he dies:

"This is what happens to guys who hire guys to kill another guy!"

So it came to my attention earlier this week that I am not, in fact, the only person on Earth collecting Boy Comics. Needless to say, this came as a bit of a shock, but as I haven't been able to find any threads dedicated to Boy Comics on the forums, I figured I might as well start one since apparently there's at least some interest out there in this title by people other than myself.

Short story: About three years ago I decided to dip my toe into the Golden Age market for the first time. Up until that point I hadn't bought any GA books despite collecting since 1984; they always just seemed too pricey and foreign. But finally I got curious enough to check out ebay and on a whim I decided to try and buy a few random Golden Age books as cheaply as possible just to see what they were like.

What I ended up with were six issues of Boy Comics between #36 and #52, for the whopping sum of six dollars each. I was really surprised I could afford honest to god Golden Age comics and even more shocked when I read them and discovered they were totally awesome.

For the past three years, then, I've been trying to put together a low grade, complete run of Boy Comics as cheaply as possible. My initial goal was to get #36-up for under $10 an issue, something I did manage to accomplish (a few issues were more than $10, but averaged out I think I got in under the wire). Once that was done I started ponying up for the earlier issues and am now five away from a complete run.

Personally, I think the writing from Charles Biro is top notch in the Crimebuster strip, particularly from around #31-60 or so. The early issues for me aren't as interesting, as it's kind of more generic superhero stuff until Iron Jaw is killed off in #15 (spoilers!). After that point, though, Biro seems to slowly gain momentum as he turns the strip into a true crime series that happens to have a teenage "superhero" as the main character. By around #31, Crimebuster is in many cases almost more of a narrator than an actual player in the stories, and these are some great issues.

Once Iron Jaw comes back from the dead, things go downhill again for me, with the nadir being the issues where Crimebuster loses the cover spot to Iron Jaw and Sniffer, one of the most boring and unfunny strips I think I have ever read. Luckily, Crimebuster still managed to hang on long enough to finally return to prominence for the boy's adventure stuff in the early to mid 1950's; though these are a far cry from the hard boiled crime stories in the #31-60 range, the last dozen issues of the strip have their own charm in a Hardy boys kind of way.

I also want to mention that the art in many of these stories is very, very solid, with strong draftsmanship and storytelling; there's rarely anything flashy or eye-catching, but the artists, particularly Norman Maurer and later Joe Kubert, really know what they are doing.

Here are a couple of really terrible group shots of my Boy Comics collection. Here's #5-14, with a couple issues missing:

And here's #15-26:

Apologies for the craptastic pics, my camera is on the fritz so I had to use my phone. Hopefully i can get some good shots of these at some point.

So is anybody else out there a fan of Crimebuster and Boy Comics? Let's see your comics and hear your stories.

Hello. This thread is so people can talk about how great I am.

Now I just need to find someone who feels that way...

Very nice. Odd, the 1.5 actually looks nicer than the 2.5. I'd buy 1.5's that look like that all day long!

Boy, my comics are kind of embarrassing compared to all of these gems, but I do own both Avengers #1 and #4, so I might as well post my beaters.

Hey, if it weren't for low grade books, high grade books would have nothing to look good in comparison to, right?

There are a lot of really beautiful comics in this thread.

Don't worry though, I can fix that:

So this is my copy of Avengers #4. Here's the story: When I was about 13, I started getting serious about collecting comics. My Dad sat me down and said, you know, instead of just buying whatever random comics you come across, you should focus your efforts on a specific title. Set a goal and collect that series first and then once you're done you can move on to other things you also like.

I decided to focus on Avengers, which turned out to be a very lucky thing, because for my money Avengers #1-285 is about as solid a series of comics as have ever been printed. I don't think there's another series that maintained the level of excellence Avengers did for such a long period of time. Avengers #51-71 in particular is about as good as superhero comics get.

Anyway, shortly after I began focusing on Avengers, my Dad brought me to a comic store. I still didn't know much about back issues or collecting or Avengers even but I knew I liked old stuff so I decided I wanted the oldest Avengers issue they had. That turned out to be this copy of Avengers #4, which my Dad then bought for me for the exorbitant price of $12.50. I don't think I even knew what the significance of the issue was at the time. When we got it home and I opened it up, though, we discovered that the spine was so tattered -- big pieces were missing from it entirely -- that just reading the comic threatened to cause it to fly apart entirely. Luckily, my Dad had a simple and elegant solution -- literally a solution, because we fixed the problem by applying rubber cement to the spine and cementing the cover in place. And let me tell you, that cover is still about as firmly attached as you could imagine even today.

Somehow, I managed to put together an entire run of Avengers in about four years, despite only having my meager allowance and occasional birthday/Christmas money to work with, finishing my run the summer between my Sophomore and Junior years of high school. As you can imagine, with that kind of a budget a lot of my Avengers issues were nearly as ratty as this Avengers #4. Since then, of course, I have upgraded most of them to at least solid copies. But despite how terrible this Avengers #4 is, it's the one book in my collection I will never replace.