CentaurMan

Here's another hard-to-find issue, New Adventure #29: It's funny, the Flessel covers for pre-Batman Detective Comics are widely known as classics and are in heavy demand. Yet I believe his work on the pre-Sandman Adventure Comics is equally impressive, maybe even more exciting due to the broad range of subject matter (Flessel stuck to the "Detective" vs. "Adventure" themes very nicely). But for some reason, these early Adventures don't sell for the same premiums as the early Detectives. I think they're a good bit scarcer, which is part of the problem. People don't even know of them except as a vague run.

Wow, that would be cool. I don't have any books from that pedigree. Hey Andy, you mind looking in my NA #24 and seeing whether it's got any distinctive markings? To keep the thread going, here's another early Flessel, New Adventure #28: I love the racial diversity, and I always find myself staring at the guy looking towards us in the bottom corner.

Win that is a beautiful #24. The pages look bone white. Is it a pedigree? Lovely book, Win - did you happen to purchase it within the last few years (from Motor City, perhaps)? STEVE Got Larson? You know, my records are woefully inadequate, but I suspect you're correct. I'm sure I bought it in 2004, not sure from whom, but it was at the Chicago Con (which could've easily been Motor City). Do you know the book?

And one more for tonight, a charming early holiday cover, #11:

Staying with New Comics for now, here's #9. They've obviously switched to more stable paper stock at this point.

Those early New Comics have their own charm. Here's my #6

Win that is a beautiful #24. The pages look bone white. Is it a pedigree? Doubtful. It has a sealed spine split, but is otherwise unrestored (I believe).

Beautiful 43 and 45, Bill. Here's my 43 too: Nice Fred Gaurdineer cover.

The page quality on that New Comics #2 is ridiculous. Bone white.

Now you do. More coming soon too. WOO HOO!! You da man, Andy.

Again, I don't have a lot of mine scanned yet, but here are a few. I absolutely LOVE this run of covers. I consider these books to be the pinnacle of the early Golden Age.

Jon's exactly right. I've been sloppy with my nomenclature. Centaur completionists include these pre-Centaurs in their checklists (as in many cases the issue numbering doesn't even change as the publisher changes).

Awesome! Unfortunately I don't have a lot of mine scanned yet, but I do have #2 all queued up (as you predicted):

These covers aren't as impressive as some of the ones posted recently, but this is an important series. Western Picture Stories was the first single-themed western comic. Here's the full run:

My lord, those are nice books. And rare, too! I didn't realize that I should be insanely jealous of someone else besides Jon Berk.

Nice book! I'll post it's compatriot just so they're together in the thread. I believe you're right; #2 is the last original Centaur book: What else do you collect, DrBenway? Post more scans!!

Your books are simply phenomenal! You and Jon Berk have to be considered the masters of this genre. One question: It seems like a number of your books have a slight roll at the spine, coming towards the viewer. Is that an artifact of the way they were scanned, or was there something about the type of storage that created this? In any case, they're simply stunning.

FWIW (and I'm not Steve, so obviously take it with a grain of salt), #40 is my pick for the toughest of that group. I've got a copy of #42, I passed on a #41 once because of price, but I've never seen a #40 for sale anywhere.

Here's a pretty obscure Centaur, although of the three issues of Comic Pages it's clearly the most common:

It's funny because it's true.

Well, DUH, you just solved your own problem! As I stated above, the funny covers are cheap as hell compared to the awesome covers. Quit competing with me for the awesome ones and build out your collection of funny Centaurs. For instance, I know you're dying for one of these: and lucky you, I have two.

Yeah, it's funny, there are two types of Centaur covers. This kind: and this kind: Obviously, the latter kind is highly sought by both Centaur completionists and GA cover aficionados, and there clearly aren't enough copies to go around. The former kind, however, are also ridiculously scarce but have no real demand behind them, and as such can be picked up cheap (if they can be found). As a Centaur completionist, I'd say that GA cover aficionados like yourself bug the hell out of me.

Proving definitively that Centaurs are the direct predecessor to Marvel's Clone Saga. By the way, do you know if Mad Ming's "saga" continues into issue 39? I want to finish reading it. It does have a sort of retarded charm. I'm missing issue #39.

That's part of the curse of collecting Centaurs. Some of the issues are so rare that, despite cool covers, they're almost uncollectible because people are barely aware of their existence. These books are from April, May, and June of 1940, right in the sweet spot of early GA superhero books, and yet thanks to horrific distribution they are far less known than, say, Fantastic Comics #5-7 published in the same months (despite covers of comparable quality, in my mind). You certainly put this in terms I can understand! (Still need #5 & #7 myself...maybe someday...) There's a lot of overlap between Centaur and Fox collectors, so I figured comparing the publishers from the same month would help the scarcity perspective. If I ever get the final 65 issues I need to finish my full Centaur collection, I'll likely move on to Fox.

Proving definitively that Centaurs are the direct predecessor to Marvel's Clone Saga.