CentaurMan

My real name is Win Murray. I bought a number of More Funs from you, primarily via e-mail, a few years ago. The biggest book was your More Fun 73, which was in beautiful shape, other than having a small bindery chip filled at the bottom of the spine. If I remember correctly, you sold your More Fun 52 to Ian Levine, didn't you? Are you coming up to Chicago for the con this year?

More Fun was the name of the comic store that Bill Ponseti ran in New Orleans in the early 1990's, and Matt Nelson worked there. Matt had a story on his site about a large GA collection that came into the shop one time and I think that picture was run with the story. Here's another picture of Matt reading the Action #1 that some old lady brought in (I think she had like the first 20 issues and she just walked them over one day): Bill Ponseti had a huge More Fun Comics collection, too. I bought a number of books from him. Great guy. I'm wondering whether Ciorac is him, actually.

As Ajax mentioned, I think that's the picture from the More Fun collection that used to be on Matt Nelson's website. How are you affiliated with that, Ciorac? That was an awesome collection.

to both Jon and Fuelman! All three of those books are tough (especially the Amazing-Man and the Funny Pages). I've always loved that Funny Pages cover, but doesn't that lion look larger than any lion you've ever seen (especially in the neck area)?

Thanks very much for the info, and yes, he and I crossed paths. His name is Tim Cottrill (which I may have misspelled) and I'd say I bought out about 2/3rd's of his collection (about 80 Centaurs, a huge amount) a few years ago. He had a lot of obscure stuff (I think some of his books maybe came from our own buttock) but was happy with the liquidity infusion I gave him, and he cut me a nice bulk discount. I'd lost his contact info, though, so thanks so much for the PM! I'd love to shoot the breeze with him again.

Wow, Ajax, you da man. I'm honored. As for Amazing-Man #26 being a Gerber 9, I don't know, there are people around here who'd have a better sense for that than me. I just know I've been looking for Centaurs for the past 5-7 years on eBay, Heritage, Metro, etc., and I haven't seen one yet. But that might not mean anything, as the sample size for all Centaurs is pretty small. Ok, new books. Here's the two issue run of Amazing Adventure Funnies:

Here's the hard-to-find 2nd-to-last issue (#25) with the new logo: I don't have a copy of the final issue, and I expect I'll find a few copies of #22 before I find one copy of #26.

When you say you had More Fun 14-51, you mean the WHOLE RUN of 14-51?? Good god, man, that's impressive!

I don't have a copy of #22 (one of the three issues I'm missing), which is the phenomenal Nazi monster cover posted here in the past (and used as someone's avatar). So I'm moving on to #23 (in which the artwork is pretty primitive): and #24 (which is a pretty nifty image except for A-Man's distracting badly drawn arm):

Ok, I'm not getting much traction on these Amazing-Mans. That's ok, these generally aren't the best covers of the Centaur line (although Lew Glanz had some pretty neat concepts, his proportions tend to be a bit off). I'll finish posting the run just to get the scans on-line, as I expect a lot of these covers are unknown to people, and it's good to have the repository in the Centaur thread. Here's Amazing-Man #19: and #21 (which drops the sidebars and gets back to full-width artwork):

I love every Lightning Comics cover, all 10 of them. Just epitomizes early Golden Age superhero books. Very underrated and fun to collect. And what the hell kind of LCS do you have??!? Wow.

I'll skip #19 for now and go on to #20, which is one of my favorite late A-Man covers. Too bad the sidebar eats up art space. I love the guys hanging off the rocket, and their shadows. I love the damage the puma is doing to A-Man's shoulder, and the action shot of the lady shooting it in the neck. I love the heavy wooden door and the TV monitor above it showing the Great Question. Really, a tremendous action cover.

Actually, I think this issue is DC's first greytone cover, unless I'm using the term incorrectly:

Here's Amazing-Man #17, with a pretty basic cover: and #18, which begins the series of Centaur covers into 1941 which have those side-bars. Actually some pretty nifty conceptual artwork here, although the perspective is all off (no way A-Man's leg is meant to be on our side of the cannon, is it?). The Fu Manchu type guy in the upper corner seems like a non sequitor.

Amazing-Man 14 and 15 have been posted recently, so here's 13 and 16: #16 also fits into our recent discussion of covers with safes on them:

Ok, thanks to my buddy october, I've got most if not all of my Amazing-Man scans on-line now. So I'll start with #8 (another Everett cover): and #12 (a cover vaguely reminiscent of Action #61):

I don't have any of my Mad Ming or other Arrow cover Funny Pages scanned yet, but here are some earlier ones that are rarely seen: Those two crazy animal covers were drawn by someone named Ryan who I'm afraid I know nothing about. Ryan contributed tons of stories for Centaur in the 1930's (I swear every Centaur from 1937 and 1938 has at least one Ryan story in it), and his style is very unique. The stories were pretty good too, in a crazy Yellow Kid kind of way. There's always way too much going on in each panel with lots of random activity in the background (check out the crazy baseball game action, and the way the monkey photographer is fishing with his foot). He's really grown on me over the years, and at this point he's my favorite Centaur writer/artist that no one ever talks about. Anyone have any info on Ryan?

No, I just think it has an "L" on it. I have another Centaur with the same marking which I posted a few pages back:

I've got a lot of those Funny Pages you're referring to. I'll try to scan them for posting some time soon. Here's one I do have the scan of:

To keep distracting us from the ongoing horror that is the Obidiah Oldbuck thread, here's the complete 2-issue run of Super Spy:

Here's the Rockford copy of Amazing-Man #10: and my Amazing-Man #14:

Finally, I'll post the entire 2-issue run of Liberty Scouts from 1941, near the very end of the Centaur publishing house. The final issue, which I don't have, was renamed Liberty Guards after the Boy Scouts forced the name to change.

Next I'll post Keen Detective Funnies #23. I don't think the cover is quite as good as that of #24 (which I posted recently), but it's still a nice bright Air Man cover:

Ok, I've got a few more books scanned and ready to post. First up, my copy of an Amazing-Man Jon posted a couple of weeks ago. I'm reposting it just because I love the purple masthead. That's such a rarely used color scheme for comics, especially way back then:

Did she do the cover to Wonderworld 28? Jon, if you get a chance to post that one, I'd really appreciate it. If the rest of you guys have never seen a Wonderworld 28 up close, you're in for a treat...