PopKulture

I've wanted one for over forty years as well! This was a grail book in the 70's. I still love everything about this cover. Congratulations!!

Most silver age DC books were fairly consistent in terms of the art until Neal Adams and others started arriving in the mid to late 60’s. Now, when people compare the artwork between Marvel and DC, there’s a tendency I think to compare the seemingly static DC stuff to Kirby’s FF run from #48 onward or his Mangog saga in Thor. Thing is, all Kirby and all Marvel wasn’t created equally. That early Don Heck on Thor or Tuska’s Avengers was downright mediocre at best. Some of it looked like layouts, not finished work. I’ll take Swan over those two or Larry Lieber every time. And the Chic Stone inked early Kirby barely hinted at the Kirby/Sinnott stuff we came to marvel over later on. Apples to apples n all...

Trying to organize some men’s mags... I thought I’d take a picture of a random assortment.

I don’t hunt big books, but I’ve bought many $5 to $30 run-fillers, one-offs, and readers this past year. One of my favorite collecting memories from an otherwise dubious 2020 will be Catrick’s sales thread not-so-long ago when I bought this group, which seems to be in my prime wheelhouse these days, along with those miscellaneous Dell giants I pick up here and there.

I was happy to pick it up many moons ago. It's the only way I'd ever afford a piece of art from your grandfather. Both Sick and Cracked are pretty good sources for art by comic greats at a fraction of the price. I know I picked up some Bill Ward and Severin stuff too with the Playbore piece.

Wow, I don't think this has ever passed through my grubby little hands, at a show, shop, or otherwise. It's got a great mid-century feel to it.

Oh no! He's coming for all the high-grade Pocket Books now!! You do seem as much motivated by what's between the covers, so at least there's that. I'm admittedly in it more for the graphics. Pockets get a little overshadowed by the competition, I believe, but there's something so old, so visually appealing about them to me.

Here is a piece from Sick magazine:

Sadly, in a recent virtual boardroom, producers and show creators were likely assuring the writers that America just wasn't ready to have their mores so fiercely challenged. My advice going forward: worry less about checking boxes next time and create some interesting characters and storylines. If the writers were as "enlightened" as they surely must believe, the boxes check themselves organically. It shouldn't be at the forefront of all one ever does.

That's a serious pick-up, Hap. Congratulations!!

Or under the dime novel thread (if we had one!). The people who collect these refer to them as “thick books” and they can be found pretty cheap relative to their age. (I had a few listed in a past sales thread with no takers). The lithographed covers on most of them are really cool!

I would certainly add FC 408 - Donald Duck and the Golden Helmet - to that list, probably Sheriff of Bullet Valley (FC 199) and my other fave, Frozen Gold (FC 62) as well.

And lest we get chastised for derailing this thread with sports drivel, let me just add to the Bats vs. Supes debate that Superman will always be the great discontinuity. There was nobody like him beforehand, and nobody since. (Well, except for Superboy, Supergirl, Superhorse, Streaky... maybe Mon-El.) He is the spark. He started it all. Batman is utterly derivative. He is a costumed playboy detective, and there were many in the pulps before him. Even his driving force for justice, revenge, is not unique. Almost everything about Superman was or is unique. That said, I get where Batman is relatable: inherit a lot of money and do your calisthenics relentlessly and you might get there yourself. Heck, that was the Doc Savage method to a tee. So, sure, Batman is popular with the public and Boardies alike, but there is every reason to believe if he had never come to be, we’d still have superheroes. That’s not as easily asserted with regards to Superman. How somebody with vastly more resources than myself ultimately decides to spend their money making either Action 1 or Detective 27 the most valuable is a different matter entirely.

I won’t debate greatest athletes endlessly, as it just boils down to opinions at some point, but the stats are relevant up to that point of departure. West scored 27 points a game over his career! I’ve seen most of the greats and I believe two of the three best pure shooters ever are current NBA players: Curry and Durant. The other member of that trio was West. If shooting the ball from anywhere and making a high percentage of three-pointers before there was a three-point line doesn’t translate, I don’t know what does! Same for Hans, consensus for the greatest shortstop of all-time by baseball writers that know a heck of a lot than me. In baseball, you field the ball, hit the ball, and run the bases. He did that as well as anyone. In my mind, those skills translate too. I’ve heard the arguments about today’s “training methods” and all that hub-bub. Lou Gehrig and guys from earlier eras ate non-GMO foods without added sugar and didn’t consume copious amounts of high-fructose corn syrup, so there’s that. Also, we have enough film on guys like Bob Feller, Joe Wood, and Lefty Grove to know they threw every bit as fast as Roger Clemens and Jake Arietta. I believe Jeter would’ve thrived in the 20’s just as much as Ruth would’ve thrilled in the 2000’s. Of course these are discussions best hashed out in pubs around the world, so most of these debates can wait!

I see what you did there! And valid points on all. As I’ve written many times, better than half the wartime Marvel Mystery Comics probably merit consideration as “classic,” as do many more Caps than currently designated.

Take

Take

Take

No serious scholar or devotee of baseball history wouldn’t put Wagner in their top 50. I’ve seen him in most top 25 lists as well.

Wow, this is a really impressive collection, and so well curated as well! Kudos!!

Take

Take

Take

Well into my twenties, I used to know every single book I had and where I got it, whether it was a newsstand purchase or from one of the handful of the local stores that sold back issues, or a local comic show as they started to appear locally. Strangely, I can still recall many of them (even though events from last month escape me). For instance, Son of Satan #5 with Mind-Star I bought off the spinner rack at Merl Drugs (now defunct) along with so many others. Budny's in Brandywine, 7-11, B.J.'s Country Corner... plus ones I bought at a liquor store near Brown's Lake in Wisconsin there my family would vacation when I was a kid. As a teenager, I had a handful of favorite dealers at shows like Bob Myers and I can still point to random books I bought from him over forty years ago (think various issues of Looney Tunes in the 100's or something a bit cooler like Vic Jordan 1). He used little round price stickers on poly bags and I still run across a book in my boxes that hasn't been re-bagged since then (egads!). When I finally lost track of exactly what I had was only recently, and that fact owes less to memory decline and more to the fact that I look at images of comics all the time, If you see an image of a certain book in your watch list on the Bay for years, it's not surprising you may come to think you have it. Same goes for browsing things like Mike's Amazing World and viewing The Newsstand over and over. So while this leads more often to me thinking I have a book than buying doubles, it has in general undercut my ability to recall whether I have that specific Son of Tomahawk or a 15c cover price Rawhide Kid.

One of my favorite Pockets! Always loved that Hoffman cover.