markseifert

Nice copy. Most of the UK keys are criminally underrated.

AHA. Blacks not properly backed, which implies a bunch of other stuff. That explains a lot about how much Fiction House stuff seems a bit faded. Super fascinating.

Amazing!!

1853, in the series that defined his look more than anything previous -- Uncle Sam has a sidekick "Junior", and a dog, "the dorg". History has cheated us of this. Junior there is literally thumbing his nose at the fallen man.

Still deals to be had... D'OH. All right... there's another search bookmarked. (of course, I'm collecting every American periodical in the history of history these days, it seems. I should leave that to the far wealthier Isiah Thomas's legacy, though this might be a little late for them anyway)

Guys, all those issues of Cartoons Magazine are to die for. One of those series that I usually get beat out on when I see them on ebay. Some day!

It's all scanner dependent of course, but I accidentally left a slab inside its mylite bag once and was shocked by how much it cut down on glare. Repeated the trick successfully since, and it works. Try putting a sheet of mylar or something down on the scanner bed when you scan, if you don't put your slabs in bags. Worth a shot before looking at other scanner options.

Yankee Notions #1, Jan 1852. Not completely comics, but mostly illustrated stories, some single-panel comics, and occasional full page panel sequences. So, not technically a comic, but as far as #1's and first appearances go (or rather, first appearance in new costume, as we'd say in comics)... pretty good. It's a complex issue, but writer/artist/editor Thomas Strong deserves a lot of the credit for the development of the look of the character -- and turning him into something iconic -- which history books typically assign to the great Thomas Worth for his Harper's work 10-15 years later, which is much more readily available. Strong did still call him Jonathan (not Brother Jonathan, just Jonathan), but this is clearly Uncle Sam in look and in the role of American icon that Strong helped grow him into. Strong came from the world of penny valentines, which made him uniquely qualified for understanding the power of strong imagery along with captions. Strong breathed life into the character in a series of illustrated satirical fiction stories which reflected on the news of the time throughout the title, which featured Jonathan as main character and narrator -- not a government figure but a common American: smart, capable, adventurous, and willing to remind the government that he was a citizen and not a subject. You can see that with the ("don't tread on me") timber rattlesnake here -- not being purposefully tread on, but hey, you know, stay out of my way, won't you? And, quite literally forgotten by history: Strong's version of the icon he helped popularize had a kid sidekick. And a dog.

I know, right? So... what are some of the keys of the paperback world?

Whoa, fascinating. When did this come out? That is very, very reminiscent of Gold Key Magnus cover art, right down to the color scheme of that fellow's outfit.

What are you using, Bookkeeper spray?

It IS creepy stuff. I think it's also one of the reasons masked heroes exploded here in America. The country had a cultural awareness of masked and hooded vigilantes going back 75 years by then. (and not just those creepy guys, there were others related to religion, and secret societies.) Cartoonists first caricatured them, then fictionalized them, and eventually... realized that some of this iconography could be transformed and used for good as well as evil.

Holy heck, what a batch of books!

Probably because Ace financial backers included DC / Ind News "silent partner" and under-appreciated early-industry mastermind Paul Sampliner. If there'd been a problem, a quick trip down the street would probably have solved it. Wow! Didn't know that! But I've noticed from some of your other posts, you are extremely knowledgeable about 'insider' goings on and stats on/ about various golden age publishers. An asset and opinion of clarity to many a discussion on these boards. (thumbs u Absolutely great info and happy Ace was still able to give us THE Clown of the GA!!! (thumbs u Thanks (thumbs u Wyn was another of those guys (like Roscoe Fawcett, who I just have an incredible respect for) who quietly made a lot of good business moves. In a way, the Ace legacy has had just as impressive an impact on popular culture in the US as Marvel & DC, and continues to this day.

Probably because Ace financial backers included DC / Ind News "silent partner" and under-appreciated early-industry mastermind Paul Sampliner. If there'd been a problem, a quick trip down the street would probably have solved it.

+1, these are all fresh books to me. Is there a scarcity index for the early (non-photo cover) issues of Girls' Romances? +2, always great to see books you haven't noticed before.

Wait... his bird's name is Whiz? Huh.

I guess the big question is if you have the key for it that was famously kept out in the open where everybody knew where it was, (and if there wasn't a spare...) or did the thief take that with him. If the key was left behind, perhaps a crime of opportunity during the recently-held party. If the thief kept the key, might imply it was passed off to him by an insider.

Great conversation piece. Part of one of the most infamous events in the history of the hobby.

Noticed something interesting when they announced the "Superman Lives" documentary last year... If you go back and look at the timeline, his collecting entry/exit actually corresponds pretty closely with him being cast as Superman and some years later the announcement that the movie had fallen through. Though little doubt the theft was the most significant factor. Stephen's account of that situation from about a decade ago here on the boards is still one of my all-time favorite posts here. The IRS stuff came much later.

No matter what any of us do or do not think about movie/tv/media-fueled speculation, there's also this: All this stuff is worth "something", because many people buy into some version of a conversation about the book that goes like this: "If the first appearance of Character A is worth $100, then the first appearance of Character B should be worth about $85, because it's from the same year and Character B is slightly less important." There are other factors like scarcity, creator, etc that we'd consider. And we've had approximately 1,375,432 conversations like that on this board. It's fun, and because most of us buy into them to a greater or lesser extent, we make them true [none of this is worth anything if we don't all buy into this idea of relative importance in some form. If we don't, it's just crumbling old paper.] Jumping to the point -- even without any sort of hype on any given day, when the top sale in the hobby goes from $350k to $3.2 million in a 5-year period, you're going to have a lot of people revisiting those comparisons and deciding if they mean something different now, or not. A decade ago, Book A was worth $100,000, and Book G-23 was worth $5,000. If Book A is now worth $1.5 Million, is Book G-23 now worth $75,000? Or maybe "just" $25,000? The rules are different now, but how different? I think that goes just as far towards explaining some anomalous valuations as movie hype does.

It's a good and interesting question. I think... maybe... because "full color" is a printing trade term, and because US publishers have done a lot of printing business with Canadian companies since forever for obvious reasons, it could be there's more American English usage in the printing trade than there otherwise might be. Putting that to a barely-meaningful test You might know that Transcontinental Printing of Canada is currently one of the world's largest printers of American comic books. Googling their website, "colour" is somewhat more common, but there's still plenty of instances of "color" in various contexts.

What you are saying is that you don't consider them keys, but Bob Overstreet did. I have towering respect for Overstreet, but... yes, this. Largely. (and lots of people did subsequently and ABSOLUTELY considered those Legion apps keys in the 1970s/80s, and some still do to a point) Hamlet, you haven't even gotten to the fun part -- "Headlight" covers (we'll test how old people are by whether they remember that or not ) , Injury to the eye notations, and so on. Keys are in the eye of the beholder. There really is no other definition that you're going to make stick, like it or not.

Some great covers in this thread.

That's a good point. Plus, thinking about it, is that a child's handwriting, or even a young adult male's handwriting? We tend to be more deliberate about it when we're younger. I'm probably overthinking it, but that's the practiced, rushed squiggle sig of an adult. If that's true, you don't even know for sure if it's his handwriting, whoever he is. edit -- this sounds silly, but seriously... we could all chip in and get a handwriting analysis, I bet!