markseifert

I think your red highlighted portions could just be sloppy connective loops/strokes between letters. Aside from "Allen" or "Allan", it's still a problem we can use brute force on. If it does start with "A", and is 4-6 letters long, you can come up with a pretty short list of likely candidates. Even throw in starts with "T", it's not going to be an enormous list. I think ignoring the rest of the story (for the moment) is the important part. Male, born around 1920-1935ish, Bay area resident, and a that list of names. Then see if any of those results click with the story in some way. There might be some weird kernel of truth that fits in there. Like: "Tom's" brother (or cousin, or whatever) is the one who went to war. Tom didn't have the heart to read his heroes at war anymore, thinking of his cousin in those same deadly situations. Would an adult make all those stamps on the books anyway? Isn't that something a child would do?

Thought about that. I'm no expert, but I think it's not consistent simply because of the steeper angle of approach and having a heavier hand near the beginning. (look at how the entire first name flows away from the angle of the "A" leg) They are the same letter repeated twice, they are vertical... could be wrong, but it's a pretty good fit. Assume "A" followed by two identical letters... wouldn't take too long to run through all the possibilities.

Because I love comic book history mysteries: Even assuming good faith and good recollection on the part of everyone involved who has first hand knowledge of the matter, I still think you can assume there are probably significant inaccuracies in the story. (I don't think I've seen that any of the buyers dealt directly with Tom Reilly's parents, so if that's true then I'm mistaken about this) At the outset, even the original dealer-purchasers got the story third hand, and 30 years after the fact -- the husband of a relative of the family. Taking the idea that the comics were split among family at face value, that seems to imply that Tom Reilly's parents had passed, and that too is going to reduce the odds of an accurate story. Right there, you're probably sunk in terms of getting solid info. Longtime dealers, how many collections have walked into your store with a story attached that wasn't quite right when you looked into it? And if somebody walked in and said, "I'm looking into selling these comics for my wife's cousins, want to take a look?"... which, as far as I can follow is more or less the scenario... with all respect to the memory of the people who may have been involved, I think most would find it reasonable to have some healthy skepticism of that situation. It doesn't even necessarily require bad faith on the part of the seller. The seller is wary, doesn't know you, doesn't know what these things are worth, and might want to give you as little real info as possible as a result. **** That aside, the signature/stamp. Taking a good look: I do think that's an "A". I think that little loop on the right leg is an abbreviated version of what you do when you do an A like this. If it is an A, the next two loops are lower-case "ll". Visiting our nation's handy social security index of popular names, both "Allan" and "Allen" chart pretty well for boys of the 1930s and 1940s. I think you could make either case, looking at the sig. So... I think maybe ignoring the story, calling that "Allen" or "Allan", and making some assumptions about age and location is a pretty solid angle of attack on the problem.

Great info. (thumbs u

+1 To all of it. (thumbs u Yeah, +2. I think part of the debate here is that Showcase IS pretty much a run of keys, and so from our perspective 50+ years later, past the first couple years some of the individual issues feel just a little less special. Even though they are still very important. But once they got to #4 (through about #40 I guess) they locked in on the direction they needed to go and got their mojo going. If they'd had more misfires after #4 -- mixed a few more Frogmen and Kings of the Wild in there with Green Lantern and Aquaman -- the hits would stand out more. But they didn't. As it is, they had about a 6 year stretch there which is legendary for good reason.

I'm saying it fits the definition (and time-frame) of a Silver Age reboot, and that MF 73 Aquaman and Adv 260 Aquaman are demonstrably different characters. If anybody has a better idea of what the first appearance of "Adv 260 Aquaman" could be, I love good theories about this stuff. (thumbs u That said, I don't agree it's Adv 229, and think that's been arbitrarily chosen because it has the same cover-date as Showcase 4. Are there noteworthy additions to the Aquaman canon between MF 73 and Adv 260? edit to add -- reading through the entire Fradon era would probably be somewhat useful. I should do that at some point.

Well, in the same spirit (and I know we've gone through this before, but)... MF 73 = Aquaman is a human, the son of an undersea scientist/explorer. Adv 260 = Aquaman is an Atlantian and heir to the throne of a still-existing Atlantis. In general, it's the origin we're familiar with today. To make your comparison stick, this would be the general equivalent of Action 1 saying that Superman was the mutant son of a circus strongman and then Supes 106 finally revealing that he was a strange visitor from the planet Krypton. That's not to say that there aren't some VERY noteworthy origin retolds along the way with Superman. Supes 53 is the obvious one, Action 158 is another very important one. There are others. But they are additions to the core origin idea, whereas I think Adv 260 is a pretty significant departure from what had gone before.

http://jackdavisfoundation.org/board-members Looks like some family members there, and considering the purpose of their foundation (the study and appreciation of his work), could be they'd like to hear from a knowledgeable collector like yourself.

Any recs for best books on aviation history civil war to WWI? I've been getting interested lately due to how influential it was early on to sf and fantastic fiction in general.

I've admired scans you've posted many times over the years. You've got that late 40s / early 50s DC focus that you don't see too much, compared to earlier GA and Silver Age. Some of that stuff is really undiscovered country. Lots of little-known gems.

Very interesting!

I am very new to studying pulp history, but maybe somebody can explain something to me on this subject... Munsey pioneered the pulp format, but I can't figure out why the field didn't crowd in after him far sooner than it did. Street and Smith converted to pulp format... what, late teens early 20s? I know others used the format, before then as well, but it seems they didn't quite understand what was making Munsey tick. It couldn't have escaped attention that Munsey was generating a vast fortune -- which he soon parlayed into becoming one of the most powerful men in America (one of the largest stockholders of US Steel, financed Roosevelt's failed US Presidential bid as an independent -- though that was damn bold, to this day the most successful 3rd party attempt) **** On the subject of his earliest covers... Bet that was reaction to Comstock. Bad as the 1950s were for comic publishers, they had it much worse then. Comstock was throwing publishers in JAIL over this stuff, based on nothing more than his own say-so. NY Society for Prevention of Vice was still pulling that off into the 20s & 30s, though they had to jump through a few more hoops to do it, and publishers had more loopholes they could jump through.

Yellow Kid graciously sent me the following to post:

Thank you. If it's any trouble, please don't worry about it, the book sounds interesting and I'll buy a used copy from amazon. I just read through the historical info on your site with interest. I've gotten interested in 19c periodicals recently and was surprised to read about Outcault in Truth magazine and Electrical World. You mentioned 1888 Centennial Exposition of Ohio Valley. Do you know if there's Outcault work in any publication related to that event? I ask because I've found that these expositions tended to be huge deals in that era (Philadelphia Centennial, Columbian Expo, etc), and finding related publications is sometimes not too difficult.

Wow. Is there a pic of the proof anywhere?

Amazing item. Do you have any pre-pulp Street and Smith promos or merch, or (from the pulp era) anything related to Fame and Fortune, Wild West Weekly, Wide Awake Magazine, or Tip Top Semi?

I'm a guy who is generally very interested in comics history, and I've also read through quite a bit of the Marvel and DC -related court docs of recent times, and whenever historical points come up... they are very often shockingly lazy about how various arguments are supported. Of course I know that depends on the specific law firms involved and how various elements fit into their strategy. But goodness knows it wouldn't take me very long to come up with a very long list of lawyers who actually do know wtf they're talking about when it comes to golden and silver age comics history. Going hand in hand with that, the elephant in the room is that, yeah, lots of the info that has been derived from creator interviews over the years should be viewed skeptically. This is not to say throw it all out, but I do think it's clear that in a lot of cases, even over important points, creators have simply gone along with the version of history suggested to them by fandom over the years, simply due to not being able to remember events from 30-60 years prior. Motion Picture Funnies Weekly is the example that should tell us all that there's probably important things in our history which we've still got wrong. Though there's a significant body of interview and other material in existence by 1974, there was no hint that it exists. Its discovery not only changed what we knew about history, it changed people's recollections of events in which they were involved. The upside of that is important new discoveries will continue to happen. I'm pretty sure there's another shoe to drop on Whiz #1. The events surrounding Action 1, bet there's going to be some rewriting there. Other stuff.

I don't recall affidavits that spoke to this issue specifically, when this was brought up publicly a few years back -- though that doesn't mean they don't exist. When I have a chance I'll see if I have any notes on it. I'm writing from memory here so I hope you'll forgive me my sins at a later date, should you find any. That aside, to my mind there's a few key points this issue turns on: 1) When you break down the line items for the infamous Superman check, the check very clearly does not include payment for the Action 1 cover. It does include payment for the interior story, and for other material done around this time and before. 2) There exist letters between Siegel and Liebowicz discussing that various specific interior panel art be repurposed for covers. This is not definitive (and again, I'd have to go back and look at it closely), but it's possible to draw some inferences from how this played out and how it was discussed. It's not something like "ok, I will have Joe redraw that for a cover", but rather "I agree that would make a good cover". I'm not quoting exact wording, but that's the sentiment. This is CERTAINLY not definitive. 3) DC tried to hang part of their argument on the idea that the car on the cover of Action 1 is somewhat different from the car that Shuster drew on the interior. While I'll say that the cars do appear to be different, it is a really, really (really, really) weak argument. As I play this back in my mind now, this is what gives me pause about the purported affidavits speaking directly to this point. If DC had that smoking gun, why did they pull out this weaksauce argument? Then again, IANAL so who knows. I will say that there are many historical points put forth by DC throughout this that could have been SHREDDED by a historian who knew their stuff. I've never known what to really make of that (besides, of course, that most people don't know their stuff) 4) One major point that has been put forth in favor of Shuster is that... if you look close! ... The Action 1 cover Superman's boots have those... not sure what you really call them... "Hercules sandal straps" and they are just colored over to sort of hide them. The theory here is that these are from the mid-30s Superman character sheet which is of course Shuster. Since the boots don't have those straps on the interior story, the theory goes they could only have come from Shuster. It's an interesting argument, but I don't think it's definitive. It could simply mean that the staff artist saw the character sheet as well. **** In summary, the above is not enough to sway me either way -- though I do find the (lack of) payment issue particularly interesting. When I have a little time I'll see if there's anything more out there, if nobody else turns anything up.

The O'Mealia part I hadn't heard. Matt and I added the notation to the Price Guide about the cover coming from the Action 10 story. Matt ran an article on it in CBM quite a few years back DC has maintained for quite some time that staffers drew (or perhaps "finished" might be the word) many early Supes covers (including the Action 1 cover) based on Shuster's panels. The Action 1 point came up specifically in the legal wrangling of recent years -- as a way to maintain that important elements of Superman were work-for-hire from the beginning. [i know at least one longtime historian who adamantly disagrees with this] I don't know Delich but he's been at this a very long time, was an associate of Jerry Bails, so... you'd guess it might be from interviews, but beyond that when you've been at it for that long could be a lot of things.

Ayer's puts Lev Gleason line-wide circulation at 2,471,232 in 1951, and 1,445,601 in 1955. I believe that's 7 titles in the group both years. The elephant in the room that I don't think we've touched on too much during these circulation discussions is that it's very likely some of these pubs or other agents in the distro process were retrieving intact returns and remaindering them either above-board or otherwise. That's going to account for some warehouse finds over the years, probably, and perhaps explain why some titles or individual issues seem more plentiful than might be expected.

The process has changed radically even since just the 90s. No more doing film separations, no moving material around via fedex (/mail/etc). Soon, we won't even need to scan stuff. No racing to make the last fedex drop-off deadline of the day. Upload files to the printers and you're done.

On the other hand, I always marvel at how much work it must have taken to put out a fanzine in the day. You touched on that in the interview re mailing stuff out, but beyond that, so much that we take for granted in layout, editing, even just getting copies of covers/art for clean reproduction... so much more difficult then. As you implied about selling it to Groth and you and other participants basically moving on with your lives, I can imagine sort of being ready to move on from it after a few years. The zines that had done long runs by the 70s, like RBCC and Comic Reader (though were passed from editor to editor in most cases) really are impressive. There is SO MUCH EFFORT in some of these 60s/70s zines, it really is amazing.

Missed this thread the first time around but some great info here. In addition to the raw numbers, it's very likely Fox had some serious distribution challenges due to fallout from the Wonderman lawsuit. He probably couldn't use Independent anymore, which was one of his primary distributors (and Donenfeld's savvy at traveling the country and building out his distro network is said to be one of the "secret" ingredients of the DC success story). And it even goes beyond that -- DC dragged Kable and Interborough into the suit also, so who knows how they felt about Fox after that. If it happened that he lost both Independent and Kable, that would've given him some serious challenges in the Midwest and non-metro East, and he may have had to try to piece it together from less reliable distros. If most of those print runs are then concentrated in metro areas + probably sporadic and changing distribution, I think that goes a long ways towards explaining fewer surviving copies of some things (people in metro areas move more, live in apartments more, have less room = comics don't get saved).

Nice interview. It's interesting how active the scene was in the TX area... I think that's under discussed vs NYC and SD in that era. I'm guessing #15 (Star Trek / Herbie cover) was one of your highest print runs... I think that's the one that I've seen around the most in recent years. I'm surprised to read about the contention with Stan Blair, and a lawsuit even...! I hadn't heard about that before... though the early 70s fanzines definitely have an undercurrent of tension in them overall... a lot of worry over whether a price guide was a good idea, business disputes, who was charging too much for back issues, various fanzine rivalries, etc. Growing pains as the hobby turned into a business, I suppose.

Thanks for the knowledgeable response. Longshot, but as it IS a knowledgeable response, does anybody know of any reference books re the movie theater industry of the 1930s? There is some fascinating stuff about giveaways and prize lotteries... lots of legal wrangling and industry back and forth about putting a stop to it -- which explains what they were trying to do with Motion Picture Funnies Weekly (cheap alternative), but I have basically been reading through film industry mags of the era trying to piece it together.