sarvajnatman

Still concerning reprints of American books during the WECA period, I guess you have to mention the Gilberton Classics Comics in 1946 and you must also bring up the fact that certain American comics that were deemed to have some 'educational' value such as the Parents' Magazine Publishing comics (True Comics, True Aviation Picture Stories, etc.) were allowed through. Even here though, there is a collectible difference in some. The tile of the American 'True Comics' was changed to 'True Picture Magazine' in Canada and had a Canadian context story inserted in it. Take a look at the difference between the American True Comics 17 and the Canadian.

I have this copy of Exciting 39 as well and it's always been a bit of a mystery to me. Nothing much is known about Publication Enterprises and one wonders why a government watch dog or a disgruntled Canadian publisher didn't pick up on this. The same sort of thing happened right at the "Big Bang" of Canadian comics in March, 1941 when Anglo-American put out 4 black-and-white reprints of Fox titles which are now really difficult to find. Here are a couple:

This is a common characteristic of these Canadian reprint books. First the Canadian printing equipment wasn't that great and second the restrictions of the FECA period included the fact that American books could only be reprinted if the Americans sent up facsimilies of their plates. These are seen as inferior comics by many (fewer pages/stories, poor register, inferior paper), but for me they are still special and part of the history of Canadian comics.

Yep, it's a WECA book. This is one of the 6 compendium titles that Bell Features issued in the summer of 1945 and is one of the harder ones to find. Others in this series are the famous and high-priced Nelvana compendium as well as the Speed Savage one. Maybe Stephen will post his array.

Hello Canadian Gold miners. i'm getting closer to the end of my book project on the the Bell Features artists of the Second World War. I wrote about it in my online column last week. Here is the link: http://www.comicbookdaily.com/collecting-community/whites-tsunami-weca-splashes/heroes-home-front/