Hepcat

A Charlton!

Rather than trying to determine which of my 10 cent comics I've not yet posted in this thread, I thought I'd first list the titles in which I have the most 10 cent issues. I drew the line at five: Archie Adventures of the Fly: 14 DC House of Secrets: 12 Tales of the Unexpected: 12 Detective Comics: 11 Batman: 10 Brave and the Bold: 10 Flash: 10 Wonder Woman: 10 World's Finest: 10 Showcase: 9 Challengers of the Unknown: 8 Superman: 8 Green Lantern: 7 Action Comics: 6 Mystery in Space: 6 Justice League of America: 5 Dell Lone Ranger: 19 Tom and Jerry: 17 Daffy Duck: 12 (White Eagle) Indian Chief: 9 Spike and Tyke: 8 Walter Lantz New Funnies: 7 Goofy: 6 Howdy Doody: 5 MGM's Mouse Musketeers: 5 Harvey Felix the Cat: 35 Playful Little Audrey: 27 Black Cat (Mystery): 26 Spooky: 12 Warfront: 9 Inky and Dinky: 5 Wendy: 5 Dell comics were ten cents prior to those hitting newsstands in December 1960 while DC and most other publishers kept the ten cent price up until the start of October 1961.

I still clearly remember the day I bought the comic that introduced me to Adam Strange particularly well. It was the day in October 1963 of the annual charity bazaar in the basement of St. Martin's church which was adjacent to my school. Included among the attractions were some designed to coax the nickels and pennies from kids' pockets such as a "fish" pond. I clearly remember standing in the outside entrance alcove at the side of the church admiring the copy of Mystery in Space 88 that I'd just purchased at Les' Variety: Up to that point Mystery in Space had not been among the titles I'd been buying because my focus at the time was on superheroes and I thought Adam Strange was one of those future spacemen like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Space Ranger and Tommy Tomorrow. It was the cover blurb promising a Hawkman thriller that actually prompted me to buy the issue. Hawkman was a mysterious hero who I only knew from house ads such as these up to that point: But that issue of Mystery in Space acted to make me a big fan of Adam Strange as well. Unfortunately Adam Strange stories illustrated by the old master Carmine Infantino continued to only issue #91. When Julius Schwartz took over the Batman editorial bailiwick from Jack Schiff in 1964, Infantino was assigned the artwork on Detective Comics and he had to give up illustrating Adam Strange stories.

I don't believe any of those are still in regular publication. Therefore they'd fit my definition of "abandoned properties".

I found this other ad which appeared in the same DC comics as the "Tomorrow's Stars Appear Today" ad powerfully compelling at the time: Wow! Baseball Coins! Just like the Shirriff/Salada Hockey Coins that had been so popular with young boys in Canada over the previous two winters. I wondered immediately whether the coins would just be offered in the States, but within a week or so I found out that they'd not only showed up in bags of Shirriff Potato Chips on local store shelves, but that Mike M. from just down the street already had some! Mike being over a year older than me was always into the cool stuff first it seemed. Well I had to start collecting the Shirriff Baseball Coins and I did, but I didn't get beyond four or five because other interests/collectibles including the 1962 Baseball cards and the Jell-O/Hostess Potato Chips Aircraft Wheels were competing for my dimes. I do have a set now though which I acquired more than 35 years ago:

More of Western Printing/Publishing's Hanna and Barbera comics! Poor Mr. Jinks failed to get a spot on the cover here of his own title! Very sad. He appears all through the interior pages though:

I already have several good hardcover collections of Golden Age DC stories. I have the last two All Star Archives but sadly the Jay Garrick Flash and Alan Scott Green Lantern Archives never got as far as the late 1940's which is the period of greatest interest to me. In addition I have Simon & Kirby's Sandman plus Newsboy Legion. I would however like to see many more of these quality collections!

There was in fact a very clear demarcation line between the run of generally superb Justice League covers and ones that were ho-hum. There was a great run of covers up to and including #35 cover dated May 1965: But things went off the rails beginning with issue #36: Oh I love the colours but what's with that huge messy arrow-shaped Marvel style cover blurb that does little but take up space? Well rumour has it that the DC "brain" trust had noticed that Marvel comics were starting to sell a lot better and eating into DC's market share. They therefore looked at a few Marvel covers (clearly they didn't read through the stories in between the covers) and decided that the key to Marvel's recent sales success was that the messy blurbs infesting Marvel's covers were drawing kids' eyes and inducing them to part with their pocket change. The next two Justice League covers were absolutely lousy: All the blurbs take up so much space that far less canvas remains for the traditional DC house look cover artwork that had delighted me since early 1962! Moreover up until mid-1965 Justice League covers generally portrayed a situation where the League members were very seriously imperiled by some menace. After mid-1965 covers switched to promising "Action!" à la Marvel. Consider. Marvel's strengths were one unified Universe with continuity not only from one issue to the next but across titles. A story in one comic not only segued seamlessly into the next but frequently hinted at the next by leaving loose ends, e.g. Thing or the Human Torch walking out on the Fantastic Four on the last page. Or the next issue's villain would be shown peaking in on the action in the current issue. Moreover x-overs of both heroes and villains were almost an every issue occurrence thus weaving each individual comic into the wider Universe. This all meant you couldn't read just one Marvel comic. You had to read more, many more, to get the whole picture! And of course there were punch-ups galore in Marvel stories, most particularly when "heroes" met! (Kids loved that.) And Stan Lee never stopped pitching the Marvel line to readers which he labelled "Real Frantic Ones". What kid wouldn't like that? Lee made Marvel readers feel a part of the Marvel family of writers, artists, letterers, colourists and even secretaries by speaking to the readers directly on the pages of Marvel comics and even creating the Merry Marvel Marching Society which was a concept so zany that young readers were both delighted and proud to join. Only Topps understood and marketed to kids as well as Lee. So what did DC have? Well they didn't have Stan Lee. DC had two competitive edges though. They had legacy heroes such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Hawkman, Green Arrow, etc. none of whom were plagued by psychological problems. They were calm, competent men. In a word they were heroes, someone to emulate. Secondly in early 1965 they had a stable of artists such as Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Dick Dillin, Irv Novick, John Romita, Jay Scott Pike, Howard Purcell, Lee Elias, etc, etc. whose artwork was a pleasure to the eye. DC "house look" covers and even individual panels were very often mini works of art. (Ask Roy Lichtenstein.) So DC should have leveraged and built upon their strengths. Offered a strong alternative with cross title continuity! Rather than allowing each Editor to jealously guarding his own bailiwick/title lines, Editor-in-Chief Irwin Donenfeld should have cracked the whip and demanded a co-operative effort. But Donenfeld didn't do his job. What DC's management opted to do instead was mimic Marvel's weak point, e.g. messy covers. Groan. Then of course in 1966 they infected their entire line of titles with camp from the Batman TV show to court the TV crowd but in so doing alienating their core fans. So after the silly Bat-craze ended, what was left?

How do you know that the dealers are wrong and CGC is right? And do you not have your own eyes and judgement? What do you think of the condition of those comics? And isn't that all that matters? I agree. Anybody else's grades be damned! But why then do you keep sending books to CGC at great personal expense to get their opinion? And why all these posts focusing on grades and grading? Why don't you comment on the actual comics themselves? What do you like about the stories, artwork, etc?

The "Tomorrow's Stars Appear Today" ad was on the inside front cover of many/most DC comics with a cover date of June 1962 such as this one: This was the ad on the inside back cover of those issues: This ad's first appearance was on the inside back covers of DC comics with a cover date of February 1962 such as this one: Two things to note though. First of all DC's claim of "For the best in comics entertainment" was probably dead-on accurate at the time. Dell had self-immolated by raising the price of its comics to fifteen cents in December 1960, Archie and Harvey had much more limited product lines targetting a generally narrower demographic, and Marvel wasn't putting up much of a fight yet. The Fantastic Four had gotten their uniforms only that same month in issue #3. Secondly Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, the Fox and the Crow, and Sugar and Spike are all featured but Wonder Woman is not despite her status as one of DC's iconic characters! Editor Robert Kanigher was of course busy running the Wonder Woman title into the ground at the time. He wasn't sure who made up his target market so he tried to target everybody and ended up missing them all. Neither did already legendary war hero Sgt. Rock appear in the ad. I would have replaced Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis with Wonder Woman and Sgt. Rock. This message was on the inside front covers of the DC comics cover dated February 1962: Very sad. 'Nuff said.

I'd just call that toning/tanning. "Foxing" to me means spots caused by mildew. Here's an example of foxing:

More not quite brotherly love:

Actually I cannot. For one thing Amazing Fantasy 15 had a cover price of 12 cents. But the newsstands I frequented had at the very most two copies of any issue and even that many was a seldom occurrence. I've only heard of newsstands with whole stacks of a single issue (perhaps in the New York area). Did you actually know of any such newsstands?

More Tom and Jerry comics: Random House copy

Here I've catalogued a list of the Aquaman artists from when Ramona Fradon began her tenure until well into the Bronze Age: Adventure Comics 103-206, 208-280, 282: Ramona Fradon Adventure Comics 284: Jim Mooney Showcase 30: Howard Purcell & Sheldon Moldoff cover, Ramona Fradon interior Showcase 31: Howard Purcell & Sheldon Moldoff cover, Nicholas Cardy interior Showcase 32: Nicholas Cardy Showcase 33: Dick Dillin & Sheldon Moldoff cover, Nicholas Cardy interior Detective Comics 293-300: Nicholas Cardy Aquaman 1: Howard Purcell cover, Nicholas Cardy interior Aquaman 2-39: Nicholas Cardy Aquaman 40-56: Nicholas Cardy covers, Jim Aparo interiors World's Finest Comics 125-126: Nicholas Cardy World's Finest Comics 127-133, 135, 137, 139: Ramona Fradon Brave and the Bold 51: Howard Purcell Adventure Comics 435-437: Mike Grell Adventure Comics 441-452: Jim Aparo Aquaman 57: Jim Aparo Aquaman 58-63: Jim Aparo covers, Jim Aparo & others interiors Note that Ramona Fradon's tenure on Aquaman was almost entirely with stories that were back-up features. As a result she didn't do any Aquaman covers. But what puzzles me is why/how Nick Cardy was chosen to take over Aquaman when Fradon went on maternity leave. Lee Elias had been drawing Green Arrow stories up to and including Adventure Comics 269 and looked to my eyes as the most natural replacement Aquaman artist. His characters looked very similar to Fradon's and I think he would have nailed Aquaman. Look at these examples: Aquaman by Roberta Fradon Green Arrow by Lee Elias