Hepcat

That has to be one of those issues in which Curt Swan had a great idea for a cover and drew the cover before the story was written. Mort Weisinger would have then told one of his writers to spin a tale based on the cover. Seeing scans of all these great Superboy covers though reinforces my recent thinking that I absolutely, positively need to beef up my collection of Superboy comics over the next two or three decades. While Superboy was never among my favourite titles as a kid, I'd say that it's high time more copies of Superboy found their way into my comic cabinet where I keep my really good stuff.

Personal nostalgia can definitely influence aesthetic preferences. And there's nothing wrong with that at all.

Awwwww, come on! That's not even a good cover let alone a candidate for the best. It's neither colourful nor dynamic. Moreover Jack Kirby was absolutely, positively not the right artist for Spider-Man. In fact, the vast majority of Silver Age Amazing Spider-Man covers are better than that one.

Here are scans of four more from my own collection:

Indeed! I was just teasing.

That's barely a start! I'd argue that a real fan's goal should be to get them all. I started by pecking away at all the issues with Aquaman as the title character including the four Showcase comics. I have all the World's Finest Comics in which Aquaman appears as well. I'm now pecking away (albeit very slowly) at the Adventure Comics in which the Aquaman stories are drawn by Ramona Fradon which I believe start with issue #167.

Victory! Very good to hear that you've finally completed your long and noble quest. And such a fabulous copy of #1! How long did it take you before you broke it out of the holder and put it with your other Superboy comics?

Given that they were issued in both the then leading potato chip brand in Canada as well as in Jell-O, were enormously popular with kids and were capable of standing up to normal handling, they're still easily found these days. If you're interested you should be able to get a complete set with a holder like the one below for no more than about $200. Here's a fantastic write-up on one fellow's experiences collecting these Aircraft Wheels back in 1962: http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/185/Boys-Will-Dream--collecting-Airplane-coins.aspx This set of twenty Fightin' Warship coins issued in the spring/summer of 1963{?) by Krun-Chee, Schuler's and Hunter's Potato Chips may also be of interest to you: It included ten American vessels, four British, three Canadian and three Soviet. A complete set of Krun-Chee or Schuler's Warships fetches about $75. Hunter's Potato Chips might not have been sold outside of Manitoba though. Therefore after 35 years of collecting this kind of stuff. I've only managed to acquire one Hunter's Warship coin. You'd have to be a real eccentric (like me) to pay a premium for the Hunter's coins though.

Is there a way to SEARCH this (or any) thread for just one's own previous posts?

Here are scans of a few more of my Superman comics that I've probably not yet posted:

I'm still holding out for a NM copy of Action Comics 1. Since I haven't been able to afford any of the lesser copies that have come up for sale in the last few years, I might as well hold out for a really nice one.

DC's Silver Age may have reached an apex with Hawkman's Brave and the Bold tryout series in 1961 and then again in 1962 illustrated by the incomparable Joe Kubert. Now we frequently post and comment upon covers on this forum but splash pages rarely draw any attention or remarks. Here therefore are my favourite covers and splash pages from Hawkman's Brave and the Bold tryout runs: 34 35 36 42 43 But wait a minute here! Everybody knows that the Hawks get their lift from their belts which are made from an anti-gravity metal, right? Right?! After all this was explained early on by writer Gardner Fox in Brave and the Bold 34 and used on occasion thereafter as a plot device. The Hawks wings are only there to enable them to maneuver. So why then is Hawkgirl falling like a stone just because one of the Manhawks has made her wings vanish? And then the same blunder was repeated in Mystery in Space 88! Not being able to remember the powers they themselves had just recently given their characters was a bad brain cramp on the part of writer Gardner Fox and editor Julius Schwartz.

You know despite their huge popularity on this board I just can't get into all the gory pre-Code comics either. Yes, give me the Golden Age GGA, funny animal and the select superhero comics such as the titles featuring Green Lantern from the late forties and Simon & Kirby's Sandman and Newsboy Legion. But rotting corpses, torture and injury to the eye motifs? Screw that. I'd much rather leaf through a Little Roquefort comic.

The first DC superhero comic I can specifically remember reading was Green Lantern 11 in April of 1962 which a buddy of mine on a farm outside of London had: I still remember how it filled me with a sense of awe and wonder at the time. Now I know that it prompted me to check out the comics at the newsstand of Les' Variety at the time. But I just don't remember which comics I saw there on the stand. I suspect therefore that the only superhero comics I encountered on the stand that day were Superman family titles. These never intrigued me as much as those devoted to the lesser known heroes which would explain why I don't remember the comics I saw at the time. But I do remember the ads within the DC comics I saw at the time! I recall being captivated by the exotic Atom and Hawkman characters I was seeing for the first time in the latter two ads. And I know for a fact that it was in the spring of 1962 that I first encountered that house ad for Atom 1. When I saw basically the same ad reprinted for Atom 2 a couple of months later, I remember thinking that it was a pity that it was no longer exactly the same ad for Atom 1 I'd seen before since it meant that I had missed out on getting Atom 1 with the cool Venus flytrap cover! Therefore I must have seen the Atom 1 ad previously. But if anything the house ads on the inside front and back covers impressed me even more strongly: Wow, so cool and mysterious that Hawkman, and who were these Metal Men anyway? Since I very clearly remember knowing nothing about the Atom, Hawkman and Metal Men at the time, I must have viewed those ads for the first time in the spring of 1962. The Tomorrow's Stars Appear Today ad is still one of my very favourite DC ads of all time despite, or perhaps precisely because, it was in B&W. But because these ads were so compelling, over the years I've periodically wondered why I didn't start looking for and buying some of the comics that must have been on other comic racks only a few blocks away. I mean how could I have resisted covers such as these? Well the answer lies in another ad from that month I clearly remember seeing: 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. Here are scans of a few of these coins from my present day set: I wondered immediately though whether they'd 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 as well as Shirriff Jelly Desserts in 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 before Hostess Potato Chips and Jell-O launched their own competing promotion (well they weren't just going to stand idly by while Shirriff carved into their market share), an absolutely fabulous set of 200 Aircraft Wheels! Here are scans from my present day set: But, but, but, I couldn't collect both! It cost a whole dime to get a bag of potato chips with one of these little treasures and my ability to accumulate these Coins/Wheels was severely limited by cash flow considerations. Since I was already collecting the 1962 Topps Baseball cards (mercifully limited that year to the first three series totalling 264 cards since O-Pee-Chee didn't seem very good at convincing retailers to order the higher numbered series once the end of spring approached): And eating Sugar Crisp cereal to collect the Canadian issue of the Post Baseball cards: I therefore chose to collect the Aircraft Wheels thus contributing to the profits of the Hostess Potato Chip Company even though Shirriff made slightly better chips. (Mmmmmm, so delicious as well as nutritious whatever the brand!) Going with the Hostess turned out to be a wise decision since the Hostess/Jell-O Aircraft Wheels I accumulated that spring and summer are among the very few items that somehow survived in my possession from my childhood to the present day. But of course cash flow constraints prevented me from buying any comics as well - until late June anyway!

I've been lapse lately in making new posts to my Journal because the new format has made it more difficult to post pictures en masse. If you try to copy and paste a bunch of pictures, this new program balks at auto-formatting them. Very annoying.

Wow! Your room is filled with so much comic and popular culture goodness that it's almost claustrophobic! And that's not necessarily a bad thing. What prevents your dog from getting up to your loft though? Are the stairs leading up to it just too steep for your dog?

Why the bloody hell does this stupid damn program not allow me to insert my own words under the above words written by Yossarian? In any event, I was going to say that what Yossarian said is very, very true. And that's why Mad magazine stories have aged so very well indeed despite the enormous changes in society that have occurred in the sixty plus years since its inception. Old issues of Mad are not only a window to the popular culture of the time but continue to be relevant and a delight to the very present day.

That's a fabulous cover!

It sounds as if you made an absolutely massive purchase of general interest magazines some years ago but you've not even sorted through what you actually have. miscellaneous

Huh?! But I thought you had an incredibly massive collection of magazines, i.e. complete or nearly complete runs of everything from TV Guide to Life, Saturday Evening Post, Look, Collier's, Time and Newsweek?

My own experience has been that whatever magazines Warren was no longer selling as back issues when it closed its doors in early 1983 are now relatively scarce. The other issues were for years (decades?) available from Warren's warehouse stock. The back issue ad in Vampirella 112 or any Warren magazine cover dated February 1983 would therefore provide a very good indication of which issues would be the most difficult to find these days.

Those Murray Ball cartoons look great! Which of the books collecting the material he's done would you most highly recommend?

Now then might be a good time to post more pictures of your comic room and storage system.

Okay! Here then are scans of a few more: 11 12 13 14 15 16 18 19 20