themagicrobot

D C Thompson may well have invented the concept of "free gifts" in comics. In the 1930s they were usually little booklets. That Whoopee Mask in the first Beano might have been the first time something more interesting was included. My favourite was the green cardboard frog free inside Smash number 2. These were fun too. PS: When they produced the most recent facsimile of Beano number 1 in 2018 (to celebrate 80 years of continuous publication) they removed Peanut, the guy standing to the left of the logo. Modern life is rubbish innit. Earlier facsimiles were more faithful to the original.

I have a Wham! number one from 1964 which is absolutely priceless to me as it was the first comic I ever “collected”. By that I mean it was the first ever comic I kept/saved/preserved for the next 59 years. Prior to Wham! number one I, like everyone else I knew, swapped/traded comics with friends neighbours and relatives simply because you wanted to be able to read far more different copies each week than you could afford to buy. And you had to hide it under the bed because if you left it lying around downstairs your parents would add it to the pile of newspapers that would later be screwed up and used to light the fire.

?????????? Can you be more specific. All comics have some value, be it small or great depending on dozens of factors, whichever country they were published in. Note that the comics displayed above such as the Tales of Suspense and Brave and the Bold were NOT published in the UK. They are US comics that were sent to the UK. In the case of the TOS if it isn't yet then one in a reasonable grade really ought to be worth more than a similar grade cents version due to its rarity/smaller print run. This comic below WAS published in the UK and is currently for sale at £2000. Some UK comics have a value of 5p and some such as Beano No 1 change hands for ££thousands as perhaps as few as 30 still exist

Did DC remember to renew Super Hombre because if that is now in the public domain………

Can you point me to an example of this. I've just looked at the Grand Comic Database. World's Finest 2 and the next few issues had 100 pages. Then they went down to 92 pages, then 84 then 76 then 68 pages. All cost 15cents as far as I can see. From issue 71 they are down to 36 pages and 10cents like all the other DCs.

Dell comics continued with “Golden Age” size well into the 1960s long after everybody else had moved to the slightly smaller format. Of course comics reduced in width again in the 1970s or was it the 1980s. Seems like yesterday. Through the 1950s most companies managed to retain the 10cent price by reducing the page count from 52 to 36. lt’s only recently that I realised that 1940s World’s Finest comics were thicker than all other DCs and cost a whopping 15cents. I wonder why that was the only comic in their range produced in that format?

The seller of this comic says "Only 1 exists". Dunno if he means he has the only copy remaining or simply means that No 1 was the only issue Arnold published. I do like the "ABChiller" logo though. If anyone is interested $2000 plus postage secures it.

In the UK there were perhaps less than two dozen black and white reprints of Prize and EC Pre-code horror books that brought about this 1955 act. Any colour ECs in the UK probably arrived via US servicemen stationed here. Although colour ECs were waved by people promoting more regulation of comics sold here. Wasn't the USA act amended in the early 1970s which allowed words like "Horror" to be used in comic titles once more and allowed DC to sell "Black Magic" again? As the UK act is still on the statute books unchanged how does that impact on comics sold now? It is so vague, talking of crime, violence and cruelty which could be interpreted so many different ways. Surely every single issue of 2000AD shows "incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature". Or is 2000AD and every Marvel/DC comic now classed as Magazines rather than comics? The main problem in the 1950s was that everything published was classed as a "comic" if it was a funny animal one or an EC horror one. I suspect most of the horror (and romance) comics in the 1950s in the USA were purchased by people in their late teens/early twenties. Dell comics were far more popular with kids. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/3-4/28/1991-02-01/data.pdf

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man, apart from the Shadow? I just happened to be perusing Google maps to see what my house looked like in 2008. Interesting that 100 miles away Lower James Street in 2022 contains a large She-Hulk. Note the two vagrants/comic collectors vainly searching for the home of Arnold Comics, issues of which are now very very old and worth £$£s when encapsulated. They will soon have to resort to visiting the betting shop and the bar instead.

Now for something completely different. I have been binge-watching old Monty Python episodes and was ready for something more serious. So on to the TV adaption of Defoe's Moll Flanders featuring Alexandra Kingston. There was also a Movie in 1965 that starred Kim Novak. I own a Pan paperback from 1965. For reasons unknown that paperback was re-issued in 1966 with a different number. Out of idle curiosity in the last 5 minutes of looking I have found 32 different covers for this classic. I am sure there will be more but here are a few of them. Amazingly this book has remained in print for 301 years and is still readable today.

Will AI destroy music or enhance it? We now have Frank Sinatra singing Walk on the Wild Side which is something he never did when alive. Will there eventually have to be new ways of trademarking peoples voices or likenesses of to prevent another Wild West. Will it be legitimate to ask AI to produce a graphic novel in the style of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland or will that in the future become a new copyright infringement? We might end up with the potential to be free to do everything we can conceive but in reality unable to do hardly anything

The first comic is currently for sale at £89. The second comic is also for sale. The asking price is £180 It has a UK ink price stamp but may have travelled to Australia and back?!?.

You have reminded me that I only need a handful of comics to own the complete run from vol 1 to whatever the latest vol is. My Greatest Adventure 82 is mow at the top of my wants list. I actually preferred vols 3 and 4 to the later issues of vol 2 which got too weird for me. The "character" Danny the Street was inspired however. Is he still a van rather than a whole street? It amused me that the name was inspired by the UK "entertainer" Danny La Rue.

I collect comics with covers that don't have images of Gorillas on them and I collect comics that have the letters "DC" in the top corner. I also collect America's Best Comics but am struggling to find a copy of No 78 from May 1960.

To me, it just looks like your first image shows a trimmed comic as Scott's head is chopped off. Of course once a comic is slabbed you can't open it up to see if the interior art is centred.

It is sad that this particular thread isn’t more popular and that people aren't posting here daily.

Did you know that when Neal drew the cover art for Action 374 he included a bag of money bottom right. Which makes sense with the story being about Superman the super thief. Foreign comics often give a slightly different version of cover art as they move text around and add/subtract word balloons. This particular comic originated in Italy.

I've just ordered some cheap holiday reading. This time I am definitely going for nostalgia. I don't remember the Moorcock story but have read the others before. The Diary of a Nobody is funny (and was written in 1892!). Cider with Rosie was a textbook used in English Literature classes back in my schooldays. This looks like a 1960s first edition of the paperback version. The hardback came out in 1959. Oddly in the States the book was clumsily entitled "Edge of day: Boyhood in the West of England". I purchased Two for Tanner simply because it was very cheap and it had a Thorpe & Porter sticker front and centre. Thorpe and Porter imported Marvel, DC, ACG, etc etc comics into the UK in the 1960s and 1970s and perhaps brought over even more paperbacks too. Usually they put the price stickers on the rears of the paperbacks. I never understood why they didn't put their ink stamps and stickers on the rear of the comics too rather than defacing millions of issues like they did with this example of a Lois Lane.

Why? It seems a very odd title to choose to collect only the very highest graded issues in existence. I could understand it if the OP was collecting a title from the last 30 years where loads of issues were bagged and boarded from the day of purchase. Every Showcase would have been purchased off a Newstand or Spinner Rack (or arrived in the post folded for the few that subscribed). Even collectors in the 960s didn't poly bag their stuff so mint Showcases that are 60 years old are as rare as rocking horse sh*t.

Yes lets all live in the present whilst we can. 5 minutes ago I found this old pdf https://themagicrobot.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/brian-augustyn.pdf written by Brian Augustyne. It might be blurry just copying it as a screenshot but I hope it is readable if you don't want to click on the link. I know nothing else about him. The text page appeared in an old Trollords comic. I have just Googled and found he went on to edit/write at DC. He had a wife and two daughters. And he died 18 months ago at the age of 68.

Things are currently pretty good. I'm semi retired now and pic 1 shows a storeroom at my place of work. Pic 2 shows all the "comics" I currently have at home. I have as long as it takes to carefully go through my stuff and decide what stays with me and what goes. Oh and a Roswell Pinup included for no logical reason that I can think of apart from it being Summer and I'm going to the beach at the weekend..

I’m glad you’re in a better place now Ken. Your writings have made me analyse my past probably for the first time. I see now that my comic collecting over the last 40 years happened in fits and starts. When I was in a relationship comics and stuff fell very much into the background. When I was single again I needed to fill the void and keep busy and comics became an escape. I went through a period of buying other peoples collections. Crazy because it wasn’t like I was a dealer selling any on. Ironically it was Covid and concentrating on caring for my mother in her last couple of years that turned my life around

This thread is taking a sad but poignant turn sideways from how it started. I don't have any solutions. We all have to live our lives to the best of our ability. It is people that matter and it is a fact of life that most people accumulate stuff. My mother passed away recently, having reached a great age and was still collecting more stuff into her 90s. I currently have the sad task of clearing her house. She wasn't a hoarder, in that crazy-people TV sense. She was very tidy but never threw anything away. Cupboards heaving with stuff. She was too old to play tennis or golf anymore but hey, that stuff had cost money and couldn't be put in the trash. When four wardrobes were full she stood a tidy rail in front of them and bought more clothes. Her passion was flower arranging and I have disposed of 750 Floral Art and Gardening books and then later found another 200 books and many hundreds of magazines on the subject in the loft. Everything I touch in the house reminds me of her but 99% of it has to go. Meanwhile I have been in the process of moving house in slow motion for a few years. Stuff went into storage whilst I moved in with my mother to care for her. My "new" house stood empty whilst I had building work done. I have decided most of that stuff in storage can be sold/disposed of. Why did I spend months packing it all up? If I don't open the boxes again I won't miss the stuff after all this time. It looks like I will end up with a manageable 3000 comics (many of which I'd like to read one more time) rather than ten times that amount. It is a good feeling getting rid of possessions that have become a burden to me and would in the future become a burden to others. You can't take it with you to the next world if there is one. I'm still not quite as free as 1977 though when I moved into a flat with my entire life contained in the back of the car, a suitcase, a box of LPs, a record player, a tape recorder and maybe 100 comics and magazines.

I think all this talk of Archies and bagged/boarded Spider-Mans is for a long way down the line if you are talking about three year olds? The UK is the place to get something they can enjoy. Get some inexpensive Dandy, Beano or Sparky Annuals. They have sturdy card covers and will survive a toddlers handling far better than flimsy comics. Plus they are a fun read for children aged between 5 and 95. Note that Sparky actually says "For Boys and Girls".