bluechip

Here's a pair that are worth reading in the same day. DC beat Marvel to the punch in telling racially tinged stores in their WW2 books, but Lee and Kirby managed to best them in the contest between these two stories, both of which concerned a black soldier confrontting a racist and both of which featured a scene with blood transfusions. But in the DC story the racist is portrayed as a near-inhuman monster, while in the Marvel story he's portrayed more realistically, as a person who's basically decent, even heroic -- except for that one large and glaring flaw. People like that are much more the norm out there in the real world. When you attack racism through stories it is more effective, in my view, to point out to normal decent people how they may be racist without knowing it. If they see an inhuman monster killing and maiming a black man while he gloats over their bodies, they presume "that's not me. I don't lynch people, so I must not be racist.," Anyway, here is a pair that makes good reading,

FYI, the blind gunner story looks quite reminiscent of a scene in a Sam Fuller film (not sure which one, might be the Steel Helmet)

Excellent examples. Thanks for the look

I have never seen many of the books listed here. Thought I'd kick in a sub-category of these books that I find especially interesting. Silver age war books published in the 40s but featuring themes that revlected the 60s. Including themes racial bigotry, which while certainly a problem during WW2, never led to stories like the ones depicted here because black and white troops were segreated during WW2. They even managed to do stories set in WW2 that reflected the 1960s peace movement. No easy thing to pull ofrf, storywise.

In my experience, very hard to find in any shape,

Had a nicer copy of this once that I could've sent a scan of but it's not mine anymore. This one's not bad either; Underappreciated cover.

Love the overblown Nazi attack machine covers.

One of my favorite Timelys

A couple unusual additions but still on topic Stalin as villain from before the Nazis attacked. They hastily changed this cover because the commies had suddenly and temporarily become our friends. 20 years later this anti commie lover cover appeared in the silver age, but was SET in the golden age, (not to mention years before the peace symbold was even invented)

The psychology of the market seems to work that way. I have one book (America Menaced) that I know of only two copies in existence. If several other copies surfaced, I probably would feel that it is common dreck. America Menaced is one of those I have kept an eye out for quite a while and never seen. Along with a few others in the dirty-no-good-commie-red genre.

Wow. You guiys are thorough. I thought I had just about all the Hitler covers, but you've shown me some I never heard of. For me, the Hitler war covers are right up there with the Action war covers and some of the Timely's for capturing the time. If you had all the Hitler covers you would have a representative sampling of just about all the major heroes of the early golden age and most of the minor ones, too.

Agreed. Generally speaking it's hard to find in nice grade, but then nothing will make a sweet book surface faster than big $. [ Right you are. A new search on ebay turned one up. Probably right on scarcity. When you say something has only five copies, you're making a bold statement and should do so perhaps very cautiously. It's enough that a book is very scarce without prematurely calling it near unique (and five or less is more than just rare). I remember people thinking All-Negro had less then ten copies, then getting disillusioned when they heard there was 15 or so. Wow, a whole 15. Might as well consider it common.

It would depend on the price. I would prefer to have the cap 1, but if the price relative to market was outsized I would go for the amazing man 5 because I think that book is undervalued. As a centeur/later timely/later Marvel title, this book actually predates marvel 1 on the newsstands and is really rare. I have bought it twice and both times ended up selling for less than I figured because despite all the above the book SAT unmoving in the price guide year after year.

Love the better dead than red stuff, and started to post something, then realized there is not, as I'd hoped, a simple one-step-press-this-button-thingy-and-your-pic will-be-uploaded. Don't know if that's always the case or the commies have infiltrated my computer to prevent me from exposing them

Here's a couple.