AtlasFan

Lets rock with some more SA Supes Slabs!

A couple of key Superboy books recently slabbed!

Here is a copy that I had for 20 years that I finally got slabbed. I bought it, restored, from Mr Slobodian -- it looks just great! Maybe if I get Stan to sign it, it will come back a Moderate 7.0 !

I was digging thru my archive and came upon these beats! Wonderful early 60s monster humor from the folks at Archie - these covers are just out of this world!

Nice cover! I bet it has some great Don Heck art on the Torpedo Taylor story.

Did someone say pre-hero B&Bs?

Oh no, poor Mark Merlin takes it in the end -- but like a man! It would interesting to see what would be depicted if anyone ever commissioned one of those "One minute later" sketches for this cover.

Suicide Squad...Kanigher...Andru & Esposito...ahhh. Here's some Cave Carson for ya!

My goodness! I cant believe that this thread has fallen to page 5 with no new entries since Dec 2010. Cant have that! Here is one of my favorite DC wash covers by D ick Dillin:

Ive shown this one before, but its my favorite of the few WMs pre-heros that I own. And here is one of those "lesser" condition WMs I mentioned...just as nice IMO.

The WM pre-hero's are normally nice, but there have been lesser condition copies in that collection that have surfaced. I have a couple of lesser WMs that are just wonderful -- white pages, glossy covers -- except for some nasty Marvel chipping. I also recall reading somewhere (probably here) that there are multiple WM copies of some of the pre-hero books. I have never seen any, but it seems quite possible. Bill

Here are some more dark cover pre-heros! The Strange Tales 75 is favorite of mine - as it has a bit of a washtone effect.

Mars is nice at Christmas time -- Red Skies, Green People...

Not to be confused with this issue:

Here are a few black cover JIMs:

Thats a nice ST 91. I love the ST black covers!

Thanks, here is another Suicide Squad commission -- the Squad +1 are battleing a "Menace".... A great piece by DENNIS Sunday artist Ron Ferdinand.

Here is a recent piece I commissioned from Neil Vokes. Its based on the cover of Tales of Suspense #32. The Original Suicide Squad have been shrunk down to the size of bugs and are being terrorized by some nasty bees -- all this while only a few yards away, a typical 50's family is having a summer BBQ...

I suspect that this was also a Martin Goodman editorial policy, as anti-communist stories are also commonly found in the Magazine Management (Atlas' parent company) Men's Adventure Magazines.

Psst..here is a nice SA Action/Superman sales thread. http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=4587153#Post4587153

Very interesting that you mention those particular issues. It was around this time that there was a big shake-up in the DC editorial offices and DC's biggest "fellow traveler", Jack Schiff, fell out of power. Schiff would retire 2 years later. Its also about this time that the CAPTAIN HUNTER feature started to appear in OFF. By the way, the WW and CAPTAIN HUNTER series were both written by Kanigher. Schiff was also responsible for scripting DC's PSAs. Here is an interesting link to a blog with a regular feature about PSAs. http://www.politedissent.com/index.php?s=schiff&submit=search I'm not saying that these DC PSAs are pro-communist, but if you read them all at once, you do see a bit of a progressive pattern forming. Anyway, I love the Moreira artwork! Bill

I'm glad to see this topic revisited! I have read a number of recent interviews in ALTER_EGO conducted with DC editor George Kashdan. According to Kashdan, there was an unwritten rule that the Reds or Communists were not used as protagonists in not only the war stories, but in any DC books. He also said that there were plenty of "fellow travelers" in the DC editorial staff (with the exception of Kanigher). I could not find one instance of a Communist related story in any of the DC sci-fi fantasy titles of the 50s or early 60s. I don't know of any stories where the DC Big 3 (Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman) encountered the Reds either. Any time a story involved spies or sabotage, the "offending nation" was generally opaque as to who they represented in the real world. As to Mick's point, I (respectfully) disagree that just because Timley/Atlas was hard on the Nazis during WW2, does not necessarily mean they had a greater proclivity to lean to the left. This is evidenced by their non-stop Red-bashing that continued well into the Marvel hero age. However, I do think this may have been the case at DC, as the Nazi covers escalated in their war books during the 50's & 60's. Maybe DC editors subscribed to the mantra that "the enemy of my friend is also my enemy"?

I think I posted some Superman stuff last summer and didnt get much of a bite -- mostly some nice HG Actions. Let me know if you have any holes in your collection that you want me to fill (-- ouch, I think you know what I ment!

Is there a market for HG Superman family (Action, Superman, Superboy, Adventure, JO, LL) books from the mid-50s thu early 60s? I have been trying to sell some nice HG stuff last year, but there seems to be little interest.

The term "prototype", in its literal sense, is a bit of a misnomer when it comes to these books. I've heard it argued that a better term would probably be "precursor". With the exception of the "Man in the Ant-hill" story in TTA 27, there are no direct literal connections to the "prototypes" and the actual Marvel characters that they are associated with. However, I do think its important to the comic book historian to be able to link these pre-hero "precursors" to the later Marvel characters that would draw inspiration from them. These stories are a great insight to the early days of Marvel. I have always been a fan of the very early Silver Age Marvel stories and just when I thought I had read all of them, I discovered that there were earlier stories that were drawn by the same artists and written in the same style. When I sought these books out, I realized that there were more to these stories than just fantasy tales - they were a springboard of ideas that would be recycled and refined into some of Marvels most popular characters. Prototypes are fun to read and even more fun to find. There are prototypes to be found beyond the pre-hero books, my children...look for them in DC, Charlton, & Harvey fantasy titles (to name a few). Bill