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Best year for golden age comics for your fav publisher?

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For my fav publisher, MLJ, my opinion is this:

 

The best 12 month period is March 1941-March 1942.

1. At the end of this period, they had a full 7 titles available, which included 4 monthly mags and 3 quarterly issues.

2. All the "good" artists were still available and hadn't gone off to war/been drafted yet, so the artwork was top-notch.

3. The seriousness of WWII hadn't fully kicked in yet, at least from an American casualty standpoint, sans Pearl Harbor. However I didn't notice any Pearl Harbor references or stories until the April/May 1942 issues, so that's why the best year ends in "March".

4. MLJ had introduced several incredible characters in this period, including the Hangman, Captain Flag, Mr. Justice, BlackJack, and little 'ol Archie, Betty and Jughead. Also the popularity of the Black Hood, introduced in Oct 1940, was taking off!

5. July 1941's Pep Comics #17 saw the first death of a superhero (the Comet) in comics.

6. The covers were incredible! Sometime they depicted 'what if' scenerios of possible homeland invasion if the USA were to join the war.

7. All books still had the dual staples!

8. The months following March 1942, MLJ dropped its flagship title, Blue Ribbon Comics, and turned Top-Notch comics into 'Top-Notch Laugh' and introduced Pokey-Oakey and other hillbilly insufficiently_thoughtful_persons. Zip Comics followed suit in March 1943 with issue #36. Heck, even the Shield lost his superpowers in Pep Comics #29 (July '42) and the stories (IMO) were never as good...

 

 

So, since I know little of DC/Timely/Fawcett/Nedor/Better/Fox et al, what single 12 month period was your favorite during the golden age era if you had to choose, and why? 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

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For Disney fans, it has got to be 1947: Barks was churning out

one amazingly original long adventure after the other: "Volcano Valley",

"Ghost of the Grotto", "Christmas on Bear Mountain" (introducing

Scrooge), ... For collectors, there's the challenge of finding a March

of Comics #4 ("Maharajah Donald") and the funky Cheerio's "Atom

Bomb" giveaway. Some of the funniest and most original 10-pagers

also came out this year.

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Best year : 1953

Best publisher : EC Comics

 

Why : During 1953 they put out some awesome horror books in Haunt of Fear and Tales From the Crypt. They also had top notch sci-fi covered with Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. Lets not forget the others, Two Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat, Crime Suspenstories and Shock Suspenstories. Just about all of these books had superb covers and interior art. From the story standpoint, they were actually readable, especially when you compare the golden age horror to the post code late Silver or Bronze stuff.

 

Finally, Mad was just getting spun up (second issue had a Dec-Jan date and third had a March 1953 date).

 

Disclaimer : I should admit that my golden age knowledge is limited at best. In fact, short of a handful of superhero books the only golden age books that I have ever researched have been EC's.

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