Baker Romance 43 43

[Dr. Love]

BAM

 

Who was that masked man?

[Sqeggs]

BAM

 

Who was that masked man?

 

Somehow, he must be stopped!

[Sqeggs]

Above and beyond that - there is the Baker raw mother lode waiting in the wings, that which will blow it all away - the Church Baker. At least 20-30 raw books in nm/nm- condition, and maybe another 50 or so raw in varying grades below that. Who's got those? Verzyl?

 

 

Have any of the Church Baker's been graded? I can't recall seeing one.

[Dr. Love]

Above and beyond that - there is the Baker raw mother lode waiting in the wings, that which will blow it all away - the Church Baker. At least 20-30 raw books in nm/nm- condition, and maybe another 50 or so raw in varying grades below that. Who's got those? Verzyl?

 

 

Have any of the Church Baker's been graded? I can't recall seeing one.

 

I'll do a workup on that and get back to you.

 

As far as the Masked Marauder - He's a force majeur. Listen, and understand! That 3 second Sniper is out there! He can't be bargained with. He can't be reasoned with. He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until your Baker books are his!

 

Truly, resistance is futile.

[comicnoir]

Above and beyond that - there is the Baker raw mother lode waiting in the wings, that which will blow it all away - the Church Baker. At least 20-30 raw books in nm/nm- condition, and maybe another 50 or so raw in varying grades below that. Who's got those? Verzyl?

 

 

Have any of the Church Baker's been graded? I can't recall seeing one.

 

The Church TR's 1,2 and 3 were sold on Heritage, raw, years ago.Then they were CGC'd and sold on ComicConnect years later. The CGC grades were significantly lower than Heritage's grades.

Edited April 5, 2013 by comixnoir

[Flex Mentallo]

Above and beyond that - there is the Baker raw mother lode waiting in the wings, that which will blow it all away - the Church Baker. At least 20-30 raw books in nm/nm- condition, and maybe another 50 or so raw in varying grades below that. Who's got those? Verzyl?

 

 

Have any of the Church Baker's been graded? I can't recall seeing one.

 

The Church TR's 1,2 and 3 were sold on Heritage, raw, years ago.Then they were CGC'd and sold on ComicConnect years later. The CGC grades were significantly lower than Heritage's grades.

 

 

I think the St John romance were among the books Edgar was forced to pick up second hand and were not up to the same standard as those he bought newsstand fresh.

[RICK STARR]

I was looking at the various St.John titles in Gerber. A lot of them have similar stamps on the covers. Some with "complimentary". Are they publisher file copies? Some very nice copies were photographed for the Photo-Journal Guides.

[Sqeggs]

Above and beyond that - there is the Baker raw mother lode waiting in the wings, that which will blow it all away - the Church Baker. At least 20-30 raw books in nm/nm- condition, and maybe another 50 or so raw in varying grades below that. Who's got those? Verzyl?

 

 

Have any of the Church Baker's been graded? I can't recall seeing one.

 

The Church TR's 1,2 and 3 were sold on Heritage, raw, years ago.Then they were CGC'd and sold on ComicConnect years later. The CGC grades were significantly lower than Heritage's grades.

 

 

I think the St John romance were among the books Edgar was forced to pick up second hand and were not up to the same standard as those he bought newsstand fresh.

 

I wonder if the place he was buying his books didn't stock romance comics?

[TopNotch]

Sorry if this one was posted previously but I really like this one. could have been a great pre-code horror comic with that buzzsaw and axe!

 

[comicnoir]

I wish more romance covers had buzzsaws whirling in mid-air like this one.

Edited April 5, 2013 by comixnoir

[Dr. Love]

I think the St John romance were among the books Edgar was forced to pick up second hand and were not up to the same standard as those he bought newsstand fresh.

 

I wonder if the place he was buying his books didn't stock romance comics?

 

Edgar picked up more than 950 romance books. That's just the approx count from Chuck's Church catalog. As we know, there were many many books, the creme de la creme, distributed before Chuck went to print on the list. The TR #2 & 3 comixnoir mentioned earlier among them - although high grade apparently they were not.

 

What catalog you say?

 

"During the Spring of 1977, we worked feverishly on trying to compiling a catalog of the Church collection. Our job was made a bit easier by the fact that approximately 20% of the books had either been sold by that point, or traded to Jim Payne for his store. That still left us with about 14,000 different issues to individually grade and list, which took an enormous number of man-hours. Then came the task of typing up the pages (on an old manual typewriter, and laying them out on boards that fit the dimensions of THE BUYER'S GUIDE. By the time we finished, the entire catalog came to a stunning 52 full-size tabloid pages. Each page consisted of four typewritten 8 1/2 X 11 sheets, so the total list of comics was quite huge.

 

Below is a reproduction of our 1977 Mile High Comics Catalog as appeared in the Comics Buyer."

 

The amazing thing is not that Church had so much romance - it's that he had so little. In 1949-1951, about 1 out of every 4 comics printed was a romance book, what Michelle Nolan has called the "Romance Glut". No other genre has an example of such extreme market saturation followed by market devastation.

 

[Dr. Love]

I wish more romance covers had buzzsaws whirling in mid-air like this one.

 

True that. Now it looks as if I get to potentially eat certain rash statements I made earlier about the completeness of the Baker Index. Those hands on that Lovelorn #3 cover are Baker hands. The 3rd and 4th fingers "webbed" together, that recognizable pointiness? Now whether Baker drew them or not is one thing...but Baker hands they are!

 

Baker experts?

[comicnoir]

I wish more romance covers had buzzsaws whirling in mid-air like this one.

 

True that. Now it looks as if I get to potentially eat certain rash statements I made earlier about the completeness of the Baker Index. Those hands on that Lovelorn #3 cover are Baker hands. The 3rd and 4th fingers "webbed" together, that recognizable pointiness? Now whether Baker drew them or not is one thing...but Baker hands they are!

 

Baker experts?

 

As somebody who draws for a living, those "webbed" fingers are actually the way hands are when relaxed. They naturally rest together. Baker didn't trademark that, he observed anatomy and use it in his figures. It's also easier to draw hands that way, kind of like the 3 fingers used in a Flinstones cartoons.

[Sqeggs]

I wish more romance covers had buzzsaws whirling in mid-air like this one.

 

True that. Now it looks as if I get to potentially eat certain rash statements I made earlier about the completeness of the Baker Index. Those hands on that Lovelorn #3 cover are Baker hands. The 3rd and 4th fingers "webbed" together, that recognizable pointiness? Now whether Baker drew them or not is one thing...but Baker hands they are!

 

Baker experts?

 

As somebody who draws for a living, those "webbed" fingers are actually the way hands are when relaxed. They naturally rest together. Baker didn't trademark that, he observed anatomy and use it in his figures. It's also easier to draw hands that way, kind of like the 3 fingers used in a Flinstones cartoons.

 

I agree that it looks like Baker, although it's not listed in Overstreet or in the checklist in the new Baker book. GCD (tentatively) says Ogden Whitney but although Whitney did a ton of ACG covers, it looks a lot more like Baker to me.

 

If we are opening the door a crack, I'll make another pitch for the Romantic Confessions 6 that I posed a few pages back.

[adamstrange]

 

With regards to the Lovelorn issue I'm doubtful of that being Baker. If you look at the title, there are many stylistic similarities with the other covers in the run and those others do not have any evidence of Baker. I think it most likely this issue is Baker influenced without Baker involvement.

 

If we are opening the door a crack, I'll make another pitch for the Romantic Confessions 6 that I posed a few pages back.

We jammed that door closed, locked it and threw away the key.

 

[Sqeggs]

 

If we are opening the door a crack, I'll make another pitch for the Romantic Confessions 6 that I posed a few pages back.

We jammed that door closed, locked it and threw away the key.

 

There's a story I heard years ago about Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy. At one point, he convinced himself that he had dug up Agamemnon's skull. His assistants gave him many good reasons why the skull was unlikely to be Agamemnon's. Finally, in exasperation, he said: "If it isn't Agamemnon's skull, whose skull is it?"

 

Echoing, Schliemann, if Baker didn't draw the cover for Romantic Confessions 6, who did?!

 

Seriously, I don't know much about the community of romance artists in the 1950s (apart from what I've read in the Baker book), but it sure looks as if there must have been some who were doing their best to copy Baker. I also looked at the copies of Lovelorn currently up on eBay and there are a few others that seem Bakerish (as Overstreet might put it) right down to the webbed fingers.

[Flex Mentallo]

 

If we are opening the door a crack, I'll make another pitch for the Romantic Confessions 6 that I posed a few pages back.

We jammed that door closed, locked it and threw away the key.

 

There's a story I heard years ago about Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy. At one point, he convinced himself that he had dug up Agamemnon's skull. His assistants gave him many good reasons why the skull was unlikely to be Agamemnon's. Finally, in exasperation, he said: "If it isn't Agamemnon's skull, whose skull is it?"

 

Echoing, Schliemann, if Baker didn't draw the cover for Romantic Confessions 6, who did?!

 

Seriously, I don't know much about the community of romance artists in the 1950s (apart from what I've read in the Baker book), but it sure looks as if there must have been some who were doing their best to copy Baker. I also looked at the copies of Lovelorn currently up on eBay and there are a few others that seem Bakerish (as Overstreet might put it) right down to the webbed fingers.

 

Picasso once said, "I am a magpie. I take the ideas of others - but improve upon them."

 

We say "Bakerish" because in retrospect he is the artist we most admire. But the tropes and idioms of romance comics would have existed without him, though in the hands of lesser artists.

Edited April 5, 2013 by alanna

[Sqeggs]

I think the St John romance were among the books Edgar was forced to pick up second hand and were not up to the same standard as those he bought newsstand fresh.

 

I wonder if the place he was buying his books didn't stock romance comics?

 

Edgar picked up more than 950 romance books. That's just the approx count from Chuck's Church catalog. As we know, there were many many books, the creme de la creme, distributed before Chuck went to print on the list.

 

Ah, but those philistines would not have realized that the Baker books were the true creme de la creme!

[Sqeggs]

 

If we are opening the door a crack, I'll make another pitch for the Romantic Confessions 6 that I posed a few pages back.

We jammed that door closed, locked it and threw away the key.

 

There's a story I heard years ago about Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy. At one point, he convinced himself that he had dug up Agamemnon's skull. His assistants gave him many good reasons why the skull was unlikely to be Agamemnon's. Finally, in exasperation, he said: "If it isn't Agamemnon's skull, whose skull is it?"

 

Echoing, Schliemann, if Baker didn't draw the cover for Romantic Confessions 6, who did?!

 

Seriously, I don't know much about the community of romance artists in the 1950s (apart from what I've read in the Baker book), but it sure looks as if there must have been some who were doing their best to copy Baker. I also looked at the copies of Lovelorn currently up on eBay and there are a few others that seem Bakerish (as Overstreet might put it) right down to the webbed fingers.

 

Picasso once said, "I am a magpie. I take the ideas of others - but improve upon them."

 

We say "Bakerish" because in retrospect he is the artist we most admire. But the tropes and idioms of romance comics would have existed without him, though in the hands of lesser artists.

 

What?! Without Baker there is nothing!

 

Michael, You realize you are close to being banned from this thread!

[adamstrange]

There were lots of romance cover artists and many were freelancers, making it difficult to have a definitive list of them, much less to be precise on which one drew which cover. I have spent most of time on the artists I like the most so when there something not drawn by one of them, I'm often the wrong guy to ask about attribution. I care a lot for Baker so I'm pretty good at spotting original Baker.

 

The likely candidates for the Lovelorn covers include Ken Bald and Ogden Whitney, with Ken Bald the likeliest suspect for Lovelorn 3.

 

Schliemann, to my knowledge, didn't draw any romance comics.