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Anyone have info on Chinese G.A. books (Fox Comics) ?

Started by kaylab,

20 posts in this topic

kaylab

kaylab

Posted
Posted

I ran across this group of comics, issues #60 - 72 of this series, and I'm curious if anyone has details on these books, specifically print runs, distribution, etc... Also, does anyone collect foreign releases of G.A. comics, this hasn't been a focus of mine. They appear to be reprints (?) of mostly Fox Comics (The Flame, Blue Beetle, Eagle), for the Shanghai market, and some covers I've matched to US comics (for example, Wonderworld Comics #30), but if anyone has more details I'm all ears. Anyone read Mandarin?

 

chineseGA_1.jpg

 

chineseGA_2.jpg

 

chineseGA_3.jpg

 

chineseGA_4.jpg

 

chineseGA_4_inside.jpg

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PreHero

PreHero

Posted
Posted
chineseGA_3.jpg

 

 

 

They're terrific!! :applause:

 

Here are the American counterparts to nine of them.

 

popular64.jpgpopular65.jpgpopular66.jpgpopular67.jpg

 

 

Wow BZ, very nice books as always! Those Popular are sharp - just got my wife to start collecting the later issues (Felix). (: Great idea posting the originals - here's one more.

 

AM24.jpg

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kaylab

kaylab

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Publish date appears to be @ 1941, but this is based on the sellers translation of the books indices, I don't know how accurate that translation is, but it does seem in line with the publication date of the US version of these books. Perhaps they were printed within a month or more of the originals?

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rjpb

rjpb

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Posted

The books the covers were taken from are from 1941, so it would make some sense that they were published fairly close to the U.S. editions, but they wouldn't have been from Shanghai, as it was under Japanese occupation by then.

 

Hong Kong did not fall until Dec of 1941, so that might be a possiblity.

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PokerKid

PokerKid

Posted
Posted
The books the covers were taken from are from 1941, so it would make some sense that they were published fairly close to the U.S. editions, but they wouldn't have been from Shanghai, as it was under Japanese occupation by then.

 

Hong Kong did not fall until Dec of 1941, so that might be a possiblity.

 

Is some of the writing on the cover in Japanese? I can't read kanji, but while the characters in the titles appear Chinese, the smaller writing looks a lot like Japanese.

 

Great books and nothing I have seen before.

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selegue

selegue

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Insights from comic-book fan and linguist extraordinaire Marc Miyake. I hope the Chinese characters come through.

 

What an interesting set of comic books!

 

Jack

 

 

Did you recently purchase all of these? I've never seen such old

Chinese comics before!

 

> Is the language all Chinese? <

 

Yes.

 

> Possibly from Hong Kong? <

 

The indicia (chineseGA_4_inside.jpg) says the publisher is 新光出版社

Xinguang chubanshe (New Light Publishing) in Shanghai and it's sold by

上海五洲書報社 Shanghai wuzhou shubaoshe (Five Continents Book and Newspaper

Company) and 香港天一圖書公司 Hong Kong Tianyi tushu gongsi (Heaven One

Picture Book Company).

 

The comic is dated Minguo 30 (= 1941 AD), October 25th.

 

Minguo (Republic; lit. People-Nation) is the calendar used by the

Republic of China; it's now obsolete in the PRC:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minguo_calendar

 

Maybe it'll be obsolete in Taiwan someday:

 

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2006/02/25/2003294523

 

All of the comics are titled 警備車 JINGBEICHE (POLICE CAR). The cover

text offers no interesting information beyond pricing and things like

夏季特大號 "Giant Summer Special".

 

The two strips in chineseGA_4.jpg are

 

牛鼻子 NIUBIZI (COWNOSE)

 

and

 

奇異人 QIYIREN (STRANGE PERSON; the Fantastic Four were called 四異人

Siyiren (Four Strange People) in a translation released in Taiwan).

 

Do you know what they're called in English?

 

(Sorry to everyone who sees nonsense characters instead of Chinese

characters. I'm typing the Chinese text for my own reference.)

 

Marc Miyake

 

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selegue

selegue

Posted
Posted

PS

 

A correction:

 

牛鼻子 NIUBIZI (COWNOSE) should be OXNOSE. I keep thinking 'cow' is a

gender-neutral term.

 

 

I was just checking to see if all of you were paying attention.

 

Jack

 

 

Insights from comic-book fan and linguist extraordinaire Marc Miyake. I hope the Chinese characters come through.

 

What an interesting set of comic books!

 

Jack

 

 

Did you recently purchase all of these? I've never seen such old

Chinese comics before!

 

> Is the language all Chinese? <

 

Yes.

 

> Possibly from Hong Kong? <

 

The indicia (chineseGA_4_inside.jpg) says the publisher is 新光出版社

Xinguang chubanshe (New Light Publishing) in Shanghai and it's sold by

上海五洲書報社 Shanghai wuzhou shubaoshe (Five Continents Book and Newspaper

Company) and 香港天一圖書公司 Hong Kong Tianyi tushu gongsi (Heaven One

Picture Book Company).

 

The comic is dated Minguo 30 (= 1941 AD), October 25th.

 

Minguo (Republic; lit. People-Nation) is the calendar used by the

Republic of China; it's now obsolete in the PRC:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minguo_calendar

 

Maybe it'll be obsolete in Taiwan someday:

 

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2006/02/25/2003294523

 

All of the comics are titled 警備車 JINGBEICHE (POLICE CAR). The cover

text offers no interesting information beyond pricing and things like

夏季特大號 "Giant Summer Special".

 

The two strips in chineseGA_4.jpg are

 

牛鼻子 NIUBIZI (COWNOSE)

 

and

 

奇異人 QIYIREN (STRANGE PERSON; the Fantastic Four were called 四異人

Siyiren (Four Strange People) in a translation released in Taiwan).

 

Do you know what they're called in English?

 

(Sorry to everyone who sees nonsense characters instead of Chinese

characters. I'm typing the Chinese text for my own reference.)

 

Marc Miyake

 

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rjpb

rjpb

Posted
Posted

Fascinating.

 

To correct my earlier post - the International settlement in Shanghai wasn't occupied by the Japanese until Dec of 1941, though the Chinese parts of the city were occupied in 1937. The U.S. Marine detachment didn't leave the American sector until Nov of '41.

 

Are these the earliest foreign language versions of American comic books? Someone in Shanghai would likely had to have acccess to photostats in a timely fashion in order to translate and reprint these comics so close to the U.S. publication dates.

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