OO collection part 2

[Kevin.J]

Back Cover

 

 

If only someone had realized how much that little strip would be worth when they tore it off the back to mark their place in a book.

 

I think that's exactly what happened. Yea, Ouch!! Don't tell the OO.

 

Almost as bad as the day they used the Superman cover to make a paper airplane.

[CycleGirl]

Front Cover

 

Fantastic eye appeal!

Yea, my stomach dropped when I pulled this out of the box.

 

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I think I would have cried.

 

Kind of like the little girl who found out she was going to Disneyland...

 

[vaillant]

If only someone had realized how much that little strip would be worth when they tore it off the back to mark their place in a book.

 

Honestly, I wouldn’t care less: all in all, it’s just the back cover.

In fact, I’d love to find all the books I’m seeking for in that condition, to have them at reasonable prices!

[tb]

That’s so fascinating… Guess how did they felt during the War.

 

Such a discovery, done in Italy, would be equally exciting (especially for the early 1940s) but would move lot less money. Most costly examples of collectibles are the earliest Disney story published in "standalone comic book form" (Topolino contro Wolp"), which could sell for some 10-20 thousands USD, or this early Brick Bradford album (from 1935):

 

 

Very rare, but even italian own production never reach the value of certain comic books of the same time.

 

Plus, sellers aren’t grading-affordable. Or better: they won’t grade, since it may be more convenient to leave that to the buyer. It‘s a situation which would benefit from a grading-scale.

 

That's a fantastic 1935 comic. Although I know almost nothing about Italian comics, it doesn't take an expert to tell that a book like this is very special. I ran some searches on "Topolino Contro Wolp" - that is a really cool book, too. These boards are very US centric, but I hope you'll continue posting Italian comics from time to time. It looks like your collection could be pretty spectacular, and at least the two above books have no counterparts in Northern Europe where I grew up myself.

[vaillant]

@tb: Many thanks. Where are you from?

Although the issue is not mine, it’s among the first comics published in "comic book form" (previously, comics were just serialized in large "giornali" featuring translations of the best syndicated strips, our tentatively equivalent "golden age" beginning which in the US is Action #1 coincides with the first issue of L’Avventuroso.

 

Just to give a glimpse: italian market was fresh, we know comics are born in the USA, but Italy has been among the first countries to fill the distance: in the 1930s we already had exceptional artists (often coming from fine art) producing the earliest examples of our comics native production.

The only example which made it to the USA is a partial publication of "Saturno contro la terra" ("Saturn against the earth") which run for four issues on McKay's publications' "Future Comics" (pretty tough to find, I’d like to find someone willing to scan some pages for me).

 

To be clear, these arent’ from my collection, but from a friend of mine, which is also the author of a spectacular book chronicling the history of italian comics publishers against the restrictions imposed by educators, and later on, from the fascist regime policies. It’s named "Eccetto Topolino" ("Except Mickey Mouse") and alludes to the fact the Disney publications were among the few allowed to be printed in the later war years, since Mussolini was indulgent towards the characters and pretty liked them.

 

This research led me to the golden age of comics, especially superheroes, which is almost entirely unknown in Italy. I am trying to use this interwar period research to cross-pollinate the interest of comics' readers and enthousiast alike both in Italy and in the USA.

[Rip]

Wow that's really cool. Love learning new stuff (thumbs u

 

When I was in Italy in the early 90's I remember Dylan Dog. I liked the print quality of the books and how they often put a couple of american issues together as one comic.

I saw nothing old or any comics shops what so ever.

[Scrooge]

FWIW, that structure of packaging several american issues as one comic magazine is how France (and other francophone countries) were delivered their SA Marvel.

 

Strange (the flagship magazine) started with reprinting in its issue # 1: Uncanny X-Men # 1, TOS # 39, DD # 1, Silver Surfer # 1 & 7.

 

Later on in the run, the selection of features stabilized to the following line-up:

 

Uncanny, DD, Iron Man and Spider-man.

 

So, if you ever wonder why Frenchmen have an appreciation of the Iron Man (or DD) run greater than their U.S. counterparts, it's because they read it assiduously every month as part of their package.

 

At the same time, the reason I have great gaps in my FF knowledge is b/c the FF were in another mag that my budget didn't always allow me to buy (given that I was buying Conan instead). FF were packaged in a disjointed way first in Fantask then in Marvel, then in a series of one-shots every 3 months reprinting 4 issues of FF and finally in Nova (packaged with Spectacular Spider-Man and a variety of third features from Iron Man to Spider-Woman to Nova to a later Silver Surfer series, anyway, enough to give one a fit). Pheewww, no wonder I never was a FF fan, seems like it was work trying to keep up with them!

[vaillant]

@Rip, Scrooge: thanks for the interest.

 

It’s quite easy to understand the choice of Italian (and very likely French) publishers to group more titles in a publication. For Italy the reason is clear: at some point the "giornali" format went out of fashion -- those were large tabloid-like publication of 8-16 pages. This coincided with the end of the war. The publication since then has been a mixture of syndicated classics (Mandrake, Flash Gordon, Brick Bradford, Tim Tyler's Luck, etc.) and native italian productions, which already in the early 1940s were very imaginative and original, no longer depending on their inspirators.

Of course, there was still poor art, but the same thing happened in comic books.

The only difference was that usually in the US newspaper strips were drawn with more care, while the early years of comic books marked a new kind of experimentation, with artists like Carl Burgos which "invented" their style without looking at Alex Raymond or other fine newspaper artists.

 

Towards, the end of the war (and after), we were a ravaged, impoverished, "civil-war" torn country, and the publications became poorer. Abitual formats became about comic-book size, and later on, in the 1950s, slowly shifted towards thicker, black and white publications of 96+ pages. The innovation was mostly due to Bonelli (publisher of Tex and Dylan Dog, among others), whose father, Gian Luigi, has been among the true forerunners of comics writing, having been also a collaborator of "Il Vittorioso", the catholic publication which was among the first to truly believe to an entirely italian alternative to the US syndicated heroes.

 

So, in the late 1960s, early 1970s, it was quite understandable the publisher felt more confident in presenting -- say, two Spider-Man stories with Doctor Strange as a backup features rather than doing skinny 32 pages books.

Almost the opposite of the USA, where thicker pre-war books were slowly diminished in pages and paper thickness, up to the 1970s, where the print quality was also low.

 

Said this, we have never had a single golden age super-hero properly published, and it’s time to raise some consciousness about this production.

[Scrooge]

Funny that you should mention format at it reminded of some other fact about the FF. Recall that the FF had a checkered publishing history in France jumping from one mag to the other until the format settled. Not only the publications shifted but the format changed as well:

 

Fantask and Marvel were regular comic-sized publications

 

Les Fantastiques wherein 4 FF issues were bundled every 3 month was IIRC an oversized publication allowing for better view of the comics

 

but then "tragedy" struck when they were shifted to Nova since Nova was digest-sized so pages had to be cut-up and reorganized to fit into the digest format so any sense of flow of the original stories went out of the window and the art was shrunk losing out details.

 

One final element to this story is that, despite having passed the U.S. code, all publications had to go through the French equivalent to adhere to French standards so art was commonly retouched since some elements accepted by the U.S. code was a no-no to the French censors (yeah, hard to believe, eh!).

 

Btw, the history you mention of progression for the Italian market mirrors that of the French market.

[vaillant]

@Scrooge: In fact, the way the Marvel age has been handled in France is odd to say the least. Given their long tradition in respectfully publishing comics, treated almost as a thing of literary quality, in bookstores, and hardback editions since the 1930s, it surprises to see how they treated the Marvel mythos apparently as low-profile children literature. Occasionally. Or maybe I have a wrong picture.

Are you just experienced with the french publications, or do you come from France?

 

Side note:

@Rip: I have to check, but I’m sure I have some spare issues of "Il Vittorioso", which I collect, from the 1940s. If you don’t mind, I would love to send a pair of those to you for your friend's father, the OO. He grew up in the USA as the son of italians, and I would love to show him what was happening at the same time he was reading Captain America, The Black Terror and Archie smashing the Axis (well, maybe not Archie…) in fascist italy.