What would you have bought as a kid in the GA

[rjpb]

I know a few boardies actually did buy comics back in the GA, and feel free to chime in as to what it was that caused you to spend your dime on one book rather than another.

 

For the rest of us, what do you think you would have spent your hard earned dime on in the 1938-1949 era as a kid? Our tastes are somewhat different as adults, and what you choose to collect from the GA has many different motivators that wouldn't occur to a kid just buying to read. So try and imagine what the 10 or 12 year old version of yourself would have bought, not what the current you thinks are the coolest books from the era.

 

Looking back at what motivated me as a kid in my comic reading prime, mid-late sixties to mid 1970s, I strarted out reading humor books and then became so enamored with superheroes at around age 10, that they became the overwhelmingly dominant part of my purchases until I started focusing on undergrounds exclusively at around age 16.

 

Back then I found a certain magic to GA reprints, but particularly the Simon & Kirby stuff as well as Jack Cole's Plastic Man. I imagine in the 1940's I would have been the same. I also loved Little Lulu and Carl Barks' duck stories as a younger kid, while much of this was reprinted from the 1950's not the 40's, I imagine a younger version of myself in the late 1940s would have been buying plenty of Dell.

 

As much as I love Schomburg's war covers, I didn't buy stuff just for the cover as a kid, and given the weakness of the stories inside, I doubt I would have picked up more than a couple before deciding they promised more than they delivered.

 

I can see myself buying the Fox Phantom Lady books when on the cusp of adolescence, and telling myself it was because they were superhero stories with better than average artwork.

 

Like many kids I was as drawn to colorful villains as I was heroes, and Joker and Two-Face covers would have got my attention. Batman in general I would have read, though I'd have skipped the goofy bike riding and christmas tree decorating covers, as well as World's Finest. Even as a kid I cared little for Superman. And as the 1940s D*ck Tracy stories were the peak of the strip's history, and the Collected Cases of D*ck Tracy was a favorite Christmas gift when I was 11 or 12, I would have been reading the comic book version for sure.

 

 

 

 

[fifties]

You asked about Golden Age, but then narrowed it down to ending in 1949. I believe the broad interpretation gives it until 1955, so given that;

 

I don't remember exactly at what age I began getting comic books, but 1952 seems pretty close, and at that time, it was Dell's Bugs Bunny, Heckle and Jeckle, Mighty Mouse, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Little Lulu.

 

I can tell you that seeing the horror covers at the news stand would scare the daylights out of me!

 

Now at age 11 & 12, 1956-57, I became enamored at what was now forbidden; those horror comics! The local grocery store had a metal spinner rack containing cellophane bagged coverless comics, at 3 for a quarter. It got a lot of business from me! Some years later, I loaned them to a "friend", who with his little brother managed to lose or destroy them.

 

When I got back into collecting some years later, I would occasionally run across a "familiar" leading story, and recognized it as being from one of the coverless issues I had read years earlier. This then became a quest to locate as many of them as I could, and I believe that at this point in time I've pretty well accomplished that end. Those books, BTW, were some of the very best for PCH stories.

[jerome34]

I started collecting comics with All Star 13 (in Sept 1942) so

super-heroes and SF were my focus. I got every issue of

All Star as it came out and many issues of Flash and

All American, I remember specifically AA 61 (1st Solomon

Grundy).

 

Most purchases were second hand (2 cents instead of

10 cents). Mostly DC's but More than a few Capt. M Adv

and Plastic Man.

[vaillant]

For the rest of us, what do you think you would have spent your hard earned dime on in the 1938-1949 era as a kid? Our tastes are somewhat different as adults, and what you choose to collect from the GA has many different motivators that wouldn't occur to a kid just buying to read. So try and imagine what the 10 or 12 year old version of yourself would have bought, not what the current you thinks are the coolest books from the era.

 

Excluding non-superhero comics, to which I have been exposed at an early age (reading Disney stories, even classic ones from the 1930s when I was in primary school, and also some early Tracy thanks to italian magazines which were bought by my father) I would consider your question according to the impact the Fantastic Four have had on me as a child.

 

My very first story was Fantastic Four #175: a story which obviously was not the ideal "step in" for a new reader: complicated, incomprehensible, most of what was mentioned and addressed in the story implied at least some familiarity with the previous events, but I was entirely hooked by the characters, the mystery, the heroism and the grandeur, so to speak (there is a Galactus vs. the High Evolutionary showdown).

 

Hard to imagine, but I guess it would have been what I like most now: aside from Timelys, with whom I have little familiarity, maybe it would be National Comics with Uncle Sam, or Daredevil, or the Marvel Family.

Most of the other comics from the 1930s and 1940s I was enough lucky to be familiar with as a child, since in Italy they were constantly published and their memory was still strong in the 1970s-1980s – especially that of such classic syndicated strips as The Captain and the Kids, Flash Gordon, Secret Agent X9, King of the Royal Mounted, Brick Bradford, Mandrake, Popeye etc.

Not that I am familiar with all of them, but it was the whole environment: a lot different from the one of a kid growing up in the USA in the 1970s.

 

All for one: I have never seen Star Wars, only as an adult and as much as I quite liked it it did not impress me particularly, while there is some 1930s-1940s stuff which is indelibly part of my upbringing.

[vaillant]

I started collecting comics with All Star 13 (in Sept 1942) so

super-heroes and SF were my focus. I got every issue of

All Star as it came out and many issues of Flash and

All American, I remember specifically AA 61 (1st Solomon

Grundy).

 

Most purchases were second hand (2 cents instead of

10 cents). Mostly DC's but More than a few Capt. M Adv

and Plastic Man.

You’re just awesome and I find incredible how, being more or less the age of my father, things were so different for italian children.

At best, my father would have been reading this – and he was already a teenager.

(This is from 1946).

 

[rjpb]

You asked about Golden Age, but then narrowed it down to ending in 1949. I believe the broad interpretation gives it until 1955, so given that;

 

I don't remember exactly at what age I began getting comic books, but 1952 seems pretty close, and at that time, it was Dell's Bugs Bunny, Heckle and Jeckle, Mighty Mouse, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Little Lulu.

 

I can tell you that seeing the horror covers at the news stand would scare the daylights out of me!

 

Now at age 11 & 12, 1956-57, I became enamored at what was now forbidden; those horror comics! The local grocery store had a metal spinner rack containing cellophane bagged coverless comics, at 3 for a quarter. It got a lot of business from me! Some years later, I loaned them to a "friend", who with his little brother managed to lose or destroy them.

 

When I got back into collecting some years later, I would occasionally run across a "familiar" leading story, and recognized it as being from one of the coverless issues I had read years earlier. This then became a quest to locate as many of them as I could, and I believe that at this point in time I've pretty well accomplished that end. Those books, BTW, were some of the very best for PCH stories.

 

Even though I put a 1949 end date, I accept the common usage of GA of continuing up to the comics code. The main reason I left it the early 1950's out, is that what was generally available on the stands was far different from just a decade earlier, so I stuck with the general outlines of what most think of as the superhero Golden Age. Had I been buying as kid of at least 11 in the early 1950s, I know it would have been EC all the way, every thing from MAD to Weird Science to Frontline Combat, as I was totally blown away with all that stuff in the early 70s once I discovered it.

[Phantalien]

I would be EC for the 50's.

The 40's I would probably go for whatever cover art interested me the most. I would like to think that anything Green Lantern, Spectre, Dr. Fate, and Captain Marvel Jr. would have caught my eye.

 

I could have been one of those comic snobs back then and never bought from the big companies and went for those smaller companies.

[batman_fan]

Batman, definitely Batman

[jimjum12]

I think Planet Comics would have caught my eye...... GOD BLESS....

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[jimbo_707]

It really would have depended on my age, but as an adolescent in the '40s, I think I would have bought Batman, Plastic Man, Tracy, Flash, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Spectre More Fun Comics, and old-costume-Sandman Adventure Comics.

Disney, Felix the Cat, Looney Tunes, Mighty Mouse, and Walter Lantz titles (Oswald, Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker) would have appealed to me as a younger child (age 10 or younger, let's say).

[BB-Gun]

When I was a kid in the fifties, I purchased Superman comics. Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, World's Finest, Action and Superman were all the same to me. My brother purchased Dells (Disney) and my mother brought them home from the grocery store.

 

I think if I was 10 years older, I would have purchased mostly Superman Comics. Since I was a Kirby fan as well, I probably would have purchased anything that he worked on in the golden age. Eventually I would have picked up some All Star comics and maybe a western or two.

 

I don't think I would have avoided Timely but it would probably attract me later. Captain America would probably be on the buy list.

[poundofbull]

Hero books for me. Batman,Superman, Marvel Mystery etc.. Pretty much the same thing I buy today.

[Ken Aldred]

40s

 

- More Fun Comics - Spectre and Dr Fate

- Adventure Comics - Flessel and S & K Sandman

- Police Comics - Plastic Man

- Batman - both titles

- Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories - Carl Barks

 

50s

 

- ECs

- Atlas Horror