SHOW US YOUR GOLDEN AGE CANADIAN COMICS 12 12

[ecgt]

28 minutes ago, Tbone911t said:

Hey Brian, 

Those Tecs for sale?

Mike

Sorry, Mike. I'd only be willing to sell if I had a duplicate, which I do not. If I do end up with an under copy you will be the first to know. Best of luck in your hunt. Have you managed to pick up any Canadian TECs lately?

[Tbone911t]

Just now, ecgt said:

Sorry, Mike. I'd only be willing to sell if I had a duplicate, which I do not. If I do end up with an under copy you will be the first to know. Best of luck in your hunt. Have you managed to pick up any Canadian TECs lately?

Thanks Brian, I appreciate it. Nothing new lately.....only reasonable offer I had was a Tec 140 (raw 1.8 ish) but I already have a copy. I know of a couple in Halifax but fortunately they are WAY overpriced. I did ask my mom about the Colonel Ernie books. She remembers seeing them but that's about it.

 

[thehumantorch]

 

5 minutes ago, ecgt said:

51 minutes ago, wolverine180 said:

e book I have has the interiors of issue 35. It has 6 of the 9 stories.  Black terror, American eagle, haunted house, sergeant bill king, good cowboy and Larry north. All text match and page count compared to story.  Such helpful information.  Thanks again

Glad to help. Cool to learn about such an early FECA style book! Thanks for sharing.

It's a cool book, thanks for sharing it.

[wolverine180]

It was my pleasure. I got to learn so much and can't thank everyone enough for the help.  From reading some of the back dialog I think I have a Canadian white too. I will post pictures shortly and hopefully someone can verify . 

[wolverine180]

Here is the book I have that I thought might be a Canadian white

[gadzukes]

[gadzukes]

[gadzukes]

[gadzukes]

[gadzukes]

[gadzukes]

[gadzukes]

[gadzukes]

I was struck by how poor the quality was on these Canadian DC comics.  Cover paper is inferior & the color registration for the books are way off.

Look at how bad the color registration is on this one.

[porcupine48]

24 minutes ago, gadzukes said:

I was struck by how poor the quality was on these Canadian DC comics.  Cover paper is inferior & the color registration for the books are way off.

Look at how bad the color registration is on this one.

@Straw-Man would love this.

[sarvajnatman]

10 hours ago, wolverine180 said:

Here is the book I have that I thought might be a Canadian white

Yep, it's a WECA book. This is one of the 6 compendium titles that Bell Features issued in the summer of 1945 and is one of the harder ones to find. Others in this series are the famous and high-priced Nelvana compendium as well as the Speed Savage one. Maybe Stephen will post his array.

[ecgt]

10 hours ago, wolverine180 said:

Here is the book I have that I thought might be a Canadian white

That's definitely a Canadian White. It's a late run WECA book from around 1945 that reprints Spike & Mike stories from Joke Comics. All original Canadian content. This sort of stuff doesn't get the same amount of love (or the big bucks) as the superhero books, but it's still super cool.

[sarvajnatman]

5 hours ago, porcupine48 said:

@Straw-Man would love this.

This is a common characteristic of these Canadian reprint books. First the Canadian printing equipment wasn't that great and second the restrictions of the FECA period included the fact that American books could only be reprinted if the Americans sent up facsimilies of their plates. These are seen as inferior comics by many (fewer pages/stories, poor register, inferior paper), but for me they are still special and part of the history of Canadian comics.

[ecgt]

5 hours ago, gadzukes said:

I was struck by how poor the quality was on these Canadian DC comics.  Cover paper is inferior & the color registration for the books are way off.

Look at how bad the color registration is on this one.

 

 

 

That's part of the "charm" of these FECA books. The texture of the cover, poor quality paper and extremely common off registration problems were all part of how these companies kept costs down to maintain the 10 cent cover price. That's also why these are 36 pages instead of 52. They're not "sexy," but they are definitely interesting artefacts from a bygone era of Canadian comics.

All of the books you posted close-ups of look to be in better shape than I expected. Great find.

[ecgt]

Ivan, I'm curious as to what you think about the Canadian Exciting Comics # 39 from 1945 that we were discussing yesterday. Have you ever encountered a FECA style book that was released during WECA? It caught me off guard.

[sarvajnatman]

22 hours ago, ecgt said:

FECA books have been on the rise lately, but they generally do not sell for as much as US versions. However, this is a very interesting find. Many Pines books were reprinted in Canada during the FECA era after 1947, but they are hard to spot because unlike other publishers the Pines reprints generally do not have CDL or "Canadian Edition" written on the cover. I have an issue of America's Best Comics # 28 and Exiting Comics # 60 and 62 in my collection, but all were printed in 1948. The 1945 printing of your Exciting # 39 predates FECA and actually places this in the late-WECA period, prior to the end of WWII.

The later Canadian Pines books were published by Better Publications of Canada, which has the same 36 Toronto Street address in the indicia as your comic does. However, your book's publisher is Publications Enterprises Limited (which is not to be confused with Publication Services Limited, which was a different Canadian publisher, also based in Toronto). This is a publisher that I have not encountered in the past, but obviously became Better Publications of Canada over time.

Prior to now, I had never seen a US reprint (the Anglo-American Fawcett books are a different case) this early in the period. That said, the GCD does have pictures of three early issues of America's Best that may also be from 1945, but it is impossible to know for sure without having access to the indicias of those books. The early date of this book really throws me for a loop, because it predates FECA. Honestly, I am surprised that this even exists. Perhaps one of the board's WECA experts, like Stephen Lipson, can provide more information.

I have this copy of Exciting 39 as well and it's always been a bit of a mystery to me. Nothing much is known about Publication Enterprises and one wonders why a government watch dog or a disgruntled Canadian publisher didn't pick up on this. The same sort of thing happened right at the "Big Bang" of Canadian comics in March, 1941 when Anglo-American put out 4 black-and-white reprints of Fox titles which are now really difficult to find. Here are a couple: