UPDATED: My Nominee for the "First Great Comic Collector" 12 12

[Mmehdy]

On 8/13/2023 at 1:33 PM, MrBedrock said:

If there is anyone we know we can count on to accurately and definitively recount the past, that person is Bob Beerbohm.

 

On 8/12/2023 at 9:00 PM, Mmehdy said:

1-I am not derailing, just responding.

2- let’s move on

Please read the above, apparently you missed it....especially #2

[MrBedrock]

On 8/13/2023 at 5:10 PM, Mmehdy said:

 

Please read the above, apparently you missed it....especially #2

I didn't miss a thing and I am completely insulted that you would insinuate otherwise!

[MrBedrock]

Just kidding. I can't get insulted by this group. The drama here is pretty fun to follow though. Thanks!

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

On 8/13/2023 at 11:37 PM, Robot Man said:

Jon may not be the first and he won’t be the last of the giants in this hobby but I for one benefitted for his zeal and passion. We need to encourage and hope more of the old guard continue to pass on their experiences while they are still with us. We recently lost Ray Storch. A legendary Bay Area collector and dealer and a good friend. Like creators, a lot of legendary collectors are sadly leaving us…

Sorry to hear about Ray. I ran into him at a few Wonder Cons and he had boxes filled with early fifties DCs that no one else ever had. I enjoyed talking to him quite a bit. RIP!

[Sqeggs]

On 8/12/2023 at 6:47 PM, The Black Hand ® said:

Are there any more collectors here who knew Barry Bauman and visited his "Bat Cave" up on High Street, I believe it was. I used to take the bus there. He was a bit older so he was like a hero to me.. What a kick it was to be able to root through all those boxes of books and thumb through them. I think it was Bob Beerbohm who told me how he passed all those years ago and the circumstances that may have led to it. Sad. For me that was the Golden age of collecting, but the girls and outside events took hold and I dumped the collection I had then. The second Golden age of collecting for me came in the late nineties early 2000's,  with Ebay coming in to play.

Never met him but did buy from him off his ads in the old RBCC. 

[Pat Calhoun]

I bought some from Barry Bauman way back in the day, and Ray Storch sold me my Dennis #1. Happy to have dealt with both of them and RIP gents.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

On 8/14/2023 at 10:52 AM, Pat Calhoun said:

I bought some from Barry Bauman way back in the day, and Ray Storch sold me my Dennis #1. Happy to have dealt with both of them and RIP gents.

Ray seemed to appreciate the obscure comics I also enjoy. I spent an hour or so at Wonder Con looking through runs of Star Spangled and Tomahawk. I picked up some fun issues of Star Spangled with Robin and Tomahawk stories.

Ray also turned me on the fact that Buzzy had some Scribbly stories as backups. So I got one of those from him!

I also recall him talking about how he picked up loads of back issues in Oregon and Washington. Fun times talking to him.

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by 50YrsCollctngCmcs

[HouseofComics.Com]

That's so Ray. He'd have Dennis 1 or Sugar and Spike 1 or Showgirls 1 or Brave and the Bold 1 or It's Gametime 1, but not Flash 105 or Brave and the Bold 28.When he first started reading comics it was probably the tail end of pre-code horror and the nadir of superheroes, and thus an "esoteric" collector was born. More likely to have 3-D humor comics than Batman. His job as a crafts fair guy allowed him to travel and hunt all over the west coast.

He was also very instrumental in Katy Keene fandom with the resurgence of the character in the early 80s and became good friends with Bill Woggon.

[Robot Man]

On 8/13/2023 at 7:59 PM, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

Ray seemed to appreciate the obscure comics I also enjoy. I spent an hour or so at Wonder Con looking through runs of Star Spangled and Tomahawk. I picked up some fun issues of Star Spangled with Robin and Tomahawk stories.

Ray also turned me on the fact that Buzzy had some Scribbly stories as backups. So I got one of those from him!

I also recall him talking about how he picked up loads of back issues in Oregon and Washington. Fun times talking to him.

 

Yeah Ray always had the kind of scarce, oddball type of books I liked. Tons of them. Not many superhero’s but all the other genres. His boxes were a treasure trove for this stuff. He always had a couple of boxes under the table that he would show a selected few. He would always tell me that they were fresh from his personal collection. Very fair dealer and one I rarely felt to negotiate prices with. A great guy with the zeal for the hobby. Was always a pleasure to be around. I will miss him…

[MusterMark]

Very sad news to hear that Ray has passed away.  He was a great comics guy.  I was fortunate to have gotten some great pieces from his incredible Katy Keene collection.  And while his focus was not on superheroes, I did get from him a lot of Tales To Astonish, Tales Of Suspense and Strange Tales, from the superhero runs of those titles.  He was always most kind and caring, and very generous with information on his comics.  I have a lot of GA comics for which he wrote extensive notes on each comic, giving info that you wouldn’t find in Overstreet or on a CGC label - just things he himself had painstakingly figured out about that comic.  I treasure those notes that came with each comic.  His knowledge of the comic medium was so vast, and he had such a great love for comics - it was always exciting to get comics from him.  And above all, he had a tremendous heart and a genuine and undeniable love of life.

Edited August 14, 2023 by MusterMark

[Tri-Color Brian]

R.I.P. Jon Berk and Ray Storch.  I never bought any books from Jon, but I did pick up a few from Ray, including this one he regretted selling me in 1994.

 

 

[Hap Hazard]

I always considered Ray Storch to be the Jedi Master of Esoteric /Oddball comics, All the stuff I love to collect. I first discovered him selling

at Bruce's Shrine Shows in LA in the 90's and later at Terry's shows. Bought great books from him and learned a lot about more obscure non-super

hero books and titles. He will be missed.

[aardvark88]

Possibly the earliest vintage comics collector-dealer in Canada: Capt. George 1972. Pic courtesy of Bob Beerbohm FB:

[Cat-Man_America]

On 9/2/2023 at 11:12 AM, aardvark88 said:

Possibly the earliest vintage comics collector-dealer in Canada: Capt. George 1972. Pic courtesy of Bob Beerbohm FB:

I believe this guy was active in fandom to some degree, turning out regular B&W newsprint reprint fanzine's called Captain George's Comic World in the late 60's and early 70's.  I'm sure someone could verify my recollections on this. The fanzines were fairly random reprints covering both vintage newspaper comics and GA comic books.

 

[AJD]

On 9/3/2023 at 4:03 AM, Cat-Man_America said:

I believe this guy was active in fandom to some degree, turning out regular B&W newsprint reprint fanzine's called Captain George's Comic World in the late 60's and early 70's.  I'm sure someone could verify my recollections on this. The fanzines were fairly random reprints covering both vintage newspaper comics and GA comic books.

 

Yes, and he cast his net widely. I think he was probably first among overseas collectors to notice some of the better Australian GA material. His Comic World fanzine covered some of that ground.

[sfcityduck]

For any Wigransky fans out there - here's an opportunity (no affiliation to me and my copy is not for sale):

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31735993981&searchurl=kn%3Dwigransky%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title1

 

 

Edited February 23 by sfcityduck

[sfcityduck]

On 11/28/2022 at 7:43 AM, sfcityduck said:

And here's photos of the books themselves, which apparently were well-loved by Cochran. He bound a complete set of mint EC's?  

 

More of Wigransky's comics as bound by Russ Cochran after he bought them straight from Dave:

 

[sfcityduck]

On 2/20/2024 at 5:39 PM, sfcityduck said:

For any Wigransky fans out there - here's an opportunity (no affiliation to me and my copy is not for sale):

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31735993981&searchurl=kn%3Dwigransky%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title1

 

I should add the seller does a good job of paraphrasing parts of this thread:

First (and only) edition of this rare, extravagant novel of pre-Beat teen hooliganism by the legendary ex-Teen who stood up to the anti-comic-book moral panic of Dr. Frederic Wertham. A juvenile delinquent book for delinquent juveniles. One of life's great Teens, "Dave Jay" was the pen name of David Pace Wigransky, a shining figure in the history of comic book censorship. As a precocious 14 year old, his indignant rebuttal to the malevolent and over-excitable psychiatrist Dr. Frederic Wertham was published in the May 1948 Saturday Review of Literature, defending the autonomy of the teen mind and its right to discern and choose: "It is high time that society waken up to the fact that children are human beings with opinions of their own," he wrote. The essay that outraged him was Wertham's "The Comics.Very Funny!", which would form the basis of his infamous SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT (1954), which culminated in Senate hearings and the creation of the Comics Code Authority. Wigransky's defense of freedom on behalf of his own generation has been cited by an approving Stan Lee and holds a permanent place in comics history. Wigransky was a busy adolescent, however, and produced not only furiously cogent letters but comic books of his own, including the recently uncovered 27-page "The Uncanny Adventures of (I Hate) Dr. Wertham" (as Sterling South). Known in his hometown as Beer Dave, "a notorious Hot Shop habitue who wore a black leather motorcycle jacket festooned with beer can openers," alumni newsletters would trade bemused updates on his doings in later years. A record as well as a comic collector, Wigransky issued a novelty single, "Me For President," in 1956 (as Dave Jay), advertised his "DEEJAY SHOW - 'BIG TIME ON WAX'" in Billboard in '62, and would later publish an Al Jolson discography. Always slightly out of step with the times, this novel (which is confirmed as Wigransky's via copyright records) was his most ambitious and perhaps mistimed project of all - celebrating one raging generation of youth just as another was on the ascendancy. RAISING HELL's only semi-contemporary review came from the author's old schoolmate and then-manager of Country Joe and the Fish, who wrote of hearing a rumor "one rainy evening that Beer Dave was writing a book about Bethesda that told it like it was." RAISING HELL was that book: its heroes were "the hard guys who swore at the teachers and blew up the principal's house, the people whose history is found in a few headlines and sensational detective story magazines. The generation who were setting the stage for the beatniks." Self-published by Wigransky (who died in 1969 at the age of 36) with the notorious Vantage Press, the book is scarce in the market. OCLC finds just ten scattered copies. 8'' x 5.5''. Original black cloth with gilt-lettered spine. Pictorial endpapers. In original unclipped ($5.50) pictorial dust jacket. Illustrated in black and white by the author throughout. 544 pages. Jacket lightly edgeworn with some chipping. Book with some shelfwear at extremities and light spotting to fore-edge. Stain to top edge. Overall, sound. Very good minus in a very good jacket.

[Marty Mann]

Pleased to see that DAVID WIGRANSKY and I were buying comics and entering contests at the same time.

[Robot Man]

On 2/22/2024 at 6:52 AM, Marty Mann said:

Pleased to see that DAVID WIGRANSKY and I were buying comics and entering contests at the same time.

Still got your club pin Marty?