Canadian Golden Age

[comicnut]

This is my first post here!!!

 

I am a collector reseacher of Canadian Comics from 1941-1946

 

These were often referred to as Canadian Whites because they were mostly printed in black & white. Titles included: Active, Better, Bing Bang, Captain Marvel, Dime, Freelance, Joke, Spy Smasher, Triumph, Wow etc.

 

I will buy any and all books.

 

Thanks

[Silver Surfer]

Welcome to the boards. As a Canadian I would just love to hear more about the history and relative scarcity of these books. Post em if you got em.

[comicnut]

I'll quickly start with the scarcity!

 

Canadian books typically had 10% of the print run of US editions.

 

Thus the survival rate is 10%...but wait, Cdn books are printed on unstable newsprint that gets brittle fast in the wrong conditions...so it is moer like 5%.

 

The average GA number of a 1941-1946 US comic is about 150-200 copies.

 

Which would put most Cdn books at about 8-10 copies.

 

The latter issues (Freelance, in color too) are quite a bit more, while the 1941 issues are believe it or not less.

 

Example: Active #1 I had one and catalogued and was letting the Cdn collecting community know about it. At that point in time nobody had ever seen one including an ex comic dealer of 30 years!!! To this day there has been only one other copy that has surfaced (last year) and it fetched about $1100 US.

 

Realize that this is a original Cdn comic not a redrawn one like what Double A put out. For those that don't know Double A (Anglo American) put out Fawcett titles like Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, Whiz etc. I should also mention that all Cdn comics from 1941-1946 were NOT reprints but books that were redrawn by Cdn artists. Some were very crude, Spy Smasher #1 in particular.

 

Here's a pic:

Can't seem to do this.

Someone explain how it put a picture up and I'll get one up.