Post Your Promotional Comic Books Here!!!! 7 7

[Dr. Love]

You know what they say about making an ASSumption....

 

The Cocomalt was a relist after I already had by placed an offer on it several months prior. Stew tried to advise me via email, but I missed the auction. I quickly contacted him, and to Stew's credit we completed the deal that had already been previously discussed.

 

Them's the facts, so how 'bout giving me some love, Dr. Love...?

 

STEVE (Luvin' Larson)

 

My bad Steve. Chalk it up to sour grapes on my part. Enjoy the gorgeous book and that impossible to come by mailer. Love out.

[sacentaur]

This is not a promotional item per se (1944, 10 cents), but it is a very strange book and I thought perhaps someone out there may have some more info on it...

 

 

STEVE

[TheWatcher]

[TheWatcher]

[TheWatcher]

[TheWatcher]

[TheWatcher]

[TheWatcher]

[TheWatcher]

[Bonds25]

Nice Spirit sections - amazing art!!

[selegue]

I debated whether this one belongs on the Short Bus or here.

Does anyone know anything about "The Wonder of Water"?

It looks like a classic 50s-60s promo book, maybe Roussos or Sparling art, with whoever it is not trying too hard.

 

I'd like to find a copy but don't have any information to go on -- publisher, year, whatever. I can't find it in Overstreet (although mine is out of date) and it's not in the GCD. I don't remember where I got the scan, but I don't think it was on the CGC boards.

 

Anyone have a clue?

 

Thanks,

Jack

[Paratrooper]

Trapped! 1951 Harvey promotional featured in SOTI

[selegue]

Nice one!

Looks like Bill is up in the air without a parachute.

 

The kid in glasses coming down the steps makes me think that Meskin could have drawn it. Any signature?

 

Jack

 

 

Trapped! 1951 Harvey promotional featured in SOTI

[Paratrooper]

I slabatized the book, no idea who the creative artists were on this book. And no idea what the book is about (bought it a few years ago, read it and slabbed it). Anyone else see this book before? It was mentioned in SOTI, never seen another one of these up for sale, just wondering how rare this book is. OPSG has it as $12 in NM, so can't be that rare.

[iggy]

Picked up 2 nice J.C. Penney promos over the weekend at an auction. This one from 1947 has Simon & Kirby art:

 

 

Ripley's Believe It or Not is from 1948:

 

 

Both have white pages & I paid $4.00 each. Also got Aquaman #1 for $6.00, Amazing Fantasy #14 & Amazing Spider-Man #5 for $5.00 each, but they were all low grade.

[mica]

[Harvey Dude]

Nice one!

Looks like Bill is up in the air without a parachute.

 

The kid in glasses coming down the steps makes me think that Meskin could have drawn it. Any signature?

 

Jack

 

I believe I read where Win Mortimer may have created the Trapped cover. I have several copies of the book and never get tired of the 50s style on the cover. Reminds me of the Ozzy and Harriet days.

[rjpb]

A few years back there was a seller who repeatedly listed higher grade copies of Trapped! on ebay for something like $5. They rarely topped the starting bid.

 

I'd say it's roughly as common as Major Inapak, but due to it's anti-drug message, is probably more desirable.

It's a cool book to own

 

[Harvey Dude]

A few years back there was a seller who repeatedly listed higher grade copies of Trapped! on ebay for something like $5. They rarely topped the starting bid.

 

Nice article by Paul Howley on the find for "Trapped."

 

Paul worked for Sparkle City at the time.

 

" I was reading a comic book titled " Teen-age Dope Slaves". This was a 1952 comic book that reprinted the old newspaper strip of Rex Morgan M.D. It was an interesting anti-drug story. This comic book was worth about $150.00 . I happened to notice an interesting message on the back cover of the comic. It explained that additional copies of this comic book were available for your school or civic organization. Now I knew that most comic books were printed in Sparta, Illinois and then they'd be shipped out directly to the magazine and book distributors around the country. The publishers usually didn't get very many copies sent to their offices. But this advertisement indicated that they would have extra copies of this comic book available. Even though this offer was over 25 years old, when we got back to our Dayton, Ohio homes, Jay wrote a letter to the publisher of the comic requesting copies of Teen-age Dope Slaves. Imagine our surprise when we got a reply stating that the publisher was sure they had copies of Teen-age Dope Slaves in their warehouse and as soon as they found them they'd send them to us at a cost of 10 cents each plus postage! We quickly sent a money order to buy 100 copies.

 

About two weeks later we got a letter from the publisher explaining that they hadn't found the comic books we'd asked for but they'd keep searching the warehouse. They explained that there were thousands of comic books in the warehouse and it could take a few more weeks to locate the comic book we wanted. In the meantime, they'd found a different comic book about drugs titled "Trapped". This was a 1951 comic book "give-away" that was distributed to schools. It had a strong anti-drug message so the publisher thought we might be interested in them. This comic book was not listed in the comic book price guide so not too many collectors were even aware of its existence. They had sent us 25 copies of Trapped. We priced them at $6.95 each and put them into our inventory.

 

At the first New York convention that we attended after receiving these comics, a serious collector was astounded to find a copy of Trapped available at our booth. He had heard rumors of this comic but had never actually seen it. After he bought a copy he explained that this was one of the few comic books that was favorably mentioned in "Seduction Of The Innocent", the anti-comic book book that was written in the 1950's by Fredric Wertham. In 1978, any comic book that was mentioned in "Seduction Of The Innocent" was in high demand. By the end of the convention, we had sold all of the copies of Trapped that we had. We didn't tell anyone where these copies came from. When we got home we ordered 100 more copies. We priced these copies at $25.00 each and sold out very quickly. We ordered 200 more copies and started selling them for $100.00 each or we would trade them for about $200.00 worth of comic books we needed for our inventory. These books were just about the fastest selling comics in the business.

 

Even though we were making a huge profit on these comics, we were eager to get the comic books we were really waiting for.Teen-age Dope Slaves! When we called the publisher, they apologized for not finding them in their warehouse. We decided that we couldn't just sit by and wait because we were concerned that some other comic dealer would discover this treasure filled warehouse. We arranged a meeting with the owner of the comic book publisher. We drove to New York to discuss purchasing everything in the warehouse. The owner seemed very pleasant. He talked about his interest in The Boy Scouts and then started rambling about his cartoon characters ,community involvement, and some other things that didn't really make much sense to us. After about 30 minutes we brought up the subject of the potential fortune sitting in his warehouse somewhere in New York. We explained that old comic books were now quite valuable and we'd be willing to pay a reasonable price for everything. We were stunned at his response. He insisted that there was no warehouse! He denied that they had any copies of the old comic books they had published. When we pointed out that we had bought some old comic books directly from his company just recently, his secretary ended our meeting. We left the building feeling like we were part of an episode of The Twilight Zone. This ended our business dealings with this company. They stopped selling their old comic books. We later discovered that some unscrupulous warehouse employee stole most of the valuable comic books and artwork and sold them directly to other comic book dealers throughout the United States."

[Paratrooper]

A few years back there was a seller who repeatedly listed higher grade copies of Trapped! on ebay for something like $5. They rarely topped the starting bid.

 

Nice article by Paul Howley on the find for "Trapped."

 

Excellent story! I bought my copy about a year ago on ebay for about $15. Haven't seen one since, maybe they'll pop up again at a later date. Maybe I'll crack the slab and read it again.