Comic Book Collecting

[Hepcat]

I too have fond memories of the early Radio comics.... Anyone read the first issue of their version of the Shadow?  The Shadow quickly became a standard superhero, but I think he's closer to the "real" Shadow in that first issue.

I've not read any of the Radio Comics Shadow issues, but there definitely seems to have been a quantum change in the character between issues #1 and #2:

(Not mine.)

I agree that S&K were hitting on all cylinders during this period. Their Fighting American was a great satire of both Captain America and The Shield.

While I don't have any of the original issues published by Prize Comics, I have this Giant from 1966 that reprints some of the stories:

[Rex fury]

It's all great stuff. The 60's reprint is a fun sampling of stories. The entire run was collected and published hardbound by both Marvel (weird, I know) and more recently by the English Company that's doing lots of 50's comics reprints- their name slips my mind. Also, they're all on-line and can be read for free that way.
My personal favorite way to read them is through the original comics. There's nothing like opening and experiencing a golden age comic, smell and all! I'm not a fan of slabbing for this reason.
RF

[Hepcat]

It's all great stuff.... My personal favorite way to read them is through the original comics. There's nothing like opening and experiencing a golden age comic, smell and all! I'm not a fan of slabbing for this reason.

Oh absolutely!

[Hepcat]

The first DC superhero comic I can specifically remember reading was Green Lantern 11 in April of 1962 which George V. a buddy of mine on a farm outside of London had:





I still remember how it filled me with a sense of awe and wonder at the time. This Green Lantern character was leagues more interesting than staid old Superman and Batman!

Now I know for a fact that it prompted me to check out comics at the newsstand of Les' Variety since I clearly remember looking at these ads in the DC comics of the time:









I remember being captivated by the exotic Atom and Hawkman characters I was seeing for the first time. And I know for a fact that it was in the spring of 1962 that I first encountered that house ad for Atom 1 because when I saw basically the same ad reprinted for Atom 2 a couple of months later, I remember thinking that it was a pity I'd missed out on getting a copy of the Atom 1 with the cool Venus flytrap cover that I'd seen advertised earlier.

But if anything the house ads on the inside front and back covers impressed me even more strongly:







Wow, so cool and mysterious that Hawkman, and who were these Metal Men anyway? Since I very clearly remember knowing nothing about the Atom, Hawkman and Metal Men at the time, I must have viewed those ads for the first time in the spring of 1962.

The Tomorrow's Stars Appear Today ad is still one of my very favourite DC ads of all time despite, or perhaps precisely because, it was in B&W. But because these ads were so compelling, over the years I've periodically wondered why I didn't start looking for and buying some of the comics that must have been on other comic racks only a few blocks away. I mean how could I have resisted covers such as these?





















Well quite simply I didn't search through other newsstands for more superhero comics in the early spring of 1962. The explanation lies in another ad from DC comics that I very clearly remember seeing at the time:





Wow! Baseball Coins! Just like the Shirriff/Salada Hockey Coins that had been so popular with young boys in Canada over the previous two winters.





Here are scans of a few of these coins from my present day set:







I wondered immediately though whether they'd just be offered in the States, but within a week or so I found out that they'd not only showed up in bags of Shirriff Potato Chips on local store shelves, but that Mike M. from just down the street already had some! Mike being over a year older than me was always into the cool stuff first it seemed. Well I had to start collecting the Shirriff Baseball Coins and I did, but I didn't get beyond four or five before Hostess Potato Chips and Jell-O launched their own competing promotion (well they weren't just going to stand idly by while Shirriff carved into their market share), an absolutely fabulous set of 200 Aircraft Wheels! Here are scans from my present day set:







But, but, but, I couldn't collect both! It cost a whole dime to get a bag of potato chips with one of these little treasures and my ability to accumulate these Coins/Wheels was severely limited by cash flow considerations. Since I was already collecting the 1962 Topps Baseball cards (mercifully limited that year to the first three series totalling 264 cards since O-Pee-Chee didn't seem very good at convincing retailers to order the higher numbered series once the end of spring approached):









And eating Sugar Crisp cereal to collect the Canadian issue of the Post Baseball cards:







I had enough baseball related collectibles on my plate and therefore chose to collect the Aircraft Wheels thus contributing to the profits of the Hostess Potato Chip Company even though Shirriff made slightly better chips. (Mmmmmm, so delicious as well as nutritious whatever the brand!) Going with the Hostess turned out to be a wise decision since the Hostess/Jell-O Aircraft Wheels I accumulated that spring and summer are among the very few items that  somehow survived in my possession from my childhood to the present day.

But of course I didn't have enough disposable income to collect comics as well - until July anyway.

[Hepcat]

July 1962 was the month when I actually bought my first superhero comics. I'd been greatly impressed to put it mildly by the copy of Justice League 8 which I'd read at a Lithuanian kids' summer camp near Mount Brydges just a few miles west of London.




For Sale---the Justice League!

Editor:  Julius Schwartz
Writer:  Gardner Fox
Art:  Mike Sekowsky (pencils); Bernard Sachs (inks)





After getting back home, the Justice League issue that greeted me on the comic stand at Les' Variety on the corner was #14:





What a great cover! I was feverish with anxious anticipation as I bought it.  Over the next two weeks or so I bought these additional comics:




  (Not mine.)



8




I may have bought a title featuring Superboy as well. Since I limited myself to perusing only the offerings at Les' and Lamont & Perkins Pharmacy right beside Les', I failed to come across any of these other really neat comics which would have been on the stands at the time:














21



1




Fantastic Four 7 would also have been on the stands at the time but I have no recollection of seeing any Marvel comics that month.

It was just as well that I didn't come across any more comics to buy since within three weeks my older sister convinced my mother to pitch my small collection out before I was hopelessly corrupted. Nonetheless I must have continued to peruse the superhero comics on the stands for another few weeks because I very clearly remember being captivated by this house ad for Superman 156:





Temporarily though I'd learned my lesson and resisted the urge to buy that or any other comic for the time being. Besides, the fabulous Topps Civil War News cards would hit variety store counters at about the same time as that Superman comic and they'd act to squeeze most every nickel and dime from my grubby fingers for weeks:











And of course my sister's efforts to save me from being corrupted by my comics failed. I was already addicted and my life has been one of comic mag degeneracy ever since.

[Rex fury]

I've recently been picking up more silver age DC comics, which is sort of new for me. I found that I really enjoyed an "Angel and the Ape" #5 that I bought at a local antique market. Consequently I've been ordering the rest of the silver age run to complete the set. While my younger self didn't appreciate this stuff ( no capes or Kirby crackle) I've found it resonates with me in old age.

Another book I picked up was what I thought was a " Challengers of the Unknown" 23. Upon opening the comic bag the cover fell off to reveal a Strange Adventures ! This might sound distressing, but it was really kind of fun. The comic was obviously beat  when I bought it, so I wasn't expecting to run off and slab it anyways-lol

What's kind of cool about collecting this stuff is speculating how the Challengers cover ended up married to its cousin Strange?  There's also a stamp on the cover that reads:
"Models &Hobbies
2215 Claremont St Skyline"
The rest of the address has been rubbed off, so I'll never know where exactly this comic spent it's early days as a collectible.
Finally there's a second stamp that reads:
"Mickeys Comic Books
Sell for 2c-Buy for 1c"
It's  fun for me to ponder who this Mickey was and how successful his comic book enterprise might have been? That to me is part of collecting old comics- wondering where they've come from and how they ended up where I find them?
No slabs and 9.999s for me, just stories and speculation about unknowable journeys.

RF

[Hepcat]

A copy of Space Adventures belonging to the older brother of a buddy of mine featuring the powerful Captain Atom helped to keep my appetite for the pajama brigade alive despite the loss of my comics in August 1962. I clearly recall that we were engaged in an informal football game across several back yards that day so it must have been sometime in the fall of 1962. The memory of these pages featuring a character based upon Nikita Khrushchev never left me:







Given the fact that the copy may have been completely coverless, I didn't know which issue it was and only determined that it was issue #40 about eight years ago:


(Not mine.)


Charlton had introduced Captain Atom in Space Adventures 33 cover dated March 1960. He went on to appear in Space Adventures #33-40 plus #42 cover dated October 1961. These early appearances of Captain Atom are brutally difficult to find in nice condition these days. I have only these two in my present day collection:


38



39




Charlton then brought Captain Atom back in Strange Suspense Stories 75 cover dated June 1965. The title was renamed Captain Atom with issue #78 and his appearances continued until issue #89 cover dated December 1967. I have all these later appearances. Here are scans of the first three:


75



76



77




All of the Captain Atom covers and stories pictured above were illustrated by Steve Ditko.

[Hepcat]

Beany and Cecil got their start as puppets in 1949 on the Time for Beany show that Bob Clampett produced for Paramount Pictures. From 1952 to 1955 Dell published seven Four Color Comics based on the Beany and Cecil puppet show:





Bob Clampett then converted Beany and Cecil into cartoon characters in 1959. CFPL-TV in London carried the Beany and Cecil cartoons for a year or two including the 1962-63 season. I watched them with delight.


Beany and Cecil Intro


Dell published five Beany and Cecil comics between 1962 and 1963. Sadly I have only two of these in my present day collection:







That's still two better than none of course, and I have the rest of my life to add more!

 

[Hepcat]

A certain day in late July 1963 proved pivotal in instilling a lifelong interest in comics within me. There was a convenience store called Ken's Variety at Wharncliffe Road and Elmwood Street in London four blocks from where we lived. It was right beside the Hyland Theatre which featured wonderful double bill kids' matinees on Saturdays for twenty cents! Ken's was a great store for kids stocking everything from penny candy to bubble gum cards, ice cream cones, bottles of pop from an ice water cooler, Krun-Chee Potato Chips, AMT car model kits and others, PEZ dispensers, CFL bobbing head dolls and Halloween masks. It was very much a destination place for me and I have fond memories of shopping for various treasures at Ken's to this very day. On one of my frequent visits to Ken's, I happened to check out the spinner rack and saw these comics in all their shiny glory:

















Now at the time I had set aside any comic buying for nearly a year because my heart had been broken late the previous summer when my older sister convinced my mother to throw out my small stack of comics because they were surely going to corrupt me for life. (She was right of course. They did.)  But there was no way I could resist the selection that was staring me in the face on the spinner rack that day. I had a pocket full of change and took the plunge back into four colour wonder. I bought the Aquaman, Flash and Justice League comics on the spot and returned a day or two later to buy the Atom and Wonder Woman ones. Within just over a week I'd bought them all.

In addition to the above comics, I picked up these among other DC superhero comics at Les' Variety (I think) just a block away from my house within a couple more weeks:


(Not mine.)




So that was it, game, set and match. I was well and truly hooked again. In fact I was so specifically taken by the Aquaman issue with Queen Mera's introduction that I took advantage of DC's kind offer and sent in the money for a two year subscription to Aquaman. And no, I wasn't daft enough to clip the coupon.

[Hepcat]

One of the house ads that appeared in most of the comics I was buying in the summer of 1963 was this one:





Well, yes! It went without saying that I absolutely, positively had to know the origins of the heroic Kid Flash and Elongated Man plus the dastardly villainous Mr. Element and Super Gorilla Grodd. 





I also had not been able to find the current issue of Green Lantern at either Ken's or Les' Variety stores since every store didn't necessarily get even one copy of every comic and of course the one copy could have been swiftly snapped up by another kid.





I "scoured" a whopping total of three or four different variety stores in my neighbourhood plus another three or four outlets downtown trying to find these two comics without any luck. For whatever reason I didn't think to devote an afternoon to riding my bike around to the other eighteen or so variety stores and drug stores that stocked comics in the square mile or so of my school district.

In late August though we went on a family trip by train to far off Toronto to visit relatives and to take in the Canadian National Exhibition which was a mega fair even by the standards of American state fairs:









To my dismay I didn't succeed in finding either the Flash Annual or the Green Lantern comic in Toronto although admittedly I only checked a couple of variety stores in the immediate High Park neighbourhood where our relatives lived. Oh well. C'est la vie. I have both comics in my present day collection anyway.

I did however pick up this nearly three month old gem that had been forgotten and was still on the spinner rack at one of the stores:





The other thing I very clearly remember from that train trip to Toronto was admiring one of the 1963 CFL coins that had been free inside a ten cent bag of either Krun-Chee or Humpty Dumpty Potato Chips that I'd managed to score at either the CN train station or from the vendor that came down the aisles inside the train itself with a metal basket of various goodies (including cigarettes, chips, chocolate bars and Jocko chocolate drink in cans). Here are some pictures of these coins from my present day collection:







I already had about five of these CFL coins and I wanted to collect both the CFL coins and the DC comics badly but my funds were very limited and I couldn't do both. The comics won out.

Nonetheless being a huge Canadian football fan I started pecking away at completing this 160 coin CFL set back in the early eighties. It took me until 2000 or so to get them all because the coins were made available in two series and the high numbers ended up being short printed. Worse yet, forty of the short prints seemed to be distributed only regionally so that only the Toronto Argonaut, Hamilton Tiger-Cat, Ottawa Rough Rider and Winnipeg Blue Bomber twenty player team sets were generally available in Ontario. As a further complexity, the coins available within Humpty Dumpty chips had bilingual English and French text on the back while the ones in Krun-Chee chips had English only text.

But I like the 1963 CFL coins so much that about ten years ago I decided to break my set up into two, one with unilingual English backs and one with bilingual backs so that I could keep on collecting these little treasures!


Unilingual





Bilingual

[Hepcat]

Aquaman 12 hit my mail box early in September shortly after our return from Toronto.





I was a bit miffed with it arriving folded in half down the middle though.  I also clearly remember acquiring these comics off newsstands by mid-September:





I remember buying the #9 at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind newsstand at the Covent Garden Market building in downtown London and trekking home with it. The excitement at my house otherwise that day was the selecting of a dress for my sister's prom.





This Flash cover just knocked me out when I first saw it on the bottom of the magazine stand at Les' Variety. Both the composition by legendary artist Carmine Infantino and the colours are fabulous. I didn't realize it at the time but Heat Wave would be the final villain to be inducted in what soon became known as the Flash's Rogues Gallery:





I also remember seeing this comic for the first time on the magazine stand at Les' Variety shortly thereafter. It was another in the series of wildly colourful eye-catching Justice League covers. Only as an adult though did I notice that Mike Sekowsky habitually drew Wonder Woman with a huge and not at all athletic looking butt.





Green Lantern, wow! Finally! And such a gorgeous cover by Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson. It remains one of my favourie comic covers of all time.





Wow! The two members of the Justice League of America who sadly did not have their own title featured teaming up on the cover of a comic. I was feverish with excitement! Mike M. from down the street had been pressing me to collect Dinky Toys with him but I knew my quarters and dimes would have to be reserved for more DC superhero comics.





I first saw Wonder Woman 142 downtown at the News Depot which together with Ken's Variety was one of my go-to places for Krun-Chee Potato Chips which frequently had great coin premiuks free inside. But Wonder Tot?! What in hell was editor/writer Robert Kanigher thinking to introduce and then repeatedly feature such an execrable character? Kanigher must have been a soft-headed new father. 

Plus a few more I clearly remember buying:









Well that was it, game, set and match! By this time I was well and truly hooked on DC superhero comics. And now here I am today, still a huge comic fan!

[Rex fury]

DC has an interesting take on the UM gang in the latest issue of Detective Comics:

https://www.cbr.com/batman-universal-monsters-calendar-man/

RF

[marsattacks666]

Here is one of my favorite comicbook series

[Hepcat]

I didn't realize it at the time but Heat Wave would be the final villain to be inducted in what soon became known as the Flash's Rogues Gallery:

Speaking of the Flash's Rogues Gallery, here's a skit I wrote up a few years ago (although admittedly you have to be a Silver Age Flash fan to get it):


A gathering of Flash's Rogues Gallery in the dining room of the Central City Jail circa 1965:




Weather Wizard: "You Piper are so pathetic. A whopping 32 issues four years and four months apart before you got a return appearance in The Flash!

Pied Piper: "Yeah, but I was in Justice League 14 in the interim though!"

Weather Wizard: "Fffffttttt!!!! You had nothing but a bit part so that hardly counts as a proper appearance. Worse yet you were just a lackey of Mister Memory, who himself turned out to be the mind wiped stooge of Professor Amos Fortune!"

Heat Wave: "Yeah, heeeee, heeee! Just the lackey of a mindless stooge!"

Pied Piper: "I'd be careful of breaching the subject of reappearances were I in your shoes, Wizard. I just looked through my collection of Flash comics and you didn't get a return engagement with the scarlet boy scout for a colossal 35 issues spanning four years and five months!"

Weather Wizard: "Did too! I had a whole story in Flash 130!"

Pied Piper: "Hah! You didn't even go up against the Flash though! You were beaten by a little kid and some two-bit superhero with stretching powers who wasn't even good enough to be a member of the Justice League."

Weather Wizard: "See! It was two against one!"

Pied Piper: "What did the Elongated Man have to stretch to put you down? His nose, his ear?"

Trickster: "Giggle! There's only one body part I want stretched."

Top: "Me I wouldn't need no secret potions either. That Sue babe of Dibny's could sure stretch it for me."

Weather Wizard: "I tell you, it wasn't fair! I was double teamed."

Pied Piper: "You couldn't even beat Aquaman or even Batman let alone the Flash. You're more pathetic than I could ever be."

Weather Wizard: "Am not!"

Heat Wave: "Well you're both beyond pathetic in my book."

Pied Piper: "Look who's talking! The johnny-come-lately who didn't even appear on the scene until I had three appearances under my belt!"

Captain Cold: "Yeah, the kids who were buying my first appearance in Showcase 8 in 1957 had all graduated to Playboy before hot head here arrived on the scene."

Weather Wizard: "Yeah, junior here wasn't even around when DC comics were still a dime."

Heat Wave: "You should talk! I still beat you onto a cover by five issues."

Weather Wizard: "Not true! I was there on the cover of #110. You just couldn't see me for the flood I was stirring up, that's all."

Captain Cold: "It was my appearance on the cover of The Flash 140 that made it an item on newsstands anyway."

Heat Wave: "Yeah sure, pops."

Captain Cold: "Speaking of which everybody knows I'm the greatest Flash villain of them all! I've been around since the Flash's second newsstand appearance way back in 1957 and I've plagued him ever since."

Mirror Master: "Well you got the plague part right anyway. I'm the one who got the first cover though, and it was for issue #105 the one that relaunched the series! None of you can come close to matching that."

Captain Cold: "Fffffttttt! You play with mirrors like a woman!"

Mirror Master: "Yeah well I still had two cover appearances under my belt before you got your first!"

Albert Desmond: "Can anybody tell me who I am today?"

Grodd: "All nonsense! Everybody knows that I'm the greatest Flash villain of them all!"

Mirror Master: "Hah! Your waistline may be the greatest, but you're nothing but a big hairy ape! You're so ugly that Julius didn't put you on a cover until your fifth appearance in issue #127."

Grodd: "Lies! I was on the cover of #115."

Mirror Master: "Doesn't count. You weren't your fat hairy self on that cover. Like I say, you were too ugly to get a cover yet."

Trickster: "Hey, who ate all the bananas?"

Abra Kadabra: "It was the overgrown ape again."

Top: "You're all pathetic. Except for the hairy ape and he doesn't count, all any of you losers ever did was rob banks and jewellery stores. I was going to blow up half the world in issue #122 until that meddlesome do-gooder interfered."

Trickster: "Could have, would have, should have!"

Top: "Huh?"

Trickster: "The world's all still here, isn't it? The point is you didn't get it done. The only thing you got done was a fast trip to the hoosegow."

Heat Wave: "Yeah! What a loser."

Albert Desmond: "But why am I here?"

Captain Boomerang: "It's elementary my dear Doctor. You've been a very nasty boy starting way back in your Showcase 13 and 14 appearances before the Flash even got his own title, so nasty in fact that most people haven't forgotten."

Weather Wizard: "Yeah, but despite his multiple IDs it took Desmond here a whopping 44 issues and six and a half years before he got himself onto a cover! Now that's really pathetic."

Professor Zoom: "Actually in defence of my sometime partner he was on the cover of the Flash Annual from the summer of 1963."

Pied Piper: "Annuals don't count though because they're just reprints. Everybody knows that."

Abra Kadabra: "I'm #1 though! My collection of The Flash ranks above any of yours in the CGC data base."

Heat Wave: "Huh? CGC? What's that?"

Abra Kadabra: "You wouldn't know. That's in the future. I've had the top ranked Flash collection at CGC since 6349."

Captain Boomerang: "Well that won't be for a few years anyway and I'll match my issues #117, 124 and 148 up against anybody's in the right here and now!"

Trickster: "Hmmmppphhfff! Nothing but your own appearances, if you can even call them that. Talk about pathetic. I don't know what's more pathetic, you or your comic collection."

Captain Boomerang: "Yeah well you've never done anything cooler than run across floating soap bubbles or ride around on a tricycle. Me though I sent Flash to the Moon and back!

Trickster: "Well why did you bring him back though?"

Heat Wave: "Yeah, that's what I'd like to know too. Why did you bring him back?"

Captain Boomerang: "Wasn't my fault.  I use boomerangs and they always come back."

Top: "Ffffttt!!!! A feeble excuse if I've ever heard one."

Professor Zoom: "Well I'm going to be badder than any of you saps, just you wait and see!"

Abra Kadabra: "Yeah, sure. What do you want from us? Applause?"

Professor Zoom: "Just wait I say. I'll show you the meaning of the word 'dastardly'!"

Top: "Is that true, Kadabra?"

Abra Kadabra: "Don't know. My comics are all sealed in plastic slabs so I haven't read any of them."

Captain Boomerang: "Huh?! But that doesn't make any sense. Why would you or anybody want comics you can't read?"

Abra Kadabra: "You'll have to wait 35 years before you understand."

Albert Desmond: "But I just wish I knew who I was this week."

Top: "Somebody here could certainly use some more electro-shock therapy."

Captain Boomerang: "Look who's talking. The failed half-a-world destroyer! Hey, who farted?"

Professor Zoom: "I think it was the hairy ape again."

Trickster: "Well that's my cue to run. Hey! Which one of you crooks stole my shoes?"

[geezer butler]

DC has an interesting take on the UM gang in the latest issue of Detective Comics:

https://www.cbr.com/batman-universal-monsters-calendar-man/

RF

That's very cool. I know the Universal Monsters made an appearance in the recent Gotham City Monsters series. I meant to post some picture, but think I forgot.