Comic Book Collecting

[horrorhunter]

More of my Fantastic Four run:

39-41


42-44


45-47


Issue 45 is the first Inhumans. Those guys & gals will be showing up in the MCU. Hopefully they will be done justice after the crappy TV series. Black Bolt, leader of the Inhumans, is part of the Illuminati along with Reed Richards, Namor, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, and Prof. Xavier of the X-Men.

[Hepcat]

Anybody have a favorite golden age story?  Of all the choices out there I think mine is Young Allies 4. The story's villain is the Red Skull, Cap and the torch make guest appearances, while the kids ride their bikes to the scene of the crime! It's a mixture of superhero, kid gang , and horror genres. I really enjoy it.

Truthfully I hate the genre of superhero war comics that Timely/Marvel published in the Golden Age. As if war was a "glorious fun adventure suitable for kids". (Yes DC did it too with Simon & Kirby's Boy Commandos but Timely published a lot more such comics.) The whole underlying idea of featuring kids in war comics is revolting.

[Hepcat]

Nice collections of Gorgo and Conan guys. In the Gorgo books I always enjoy Ditko's depiction of divers. While George Evans probably came the closest to drawing hard hat gear accurately (Piracy 7), Ditko had a way with underwater scenes that are just awesome to look at.

The depictions of underwater scenes and skin divers that I like the best are by Russ Heath. Eight of my favourite ten Sea Devils covers are pencilled by Russ Heath and given wash tone inks by Jack Adler. The other two, #11 and 13, are pencilled by Irv Novick and inked by Jack Adler. Here are the scans:

[Sir Masksalot]

Sea Devils looks like my kind of series. Bring on the sea monsters! "Octopus Man" is crazy cool.

I had no idea that my misfortune was a common thing, Hepcat. The only childhood comics I still have in
any significant quantity are Peanuts books by Schulz. Mine number in the dozens, both soft and hard
cover plus first editions and peperbacks. My crusading Mom must've considered them innocuous enough
to remain.

Of latter day editions, these currently occupy my library >







I've had this volume since the '70s but definitely wouldn't want her as my girlfriend.
She got herself into more trouble than any dozen of us could ever get her out of >

[Mike...In 3-D!]

Issue 45 is the first Inhumans. Those guys & gals will be showing up in the MCU. Hopefully they will be done justice after the crappy TV series. Black Bolt, leader of the Inhumans, is part of the Illuminati along with Reed Richards, Namor, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, and Prof. Xavier of the X-Men.

Awesome run! I'm a big Sub-Mariner fan, so early FF issues are drizzled into my collection as well. Those really early silver age issues are so bonkers and fun to read.

[Hepcat]

I had no idea that my misfortune was a common thing, Hepcat. The only childhood comics I still have in any significant quantity are Peanuts books by Schulz. Mine number in the dozens, both soft and hard cover plus first editions and peperbacks. My crusading Mom must've considered them innocuous enough to remain.

Have you ever asked your mother what possessed her at the time? I have indeed asked my older sister.

[Rex fury]

The depictions of underwater scenes and skin divers that I like the best are by Russ Heath.
Hep, I couldn't agree with you more that Russ Heath did a great job on the Sea Devils. That series, and The Challengers Of The Unknown are my two favorite Silver Age series from DC. Showcase 3 is another beautiful book. Thinking about the Sea Devils reminded me of the several stories that had the artist featured as a character in the story. Do you recall those or why that happened?

I tried to keep up with the recent auction for a page of Heath frogman art, but decided I needed a new dive computer more ( lol)!
RF

PS- in an earlier post I mentioned the Spidey comic attachment on Esquire magazine. That should have been EYE magazine. My bad.

[horrorhunter]

Awesome run! I'm a big Sub-Mariner fan, so early FF issues are drizzled into my collection as well. Those really early silver age issues are so bonkers and fun to read.

Yeah, I grew up loving the FF. Stan Lee made Marvel successful by a combination of entertaining writing and making it seem like the readers were part of the family. Stan, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, and others, created a story universe so enjoyable that it serves as inspiration for creators decades later, and has resulted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe taking the world by storm. I enjoy all comics from the '70s and before, but Silver/Bronze Marvel still ranks as high as any for me.

[horrorhunter]

My copies of Fantastic Four #s 48-50 (the Galactus Trilogy):



Issue 48 features the first Silver Surfer, and #49 is the first full Galactus appearance. These books have been highly sought after by collectors for years. Issues 48 and 49 have blown up in price in the last couple of years. Galactus is planned to be the next Big Bad in the MCU just as Thanos was in The Infinity Saga. Collectors seem to be scrambling to get their copies before prices get too ridiculous (which is driving prices to the ridiculous- funny how that works  ). I've always loved the Silver Surfer and I'm glad I bought these issues several years ago when they were affordable. Honestly, as much as I love this stuff, I just don't think I would own some of these books if I didn't already have them. I'm just not much into dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars per issue for comics. With most very expensive books I don't already own I'll probably make do with reprints. There are still lots of non-keys I need that will keep me busy buying for years at $5-$20 each. 

[Hepcat]

Hep, I couldn't agree with you more that Russ Heath did a great job on the Sea Devils. That series, and The Challengers Of The Unknown are my two favorite Silver Age series from DC. Showcase 3 is another beautiful book. Thinking about the Sea Devils reminded me of the several stories that had the artist featured as a character in the story. Do you recall those or why that happened?

You're thinking of issue #13-16 where the artists hired by the Sea Devils to illustrate their adventures appeared conversing with the Sea Devils. Here's the list:

13 - Joe Kubert, Gene Colan and Ross Andru with Mike Esposito
14 - Irv Novick
15 - Jack Abel
16 - Irv Novick

You see by early 1963 Russ Heath was getting too busy illustrating DC war comics and backing up Will Elder on Playboy's Little Annie Fanny strip on which he worked right from the Playboy Mansion in Chicago with free room, board and girls included. Heath could not fulfill all his obligations on the Sea Devils title as well so DC held a contest in the pages of Sea Devils to find a new regular artist for the title.

So who did DC end up choosing beginning with issue #16? Howard Purcell who was neither part of the contest nor nearly as good on the title as Joe Kubert, Gene Colan or Irv Novick who was the penciller on covers #11 and #13 above. Inexplicable.

[geezer butler]

Impressive collections! Keep the images coming.

[horrorhunter]

Here's a (somewhat blurry) old scan of my Savage Tales #1 featuring the first appearance of Marvel's Man-Thing.



The cover is a painting by John Buscema, which was unusual since he was a mainstay as penciler for Marvel.

Savage Tales #1 was a 1-shot for awhile, then the series was continued a few months later and ran a dozen issues featuring mostly Conan and Ka-Zar stories. Neal Adams did some spectacular covers for the run. This issue set the tone for Marvel's excellent line of black & white magazines which ran through 1975 focusing on monster characters. Marvel's attempt to monopolize the magazine racks in the mid '70s squeezed out some of the competition (like the great Skywald monster mags), and ultimately caused an over-saturation which ended even the Marvel titles (distributed by Curtis). Warren survived to the early '80s, as well as Myron Fass' Eerie Pubs (killing Eerie Pubs off was like trying to punch out a giant rat barehanded...tough). Another mag spawned by Savage Tales, Marvel's own Savage Sword Of Conan, survived as well, and thrived to outlast them all to issue #235.

[horrorhunter]

My House Of Secrets #92:



This issue is most significant for being the first appearance of Swamp Thing, but since I'm a huge Bernie Wrightson fan it's also very important for his artwork and his iconic cover modeled for by Weezy Jones (Louise Jones Simonson). Bernie was friends with Weezy and her husband at the time, Jeff Jones. They, and Bruce Jones and Mike Kaluta all hung out and worked on comics together in New York. It's just a cool snapshot of future comic book gods as relatively unknown youngsters scrounging out a living doing comics for DC and Marvel (and later Warren). If I had a Wayback Machine I would go back and hang out with those guys, and talk drawing and monsters with Bernie and the gang.

[Hepcat]

Here are pics of some of my Turok, Son Of Stone issues:

I grew up a Monster Kid and a Dino Kid. I bought many Turoks back in the mid to late '60s.... Those all got read to death but I never lost my love for dinosaur comics, especially Turok, so a few years ago I set about completing the run. I love those Dell/Gold Key painted covers.

I agree! Those Turok covers were magnificent.

Here are scans of my Dell Turok comics:

13



18



19



26



28



29

[Rex fury]

Hep, thanks for the info on Russ Heath. I'd forgotten all about his Playboy exploits ( shows I'm really getting old) and didn't connect that with the rotating artist stories in Sea Devils.

Speaking of growing old I recently bought  copies of FF 129 & 130 from EBay. I thought they were issues I'd either missed, or sold at some point. Well turns out I had both- just stored them in another long box!

I can relate to losing great stuff to overpowering adults as a kid, too. My Second Grade teacher took a copy of a Famous Monsters magazine from me ( she thought it was inappropriate for school) and never gave it back, sigh....Another kid had brought a copy of the Woodstock album to play in his music class. The music teacher literally broke the record because he was offended by Jimmy Hendrix rendition of the Star  Spangled Banner! Good times in 1960's middle America...

Savage Tales 1 is a fun book, but kinda weird too. John Romita's  story comes to mind.

RF