Undervalued Spotlight #222
Avengers #93, Marvel Comics, (November 1971) Recently I spent a good whack of money on a nice little pile of raw books. I had to pay a hefty premium for some of the hotter books like Fantastic Four #52 and…
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Category Collecting Community
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The Collector
Another stunning collection of translated Sergio Toppi material, The Collector is a compelling and beautiful read.
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ComicLink Fall Featured Auction 2014 Original Art
The ComicLink Fall Featured Auction 2014 Original Art session ended last night. There was a large amount of items, over 650, and Featured Auctions are supposed to only have art expected to fetch $500 or more. A lot of great material was sold with some big dollars for the usual suspects. As always let's take a look at five pieces that are on the lower end of the spectrum, or as we art buyers like to think affordable.
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Auction Highlights #87
Comic Link Fall Featured Auction The comic book portion of ComicLink’s Fall Featured Auction ended Wednesday December 3rd and there were some very interesting results. To say that the market is hot would be an understatement! So many books set…
Your New World
There are very few comic books that are truly scary and cause those fine hairs on the back of my neck to stand to attention but here’s one that’s a Canadian WECA book. In the spring of 1942 a strange…
Review | The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
A different kind of Lovecraft tale skillfully adapted by I.N.J. Culbard, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is a worthy addition to this line of graphic works.
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Undervalued Spotlight #221
X-Force #11, Marvel Comics, June 1992 “Is it safe”? Remember than line in the old Marathon Man movie from the 1970s? Where Sir Lawrence Olivier is torturing Dustin Hoffman with some dental hooks? I found myself asking the same question…
Frederick Griffin
Text stories, a whole bunch of words and a couple of pictures; they were probably the most skipped-over part of any WECA comic they appeared in. Though they didn’t appear in every war-time Bell Features comic book, they did appear…
Undervalued Spotlight #220
Secret Origins #1, DC Comics, June 1961 We’re going to the bullpen and calling in the trusty right hander Mike Huddleston to post this week’s Spotlight pick. Mike is known for his sliders but can throw you a good curve now and…
First Aquaman / Arrow Gets $38,837.50
Heritage Auctions had a whole pile of strong comics finish at auction yesterday, Wednesday November the 20th. There was an Action Comics #1 graded CGC 3.0 that realized $310,700. This is a disappointing result coming on the heels of the big…
WECA Ephemera: Crests, Transfers, and Paint Books!
Along with publishing the comic books themselves, our main four WECA publishers also put out a number of additional materials for kids of the time that is also eminently collectible and in this week’s column I’d like to draw attention…
Undervalued Spotlight #219
Tessie the Typist #20, Marvel Comics, February 1949 Recently I was tidying up my comic piles when I stumbled upon a low grade, incomplete copy of this gem. What an absolutely amazing cover! My initial reaction was the typical one,…
WECA’s Final Issues
Those last few months of 1946, those last few months of the WECA period, and what happened to each of the titles that were still being put out are still very murky. Not one of the issues that we now…
Undervalued Spotlight #218
World’s Finest Comics #3, DC Comics, Fall 1941 Two separate incidences led me to zero in on this book. First was the strong result realized by Wonder Woman #6 in a recent ComicLink auction and second was the strong results…
Citren, Feature and Classics Comics
When we think of Canadian war-time comic publishing companies, we usually think of the “Big Four”: Maple Leaf Publications, Anglo-American Publications, Bell Features, and Educational Projects with Adrian Dingle’s Hillborough Studio run of Triumph-Adventure Comics appended to Cy Bell’s books.…
Undervalued Spotlight #217
Amazing Spider-Man #365, Marvel Comics, August 1992 This week I’m featuring a comic that many collectors of my generation tend to overlook. It’s also a book not high up the want lists of younger collectors. I think we’ve got Amazing…
Robin Hood
For me those comics that so many people affectionately call the “Canadian Whites” fall into a specific window whose most convenient frame is a single run of comics: Robin Hood Comics Vol. 1 No. 1 (March, 1941) to Robin Hood Comics Vol. 3 No. 34 (Dec. 1946-Jan. 1947). This is what II'vecome to term the WECA era because it was initiated by the War Exchange Conservation Act (WECA) passed Dec. 6, 1940 and came to an end as the provisions of this Act were repealed.
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Undervalued Spotlight #216
Nova #4, Marvel Comics, December 1976 For this week’s Undervalued Spotlight I’d like to go with a book that gives us a new villain, has great eye appeal, won’t break the budget and tracking one down won’t be like finding…
Three Firsts
In this post I want to discuss three WECA firsts starting with a curiosity I take to be one of the first “horror type” stories in comics. “Grim Tales” was a brief two-story run in Wow Comics No. 12 (Jan.-Feb. 1943) and No. 13 (March-April 1943) by Don McKague (my dates for Bell books are all extrapolated estimates, since they stopped listing them in the indicia after the first early issues of their titles). For me, these two stories foreshadow the first true horror comics of the late forties and the horror boom that started with E. C. comics in 1950.
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Undervalued Spotlight #215
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2, Marvel Comics, 1965 Mike Huddleston’s great post on the Fantastic Four Annuals got me to thinking how much we neglect Annuals. Is it that Annuals reprint stories collectors already have? That’s probably a big part of…