Category Collecting Community

John Bell

  John Bell is probably best known to you for his published work on Canadian comics. He was kind enough to take the time to answer a number of questions I sent him with a view to publishing his responses…

Read MoreJohn Bell

Collecting

As a collector of various things for more than 50 years and, specifically, as a collector of Canadian war-time comics for the last two years or so, I have had pause to step outside myself and take an up high and a little to the side look at myself and this activity, pastime, or, some (specifically wives) would say, a kind of pathology, that has echoed in us down through history. With Fan Expo looming, in this column I want to examine what has put the wind in my collecting sails over this past half century and hope that it makes some sense at one point or another.
Read MoreCollecting

Undervalued Spotlight #210

The Spotlight format only allows passing references and hopefully some insightful tidbits sprinkled here and there. In other words I have to pick a book worthy of a birthday tribute to the Man. I’ve picked Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #133 because this book sticks out among the books that stick out, it represents Jack Kirby embarking on the most ambitious project of his career.
Read MoreUndervalued Spotlight #210

Blacklights

While some evidence of restoration can be revealed by viewing a book in natural daylight and using a magnification loupe, my favourite tool in detecting restoration (both amateur and professional) is my UVA blacklight.
Read MoreBlacklights

Harry Brunt

Harry Joseph Brunt was born on Nov. 22, 1918 in Chicago but his family seems to have settled in the Toronto-Hamilton area a few years after he was born. Brunt started to work for Bell features as one of its artists while he was in his mid-twenties around the Christmas season of 1943. The nature of his contribution to these comics consisted of two or three page featurettes that were cartoony and goofy and invariably had an alliterative name.
Read MoreHarry Brunt

Slam-Bang 7

This week I want to talk about a significant comic from the late WECA period, Slam-Bang Comics No. 7, with a cover date of May, 1946. (Jim Finlay informs me that his indicia for this issue has the date July, 1946 pencilled in, maybe with the May date whited out? Anybody else have a copy they could check?) It took the cover banner from Fawcett’s short live run of a same titled series of 7 issues from 1940, but why it began in Canada with an initial number 7 is still a mystery. Perhaps it was some sort of nod or licensing response to the Fawcett run, but who knows?
Read MoreSlam-Bang 7

TAS: Masks, Calories, and Beavers

In late 1944, Steele seemed to have come up with the idea of doing cut-out masks of a few of the lead Bell characters on the inside covers of some of the Bell Features books. We modern collectors look back somewhat aghast on this because, just like Bell’s placement of cut-out coupons in similar locations, it must have led to wanton disfigurement of many of these books, but such were the ways of the world back then towards something that was seen as ultimately disposable and easily remaindered. Steele signed these "fathead" portraits with his shortened monogram "TAS."
Read MoreTAS: Masks, Calories, and Beavers

Undervalued Spotlight #207

Legends #3, DC Comics, January 1987. The Suicide Squad made its first appearance back in September 1959 in Brave and the Bold #25. BB #25 is a great comic to own and very undervalued at its 9.2 guide value of $1,800. The book is a tough find though, it rarely comes up for auction so this week, rather than send you out on a mission impossible, I thought I’d lighten it up and send you after a book with potentially way more upside, at the very least it will be much easier, much more fun and much much cheaper to hunt down.
Read MoreUndervalued Spotlight #207

Canada’s Own Comics: a WECA database

Today is the launch day of our modest attempt to set up an online database of Canadian comic books from the WECA period (1941-46), better known to collectors as The Canadian Whites, at canadasowncomics.com. We were approached early on in our project to avoid the difficulty of creating an online index of these comics from scratch and simply upload our information to the Grand Comics Database. However, we felt it of utmost importance that the first real indexing of these comics be based in Canada. I’m sure that the information we put up there (and remember that this is the first real setting down of comprehensive data about a unique, rare, and arcane set of comic books) will often have holes and need amendment and tweaking, but this first effort is important. I’m sure that a lot of our information will be mined by sites such as the Grand Comics Database, I just hope that whoever ends up using our findings as published material will link back to our site or, at least, credit their find appropriately.
Read MoreCanada’s Own Comics: a WECA database