Category Collecting Community

Name-It Comics

By the time Name-It Comics came out, Maple Leaf’s first title, and Canada’s first comic book, Better Comics had already had eight issues out and its second title, Lucky Comics (at that time known as “Union Jack – Lucky Comics”) had had half that. The other title that came out concurrently with Name-It Comics was Bing Bang Comics with its lead and cover feature being the adolescent, Denis the Menace type of trouble maker, Pinky.

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Comics as Emotional Assets

In a recent Financial Analysts Journal article authors Elroy Dimson and Christophe Spaenjers provide an excellent analysis of the historical performance of artwork, stamps, and antique violins. The authors label these collectibles “emotional assets.” No, the authors did not include comic books in their study. However, the article offered a few interesting insights that apply to us comic book collectors.

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Bus Griffiths

  On the front cover of Canada’s first comic book, Better Comics No. 1 (March, 1941), Vancouver’s Maple Leaf Publications chooses a stylized maple leaf containing the words “Canada’s Own” to be its logo. These words broadcast the mission mandate…

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Undervalued Spotlight #203

Daredevil #53, Marvel Comics, (June 1969). When I think of Daredevil comics to invest in I usually don’t go back to the sixties in my search. The Daredevil we know now was really born, like the X-Men in the bronze age of comics. The Black Widow team-ups, Death Stalker (formerly, The Exterminator), Bullseye, Elektra, and the Kingpin weren’t part of his life back then. Neither was Frank Miller...

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Clayton Dexter

Few people know, however, that Clayton Dexter is a pseudonym for Howard Buchanan Cowan; thanks to Howard’s son Glen for this information and other biographical details. He was born in 1918 in Toronto to a well-known Dentist Father, William A. Cowan, who practiced on Bloor Street. Howard received some art training at Humberside College and after graduating in 1939 wanted to pursue further art studies but received no support from his father who seemed not to see much of a future in this and ideally wanted his son to become a dentist.

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Joseph Hillenbrand

I’ve already discussed the work of Sid Barron, one of Educational Projects main artists, elsewhere and in this post I’d like to look at another, Joseph Hillenbrand, even though there is little information available about him apart from the comic book work he left behind.

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Undervalued Spotlight #202

Jungle Action #6, Marvel Comics, September 1973. Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966) featured the 1st appearance of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's the Black Panther (T’Challa), comicdom’s 1st African American super hero. The Black Panther followed comicdom’s 1st African American hero Lobo, D.J. Arneson’s creation published by Dell Comics a year earlier, click here for my Lobo post.

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Bell Cover Stars

For this post let’s stick to the Bell heroes as they appeared on the cover of six of the seven titles; we’ve got to make an exception of The Funny Comics because it featured one central character, Dizzy Don, who got every cover appearance for the 20 issue run with Bell. Also, the first 13 issues of Commando Comics feature generic soldier covers as one would expect and there are a couple of more generic soldier covers in the runs of the other titles (e.g., Dime 18 and 19, Wow 21). So let’s just look at the covers for the runs of Wow, Triumph, Dime, Active, and Joke Comics and see which characters are most featured on their covers.

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Tremblay meets Lazare

This makes me think that the only way to get a group of truly Canadian superheroes again is to follow that first and tested pattern: ban all foreign comics from entering the country, then we’d have a captive audience and a bunch of publishers dedicated to producing a set of characters and books for these Canadian readers that could really stand out as something different.

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Undervalued Spotlight #201

Marvel Premiere #47, Marvel Comics, April 1979. This comic features the 1st appearance of the 2nd Ant-Man (Scott Lang).

Yeah, sure, measured against the Overstreet Price Guide’s assessment of $35 for a 9.2 grade this is an obvious pick. Marvel Premiere #47 has certainly grown hot over the past year and as of this post is getting about $120 for graded 9.2 copies and $190 for graded 9.4s.

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Mash-up

Sometimes people doing the kind of thing I am doing for this column get called “comic book historians.” I don’t like the term. The word “historian” has academic connotations and presuppositions and the sense of being an authority that I don’t wish to take on as a mantle. People who do “history” bring to bear a number of disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, ethnology, economic theory, religion, etc., on a particular event or series of events to offer their “take” on them. They then propose an explanation for how these events came to be and/or what resulted from these events. This is definitely not what I am doing. Besides how can comic books even have a “history” yet? They are not even a hundred years old.

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Undervalued Spotlight #199

Dell Giant #48, Dell Comics, July 1961. Dell Giant #48 is also known as Flintstones #1 and represents the 1st comic book appearance for the gang from Bedrock.

Don't you love it when you go through a box of comics you haven't gone through in years and end up finding little gems you forgot you even had. That's what happened to me with this book, as soon as I pulled it out I said "they that's Flintstones #1"! I've always loved this comic probably because I've always been a Flintstones fan.

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