It was a beautiful spring morning this past Friday April 11th, perfect weather for me to go out on the back deck and enjoy some warm sunshine and hot coffee. The truth is I was a bit early with the deck furniture this year, I blame wishful thinking.
We added a new consignor’s stuff to the “going to eBay auction” stash and this gentleman has a lot of great Pre Code War books in his collection, the books come from multiple publishers including Standard, Atlas and DC. It was out of his books that I snagged our Cover of the Week. Upon close inspection This is War #7 turns out to be quite a nasty cover, pencil credits go to Rocco Mastroserio. I’m amazing at how busy the War titles were during the Korean War, lots of publishers jumped into this obviously well selling genre, a lot of the covers were also a lot nastier than the WWII covers of a decade prior.
I know I’ve asked this question before but how on earth did the Patch King Department make any money? You get 20 patches for $1, someone had to make the patches, they had to be shipped to the warehouse, they had to be stored in the warehouse, there were expenses! Hey, at least the target audience seemed to fit, but who knows, maybe this Army Patch ad ran in some Romance titles at the time?? Looked like a tough business to be in.
Our Splash Page of the Week comes from Detective Comics #183, May 1952, and features the art of Dick Sprang though its signed off as Bob Kane, thank the lord for comics.org. I wonder when ghosting artists started? Was it in the Eisner workshops of the late 30s? If an artist was popular were other artists asked to draw in a similar fashion? I know this was a thing for Marvel in the 60s and 70s where artists were expected to draw “the Marvel Way”. Still, it makes me wonder how what much ghosting was going on in the Golden Age of comics. Were there artist nobody could ghost for? Frazetta, Baker? Remember these were times when it was just a hand a and a pencil.
Last night closed out another of our weekly icecollectibles Ebay auctions, I was impressed with how well this stunning copy of X-Men #95 did, it closed at $480 USD which is very strong for an ungraded book.
that is VERY strong for an ungraded #95! I upgraded my copy to a VF/NM in the boom and it cost me $200us – so that’s quite a hike!
Speaking of books after #94 that deserve respect:
Underrated book: X-Men #96 1st Moira McTaggart – those of us that read the generational change that was Powers/House of X have an understanding of why this should be much bigger than it is…plus..a Scottish housekeeper who goes from Hello to wielding an M-16 within a few pages of her introduction – how can you not love this character!
Spider, #96 is a great book, and to boot, it might be the best cover of the early lot.
Walt, today was a much better Deck Day…hope you got to enjoy it a little (Mon April 14th) 🙂