Daring Love #1, Gilmour Magazines (Sept/Oct 1953)
Look at that cover! Careful kids, you might start a fire!
It’s at moments like this that I wish I was a poet so that I could convey the power of love via my little undervalued comic book blog!
How many of us wrote poetry when we fell in love? I wrote poems! I remember when I was young a friend showing me a poem he’d written for a girl he fell in love with, the poem was terrible, marginally better than the drivel I was writing. I read it and said “she’ll melt when she reads this”. She did, it was written for her, by him. You gotta love love.
(For a wittier Valentine Spotlight check out my last year’s post).
This year for my Valentine’s Undervalued Spotlight I want to give you more than just love, I want to give you Daring Love!
Daring Love #1 features a cover by Bernard Baily. Baily is most famous for drawing the Spectre in More Fun Comics #52, for co-creating the Hourman in Adventure Comics #48 and for drawing a little feature called Tex Thomson which happened to be published in Action Comics #1. Bernie sure likes dropping names doesn’t he.
Daring Love #1 offers up some great reading for only a dime including a raunchy romp called “Dear John”, a little 2 page text piece with the must read title “Love… and Obey!”, two 6 page stories titled “My Sister’s Keeper” and “Career Girl” and most importantly a 6 page story titled “Paper Romance” that happens to be Spider-Man co-creator and industry giant Steve Ditko’s 1st published artwork.
Apparently it took us until the 1980s to even figure out that this was Ditko’s 1st published work. I’ve always liked collecting books that were the 1st for famous creators as is evident here.
A CGC 5.0 copy of Daring Love #1 sold last month for $900, that’s over 3 times guide!
There are only 6 CGC graded and the Overstreet guide does list the book as Scarce so happy hunting and Happy Valentine’s Day.
The 42nd edition of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide shows $321/$680/$1165/$1650 as the 6.0/8.0/9.0/9.2 price splits.
Strengths that make this comic book a good long-term investment are:
- 1st published Steve Ditko story
- Scarce 1950’s #1 issue
- It’s a romance comic and we know all romance comics are undervalued
Sorry Nestor, sorry Mike, I think I picked a book tougher than the one you guys called me out on last time. Lets blame it on love.
We’ll call it Tough Love. Congrats on the Spotlight’s 150th post.
Id suggest Walt has “Lofty expectations”