WECA Worth

My question is, does the scarcity of WECA comics put them in a universe of their own when it comes to determining their fair market value? These books are still somewhat impenetrable for the majority of collectors and maybe an accurate price guide can’t be set down because of the lack of available sales data. I don’t subscribe to GPA so I don’t know if there is any data on sales of some of the slabbed WECA books, but so far this year I have seen about 130 of these books change hands on line, but this unusually high number of WECA books made available in a single year was chiefly due to the 100 or so books offered in the February and March ComicLink (CLINK) auctions. The usual number of books exchanged on line per year is probably below 50. I suspect that most WECA books never reach the online market and are exchanged between collectors, or dealers and collectors hand to hand—or they are discovered when collections come to light from across the country when a collector digs extra hard and uncovers one.
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Marvelous Anglo-American

In the summer of that year Anglo-American put out Freelance Comics No. 1 (July/August) and then just after that Grand Slam Comics No. 1 (Sept./Oct.) and then Three Aces Comics No. 1 (Nov./Dec. 1941). This rounded off that first year for Anglo-American with all original Canadian material and characters such as Freelance, The Crusaders, Pat the Air Cadet, and Don Shield. At this point, however, Anglo-American decided to veer off this Canadian path and contract with Fawcett in the States, not to reprint their superhero stories, but to use their scripts for redraws. Of course, government acts prevented them from reprinting American comics outright (reprints weren’t really legalized until the war was over) in Canada, but not from drawing their own versions of the Fawcett scripted stories.
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1st Brief Appearance Vs. 1st Full Appearance: Which Is Better?

If we only look at the Wolverine example, we would assume that the value of a character's first full appearance always trumps the value of the first brief appearance. It would stand to reason that a comic book reader gets more of the character in the first full appearance issue and this would increase more buying demand (and value) for the first full appearance issue. However, as I sifted through and compared first brief appearance and first full appearance values in this year's guide, I found that this wasn’t always the case. Here are examples of comics showing both cases: examples where the first brief appearance issue is more valuable, and examples where the first full appearance issue is the more valuable of the two.
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Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck “The Son of the Sun” The Don Rosa Library Vol 1

I never read any of the Carl Barks or Don Rosa duck comics until relatively recently when Fantagraphics began releasing collected editions. I was, however, a big fan of the TV show Ducktales (which was based upon Barks and Rosa's works) and thus was already familiar with many of the denizens of Duckburg. Continuing in its tradition of bringing the best of Donald and Uncle Scrooge to the masses, Fantagraphics has released the first volume in the Don Rosa library.
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Marvel 1960s Annuals: Part One, Fantastic Four

One of my personal favourite genres of comic books that I like to collect is the big square bound super-hero annuals. Twice the size and price of a regular comic, these books only came out once a year and were packed with pin-ups, some classic reprints, and usually a crackling good original story. The original stories quite often took place outside the current storylines taking place in the title, but had a place in the character or groups long term continuity. There were surprisingly few made – I count 18 in the sixties and some characters and groups had none at all. I did not include war, romance, westerns, or re-print annuals in this first series but may get to them at a later date.
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Birthdays

This third week in September is quite a significant week for WECA book fans. This past Saturday night I attended the Shuster Awards for the first time and served as a presenter for the induction of former Hamiltonian Edmond Good into the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame. He and publisher of Bell Features books, Cy Bell, were the two WECA era inductees this year. In the past few years it has we have inducted two creators from the Canadian Golden Age and one more recent creator—this year well deserving Ty Templeton. One oversight that I think needs to be corrected is that a female WECA artist has yet to be inducted (top of my list is Doris Slater with Shirley Fortune not too far behind). You can see all the winners at the Shusters web site and read Scott VanderPloeg’s report here.
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2014 Joe Shuster Awards

The 2014 Joe Shuster Awards took place Saturday September 20th in Toronto. I previously posted the Harry Kremer Retailer Award winner but here is the full list with pictures and audio courtesy of Jamie Coville. Anthony Falcone, Ivan Kocmarek and myself presented awards and represented Comic Book Daily.
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