Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
This past Wednesday saw the ending of a ten-day auction of Canadian comics related material on the internationalcollectiblesexchange ebay web page. This time there were over 200 items listed, more than twice that of last year’s inaugural Canadiana auction and,…
Our virtual two-day symposium on Canadian comics: “80 Years and Beyond” seems to have been a proper success—especially for an inaugural effort. We had over 160 people register, and all the sessions were eclectic, engaging, and informative. The sessions brought…
I’m very excited about our upcoming auction of Canadian comics and related material. As far as I know, this is the first auction solely focusing on Canadian comics ever, and it is meant to be part of the events commemorating…
First of all, best holiday wishes to everybody. Here is a Christmas-themed cover from the December 1935 issue of Montreal’s La Revue Moderne by war-time comics artist Oscar Schlienger done half-a-dozen years before he began working in comics. What a…
As many of you know, this column began seven years ago as part of my attempt to focus a newly minted retirement on something both interesting and challenging, albeit perhaps trivial in comparison to the struggles we all face daily…
Christmas is just a week away and the eye-of-the-storm peacefulness and sentiment of the coming Christmas eve and Christmas day, rather than its stressful bustle and rabid commerce, begin to rope me in. This holiday season, I’ve been wistfully thinking…
The story of the past derives from documents and memory. These documents can be artifacts and phenomena such as the petrified thigh bone of a brontosaurus or the distinct geological layer of iridium that corresponds to the impact of a…
I remember Gerry Lazare telling me that it took Fred Kelly over a year of having his art repeatedly critiqued and rejected by Bell Features’ Art Director Adrian Dingle before Dingle allowed one of Kelly’s stories to be published. Well,…
One-shots are outliers in this wonderful hobby of ours and there are many reasons for their existence. Some are compendiums that gather together a number of features around a given character or theme. Some are ash-cans that are most often…
Collectors and comic aficionados are quick to knock Canadian war-time black-and-white comics to the lower rungs of the comic book quality ladder and, of the four main Canadian comic book publishers, Anglo-American comic books are seen to occupy the lowest…
Having put Heroes of the Home Front and the first edition of the WECA Comic Book Price Guide to bed last summer and having the fall and winter to relax from the scramble of getting these two projects together and…
The Comic Link auctions have been, perhaps, the primary source for obtaining Canadian wartime comics (WECA comics) over the last half-dozen years. 2017 offered up a comparative glut of these hard-to-find books with just over 180 of them being made…
Let me put forward an analogy that, I think, sort of explains the nature of the four main Canadian WECA comic book publishers. If you remember, these four are Anglo-American and Bell Features—both based in Toronto, Maple Leaf Publishing based…
I start with the preemptive apology acknowledging that this column will be mainly a shameless (but red-faced) self-promotion. For me this has been the “Summer of the Book.” Finished printed copies of my Heroes of the Home Front book arrived…
News I was at my friend Bob MacMillan’s place last week and he showed me two Colossal Comics with Adrian Dingle covers I had not seen before. These do not have war-themed images like the three covers we are familiar…
News Winter’s finally behind us and let’s see where we’re at. I’ve come to the very end of working on the finishing touches of my Heroes of the Home Front book and it’s sitting at about 330 pretty cool pages.…
I am not a person who enjoys the sombre cocooning that winter imposes on us pensioned comic geeks–and this year we are having a real, old-fashioned winter. You young whippersnappers might call this an Arctic Vortex, but to those of…
Well, the total hasn’t moved much in this second week and it appears that, at this pace, we’ll fall short of our $25,000 goal. This would mean that we’d be back at square one with getting this book printed and…
Ready to kick off the Kickstarter for my Book on the Bell Features artists called Heroes of the Home Front on or about Labour Day and was fortunate enough to get a write up by Jeff Mahoney in the local…
Edward Albert Bushell was probably born in 1917 and probably in B.C. We don’t know much about him except for the comic book work he did for Maple Leaf Publications in Vancouver during the Second World War. His first work…