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| Comic Book Collection |
of a
penny or two can increase in value 1000% and sometimes even more. but few
comic collectors are in the hobby for gain; they collect comics for fun and
would not part with a favourite issue or rare number for twice the top prices
paid at auction o
There is something special and quite personal about the look and even
feel of a favourite comic, which may mean more to just one ex-reader A comic is
not merely a bundle of folded paper printed with pictures: it sums up the age
in which it was produced and it summons up the very moment in which it was
first read.
Pure nostalgia is the prime reason . why Comic Book Collection and the art of the comic is being appreciated for
the comedy and adventure it portrays, those who collect comics from an artistic
or historic perspective are thoroughly outnumbered by the happy nostalgics. It
is for this reason that fashions in comic collecting come and go.
In the 1930s,
when story-paper collecting was the prime vogue, those few specialists sought
the early Victorian comics of their youth, the Comic
Cuts and Funny Wonders they had bought
with their Saturday ha'penny.
In the 1940s the collecting craze moved into twenties
publications, when coloured comics like Puck were
at their peak. In the fifties it was the thirties that were all the rage, the
great Golden Age of British Comics, when Mickey Mouse Weekly was born and the
Scottish publisher DC Thomson hatched the Dandy
and Beano.
The Dandy
comic is one of the longest-lived comics to date and passed its 2000th issue on
22 March 1980. Its famous characters include Korky the Cat and Desperate Dan.
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| Comic Book Collection |
Grown men of the sixties had
little to look back to from
Swan Science Fiction, Fantasy, &
Weird Fiction comic books began to be collected. In the 1970s it was Eagle No I that became the most sought after comic.
The
Eagle comic was published for the first time in April 1950. The feature that
came to dominate it was 'Dan Dare', written and drawn by Frank Hampson. At the
other end of the social scale were
A typical collector is suddenly bitten by the collecting
bug around the age of thirty and concentrates on comics read as a child,
between the ages of nine to twelve. It is a predominantly male hobby, as a
visit to any comic sale or auction will testify
.
The earliest known publication that could be a comic was
regularly issued as a fortnightly paper of cartoons and strips, called The Glasgow Looking Glass published in June 1825 in
Scotland. The first publication what was to be called a comic in a formula that
would continue for some 75 years was Funny Folks,
the first edition published in December 1874, running for 20 years and notching
up 1,614 editions.
The first comic, an eight-page tabloid called Comic Cuts, and published by Alfred Harmsworth in
1890, was little different from Funny Folks and
the other comics that had preceded it, in layout and appearance.
Its instant
success was
Another early comic that deliberately aimed its appeal at
children, was Jack and Jill issued in
March 1885, but ran only seven issues before upgrading its appeal to the adult
market.
It was ten years later that the first comic completely
designed for children was published - The Rainbow in February 1914. Its immediate success led to several
other publishers converting their failing adult comics to children's comics,
much to the bewilderment of regular readers. An example is Sparks, published in 1914, that was changed to Little Sparks in 1920.
One of the endearing facets of comics are their heroes. One
of the earliest was in Jack B.Yeats' send-up of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes,
in 'The Adventures of Chubb- Lock Homes' in Comic Cuts during 1893.
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| Comic Book Collection |
The most famous of all the early comic heroes
was the team of tramps, 'Weary Willie' and Tired Tim', created by Tom Browne
for the front page of Illustrated Chips which
first appeared in May 1896. Most long-lived of all the comic originals, they
remained on page one until the final issue of Chips on 12 September 1953.
Others have followed and remain in the memory of many adults, including 'Desperate Dan' and 'Dan
Dare' with the more brash American 'Superman' and 'Batman' among them.
The 'golden age', if one can dare call such a low-quality
era golden, of British comic books covered the twenty years from 1940 to 1960
when their more exciting counterparts, American comic books, were generally
unavailable. Restrictions on their import, for economic or censorship reasons,
left a gap in the comic market which enterprising printers and publishers
rushed to fill.
From Gerald G. Swan's first New Funnies in February 1940, through to the many monthly, and even
weekly, titles of L. Miller and Son,
British comic books based on the American format were issued in their
thousands. Paper restrictions prevented wide distribution, and no complete runs
of all the Swan and Miller comic books are known.
As they were small publisher
and failed to deposit copies at the British Museum, Swan
comic books collections are very
popular with collectors today, as are the Miller science-fiction and superhero
titles.
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| Comic Book Collection |
There is less interest in Western titles, but this may grow. Along with these native productions are the many, many
reprints of American comic books.
However, they are British editions, and often
have locally drawn covers and some editorial content. Favourites among
collectors are those earlier Miller editions printed in two-tone photogravure,
an extremely attractive colour process that is now extinct. Collectors looking
for a first edition should be warned that many of the Miller publications did
not have a Number one - their first edition started with number 50.
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