Comic Book Resources

Greaet article. Owning company books is a hard thing to do. Luckily during the 90s when Silver Age was next to dead, I bought the entire Tower Comics line for next to nothing. The line-up of talent on those books alone are worth some sort of mega Omnibus, instead of that one Archive DC put out.
Seeing this, my interest is piqued in the Atlas/Seaboard titles, well some of them

Good job!

I'm trying for a complete Gladstone collection (dont' much care about condition as long as they're intact), but there are a couple stumbling blocks. First is that later series 2 Gladstones are expensive and can be hard to find. Second is that most Mickey Mouse comics blow and I can't muster the effort to try to collect them.

I tracked down some key issues on the Ebay, but mostly I just buy whatever Disney or EC Reprint that I come across in bargain bins.

Now that I think about it, it probably wouldn't be that hard to assemble a complete "Disney Comics" collection. Those only ran a couple years before the rights went back to Gladstone.

I guess the only time I ever really actively collected Atlas Seaboard was when I was buying 'em off the spinner racks as they came out. (I've mentioned before on the Classic Comics forum that the only comic theft [knock wood] I've ever suffered, back in the mid-'70s, consisted of a stack of comics that would've been largely Seaboards, oddly enough.)

These days I pick them up as I come across them for dirt cheap ... which included, bizarrely, a copy of Vicki for probably a buck at a shop in Birmingham, Ala., 3 or 4 years ago.

Why is Vicki so hard to come across? Is it Archie collectors buying them up?

I think I've got pretty close to the entire output of Milestone Comics. Just missing one or two partial runs on minor titles I didn't particularly care for, I think.

Not quite a whole company, but I wonder if anyone's tried to collect the entire Star line of comics. That'd run up pretty well, since Spectacular Spider-Ham hit the triple digits.

Also, Aqualad, I'll meet you at the flagpole after school. Nobody talks about the Mouse like that to me.

Why is Vicki so hard to come across? Is it Archie collectors buying them up?

I suspect it's probably part of a more general problem - that romance and "teen humor" titles weren't usually read by the male audience of comics collectors, instead being purchased by girls who probably threw them out later, or don't go to comic book conventions, etc. So they're genuinely scarcer compared to adventure titles, which were saved and "collected" more frequently.

I know they were in the 90s, so they probably don't count, but TeknoComix was relatively short-lived...

TeknoPhage and Mr. Hero were quite good! (at least the early issues...)

Oh, and my wife has a copy of Vicki #1 which she is rightly quite proud of!

DC's Impact imprint -- The Web, The Comet, etc -- totaled, what, something like 110 issues? I know I've got all those. Same with the shorter-lived Focus imprint.

The Mike Danger title from TeknoComix was fun too, but yeah, pretty much the rest of the line was a waste...

I was expecting a lot more 80's-90's microimprints. (Spiderbaby! Palliard! King Hell! )

Then there are a few where, if you've already got a collection of a particular book, it shouldn't be too tough to round out the company. (Cerebus to Aardvark-Vanaheim, or Elfquest to Warp, for example)...

@ Jeff R: Cerebus #1 would be a purse-stretcher though...

Hey Michael, when the comics are good, they're really good (most of the Gottfriedson adventure strips were good). But most of the rest of Mickey comics are bland at best. I have the full run of Mickey and Donald/ Donald and Mickey, and man there are some stinkers in there.

I'm quite proud of my Impact collection. I'm less proud of my New Universe collection.
Someday I'll get back to my Milestone collecting.

Collecting entire runs sure is fun, though!

I think I owned the complete Atlas output before my last big purge. Minus Vicki, of course. All bought from the spinner racks.

I'll bet Vicki is hard to find because of guys like me who thought, "Say, with just a couple of Vickies, I could have a complete set!"

Good conversation, folks.

I didn't mention some of the publishers noted above because my mandate is pretty much pre-Crisis here.

As for Vicki - I don't have any first hand experience re. the title's scarcity - just from old market reports etc... There are a few copies of #4 on ebay right now, with BINs at $20+. I understand that Gothic Romances mag, and one of the Movies Monsters mag is tough to find. I had the one with the Harryhausen Cyclops on the cover as a kid, but it's been lost to the sands fo time.

I took some time off from piecing together an Atlas-Seaboard collection - but I'm thinking that I might jump back onboard. For those interested in A-B - check out the old Comic Book Marketplace and Comic Book Artist issues dedicated to the company - and check out the 'Atlas Archives' website.

In terms of Tower - I have most of the superhero stuff (it's still quite affordable), but I can't see myself buying all of those Tippy Teen books. I never even mention those weird Tower paperbacks.

Another I thought of mentioning was Simon and Kirby's Mainline comics - but those are soooo pricey.

Just from looking at the Vicki covers here, I get a bit of a feel for why Atlas-Seaboard failed:

http://comics.org/covers.lasso?SeriesID=13685

(I've become a minor connoisseur of third-tier teen humor titles starring blondes due to using them as fodder for my own "It's Cookie!" recaptioned stuff....)

The artwork is fine, but the first 3 cover gags are all weak, even for this sort of thing, with #1 being downright confusing in its layout. I can't see any reason why someone looking for this sort of comic would choose it instead of an Archie. Ditto when I look at most of their other covers and ponder the decision of a typical DC or Marvel buyer of the time.

I've stopped buying new comics several times in my life, but have never stopped collecting. Why? Because every so often I will read a blog post like this one, or the one about the Archie Experiment of 89-90, and I will discover an entirely new reason to go rooting through convention bins.

Collecting Disney comics gets painful/tedious post-Barks/pre-Gladstone. I know artists and writers were not hacks then, but some of that stuff is just BAD.

However, there are subsets which can be quite rewarding... Disney Showcase (their movie tie-in title) has wonderful photo covers and comicbook renditions of great celebrities (I've got a dogeared copy of "The Boatniks" with Phil Silvers, and a copy of "The Love Bug"). Huey, Dewey, and Louie Junior Woodchucks contains Barks stories (but not art), many of which were redrawn in the 1990s by Daan Jippes. (Look for the issue with HDL on the cover, and a bird has made a nest in the bugle. Flip to the back story, where Uncle Scrooge has an hallucigenic vision!) And then there are the Alex Toth Zorro comics, many of which have been collected in trade paperbacks. The Disney Comics of the 1990s, edited by Marv Wolfman do feature many writers not normally associated with Disney comics. The production values of those issues was pretty high.

Another short pre-Crisis run, which SCREAMS for a hardcover slipcased edition, is Witzend. However, the copyrights are a mess (Steve Ditko was a contributor). Apple Comics is another interesting publisher, as is Starblaze, and Pacific Comics. But I guess you could lump them in with the Black-and-White publishers pre-implosion, since they fall into the Pre-Crisis, Post-Direct Market time period, and this article deals more with titles which might appear on newsstands.

I will forgive you for honoring the awesome that is Floyd Gottfredson.

I'm not much of a collector, myself, but this is an interesting topic - and I have to say I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned Pacific Comics. That should be a pretty easy collection to compile in terms of the limited output, although apparently the issues in the initial run of "Groo the Wanderer" are pretty hard to find, and probably a bit pricey as a result...

From "across the Pond" you could always pick up the complete run of Warrior too... Giving you the very first printings of both V for Vendetta and Miracleman!
Not to mention loads of other fun strips, like Axel Pressbutton and Zirk!

Complete runs show up quite regularly on eBay.

How about the 1980s Red Circle line: There are good books (with the occaisional crappy one thrown in) & it is easy to fill!

Or Victory Productions: There are only four titles (Shuriken, Phaze One, Komodo & The Defiants, and Shrike), & only 15 overall issues published, so that is a cheap run to fill (and it started in 1985)!

J.A.P.

Red Circle--weren't they the Archie heroes (Mighty Crusaders, etc)?

Yes.

J.A.P.

I need two books to complete my Pacific Comics collection: Groo #7 and something called 'One', which I am unfamiliar with, but which ComicBase states was the first Pacific title.

I thought that I was fairly close to completing a First Publishing collection, but after checking find that i still need 99 regular issues, 21 Classics Illustrateds and 4 OGNs (done in mostly by latter issues of Whisper, Lone Wolf & Cub and Mars and some of their latter stuff that no longer satisfied my tastes).

John