Cheers!

#4 reprints the story Red Nails from Savage Tales #2 and 3; arguably the best work by Barry Smith on Conan. It also contains a reprint of the story Rogues in the House from Conan #11. Both stories are colored by Smith himself, making this treasury a must-have!!! The cover is a new one by Smith, taken from a print called “Lord of the black corsairs” or some such.

#15 is a real treat : It starts with “the song of Red Sonja” (CtB#24), a masterpiece by Smith; it continues with reprints of “Black Colossus” (from Savage sword of Conan #2) and “Night of the Dark God” (from Savage Tales #4). The first has art by Buscema and Alcala, the second by Kane and Neal Adams. It’s completed by a few Red Sonja pin-ups by Giordano, Thorne and Maroto. The cover is by Buscema and Chan.

#19 is a reprint of the story “Iron shadows in the moon” (art by Buscema and Alcala, again, from Savage Sword # 4). It also contains “People of the shadows”, from SSoC#6, with artwork by Alex Nino. This one is marred by the placement of a double-page spread on an odd and even pages! There are a few pin-ups of Howardian characters… Sonja by Thorne and Cormac Mac Art by Wenzel. (I think it’s the only Marvel Corman Mac Art I’ve seen, too….) Both front and back covers are penciled and inked by Big John.

#23 reprints “A witch shall be born” from SSoC#5, with art by Bucema and DeZuniga (it’s the one with the crucifixion scene). It’s completed by the reprinting of the first story in the Conan syndicated newspaper daily strip series, penciled and inked by Buscema.

All of these are worth hunting down, and not that outrageously expensive.

Two I had when I was younger were the Dr. Strange and Fantastic Four ones. The FF reprinted the Galactus story with the non-Galactus subplots trimmed and Galactus’ costume updated, but it was cool to see such a big story in a large-size format, where Galactus truly towered over the FF. The Strange one was even better — it was just a collection of parts of different Strange stories, but you can’t get better than Steve Ditko, Gene Colan and Frank Brunner at treasury size, with creatures like the LIving Tribunal and Shuma-Gortah.

I wish they’d bring these back! They were impossible to store, but so much fun!

Those stories have jack-all to do with Christmas, but reading those classics in that oversized formats, it’s no wonder I became a comic book fan! (And anyway, in the immortal words of Crow T. Robot, “What, like a good action sequence don’t belong in Christmas?”)

If you’re a stickler for really nice conditions, double-digits is probably a good estimate. If you’re happy with something in G-VG or thereabouts, as I am … well, I pick up an average of 3 or 4 of these a year & usually pay around $3.50, maybe, courtesy of Lone Star Comics.

I also recall the giant reprint of Marvel’s Star Wars adaptation, which was very cool to me at the time. Of course, as often happens, these books seem to be MIA at the moment…

Hmm, I see Christopher Lee is on the cover too. He really does show up in everything cool.

How much does this all cost? I like looking at all the old stuff in this blog but it almost always costs into the double digits and I just don’t have that kind of budget. How much, for example, would that really cool Marvel Treasury with the people against the wall cost?

Here’s a link to an old blog entry to mine where I discuss the book and have a pic of the back cover (featuring the villain), as well as the Orb’s lovely face.

http://seductionoftheindifferent.blogspot.com/2008/03/memoirs-of-bronze-age-baby-marvel.html

I find the Buck Rogers one very interesting – the Marvel Treasury for Star Wars #1 I have has the Whitman logo – but the #2 and the one combining 1 and 2 are both Marvel.

I know of plenty of intances where other company comics were distributed by Western/Whitman and had the Whitman logo, but this is the only time I can think of a Western/Whitman book with a Marvel or DC logo.

Whitman is a topic for another column one day – and I’ll also try to tackle those crazy Dynabrite books (I’ve got 4 or 5 of those).

So…I contacted an old associate who remembered seeing the Whitman version packaged along with some other items in some type of “movie kit”. That could very well be, as I remember several properties having such movie kits, that might contain a poster, a plastic cup, glossy photo, a comic or two (and in one case, a Star Wars treasury sized book). Perhaps someone else out there might remember a Buck Rogers Movie Kit?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Paul_McCartney_%26_Wings-Band_on_the_Run_album_cover.jpg

It was pretty iconic in its day, but it may also have been lifted from a previous comic cover (oer movie) for all I know.

http://www.comics.org/series.lasso?SeriesID=2497