Click here to return to The Leader's Chronicles.

Your narrator, the Leader

Click here to return to the Main Introduction Page for the Leader's Report on the Fayetteville Comic Con and the Williamsburg Nostalgia Fest

Click on any image below to see it much larger with more detail.

Saturday 26 October 2019

Michael Lantz, Donald Jones, Guy Rose, Julio Crespo Guy and his partners manning their table. Guy is a long time Richmond area comic book collector and dealer and the co-promoter of this show.

Guy Rose Guy holding a copy of the pre-Marvel comic Journey Into Mystery #33, 1956 featuring the first story drawn by Steve Ditko who later became one of Marvel's top artists. I bought a copy of this from Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics at one of his stores in Denver, CO in the early 1980s and I've never found a better copy I could afford to buy. The Marvel Tales #136, 1955 features two stories by artists who more frequently worked for DC Comics, Russ Heath and Ross Andru.

Guy Rose Guy with two classic science fiction comics I will probably never be able to afford to own. I've always liked movie producer George Pal's science fiction and fantasy movies and this DC comic Strange Adventures #1, 1950 has a photo cover (no story) of Pal's famous Destination Moon movie from the same year. The Fawcett Movie Comic series also has a photo cover and adapts the story from this movie but I can't afford that one either. Avon Publications was known in the 1950s for publishing some of the best comic books and paperback books with science fiction stories. I do have some Avon comics like An Earthman On Venus, Captain Science, Space Detective and so on but I've never been able to acquire this one, Robotmen Of The Lost Planet, #1, 1952. I first saw this comic in John Verzyl's comic store in Alhambra, CA in the early 1980s but it wasn't quite high enough grade for me to buy then when it was still affordable. I'm counting on the British publisher PS Artbooks who specialize in hardcover reports of this type of vintage science fiction material to eventually reprint it for me.	Ron Haines I had never seen dealer Ron Haines of Cortland, OH before. Ron is holding the Marvel comics Tales Of Suspense #59 and #58 both 1964. Iron Man had been the lead feature in this title since his first appearance in #39. After each Iron Man story the remaining stories were the usual science fiction and fantasy stories that comprised the entire comic until Iron Man came along. When Marvel was getting ready to add a new superhero feature to a comic they sometimes teased the readers with an appearance of that superhero in the issue before he got his own feature. Hence Captain America is shown battling Iron Man in the #58 issue. In #59 Cap became the second feature with a 10 page story after the 12 page lead Iron Man feature. The previously customary science fiction five page stories bit the dust forever closing out that chapter in Marvel's history.	David Vollbach David Vollbach is another dealer I had never seen before. Patsy Walker #27, 1950 is a bit unusual due to its painted cover instead of the usual line art illustrated cover. Patsy Walker had been in the Marvel Universe since 1944 along with other Marvel female romance comic characters. In the mid 1970s Patsy became a superheorine named Hellcat. David is holding a copy of Journey Into Mystery #87, 1962 when Marvel frequently had its superheroes fighting Communist bad guys. This #87 is one of the few Marvel comics I owned just by random accident until I became firmly committed to collecting all the Marvel superhero titles in 1965. It didn't survive the transcendental year of 1965 and I had to buy it back eventually, probably from my favorite mail order comic dealer in those days, Robert Bell.

Gene Carpenter The Leader's favorite comic book dealer Gene Carpenter as always had the biggest and best Golden and Silver Age comic book inventory at this show. The 50% off boxes you see belong to Gene's partner Jim Montgomery. You have to attend a really big comic convention to find other dealers who can give Gene a run for his money. I last saw Gene at the Fayetteville Comic Con in North Carolina 19-20 October and I will see him next for the last time in 2019 at the Williamsburg Nostalgia Fest in Virginia 6-8 October.	Gene Carpenter Here's Gene misdirecting his priorities. He's adjusting his glasses instead of chatting up his pretty female customer.	Gene Carpenter A small sample of Gene's rare and esoteric inventory: Teen-Age Romances #37, 1954 with cover and most of the stories by famous romance comic artist Matt Baker. And Pictorial Confessions #3, 1949 with cover art by Matt Baker and Joe Kubert. The human figures in the panel "Heart's Trophy" are by Kubert. The inside stories are by Baker, Kubert and Jack Sparling. Kubert of course later became a top DC Comics artist best known for his long run on the Sgt. Rock feature in Our Army At War. As a kid in the 1960s I never paid much attention to romance comics. All the ones I saw published by Marvel, DC and Charlton all seemed to have the type of maudlin, melodramatic stories similar to the silly "confession" type of magazines like Redbook and True Story that my Aunt Betty June used to have around the house. The covers to these much earlier romance comics Gene is showing here look more interesting. They have a harder, sexier edge to them similar to the sexy paperback books and film noir movies from the late 1940s and early 1950s. I wonder how many parents in that time period were concerned about their young teenage daughters reading stories about two "decent girls" on a "thrill seekers weekend" having to act grown up so as to visit a joint that serves alcohol? I imagine at least some teenage girls in the late 1940s had to read these comics under their bedsheets with the proverbial flashlight.

Click here to return to the Main Introduction Page to see the Leader's Report on the Fayetteville Comic Con and the Williamsburg Nostalgia Fest