pemart1966

Let me clarify my original post: " Kirby had people who “helped him out a little on commissions " - That's a statement that needs a concrete definition for every commission that "Kirby" ever did. Otherwise it's an airy fairy statement that means very little.

That's a statement that needs a concrete definition for every commission that "Kirby" ever did. Otherwise it's an airy fairy statement that means very little.

One potentially interesting thing about this piece is the "copyright DC Comics" on the lower left hand corner of the page. It does appear on some of Joe's chest up profiles and they appear to be in the same hand writing as this piece. If Shuster did this piece then he may have been under contractual obligation to put the DC copyright on it. If he didn't do this piece and just signed it, then why would there be any need for him to put the copyright information on it?

Hmmm - 10 cents for this new comic Action # 1 OR 10 cents for a malted milk with Horton's Ice Cream? Comic book...or Malted Milk? Meh..it's a hot day...I'm going with the malted...

The fact that Thor is in Australia in this version probably explains why he didn't put on his long pants

He did chest up profiles that's for sure but if I've even seen one of his Action 1 re-creations I can't remember. He was, at times, in need of $ so I'd be surprised if a) no one ever asked him to do a cover recreation and b) he turned down all requests to do cover recreations.

Clink description read: "(Shuster did not do many cover recreations in his life, and when he did they tended to be of Action Comics #" Is this then an incorrect statement? Shuster never did a cover recreation of Action #1?

Can anyone post a photo of a verifiable Shuster Action 1 recreation for comaprison?

Ahhhh - times past when comics were just for....kids

Agree on Sprang - impossible NOT to be able to pick out his work on Batman...

Maybe the answer is to ask HA for a "true" photograph.

I had thought about that. GCD lists the two versions as being printed 1 day apart for what that's worth. I guess though that there would have been nothing stopping them from doing a few extra runs of the last variant given that it was at this point a quarterly. I'm sure demand was quite high for this book as by this time the character was undoubtedly hugely popular.

Thanks for this! Here are the "on sale" dates as per GCD: Batman 1 - April 24, 1940 Flash 8 - June 14, 1940 Batman 2 - July 19, 1940 Clearly Flash 8 was closer to Batman 2 than Batman 1 in terms of its "on sale" date and given that the publishing industry is always looking forward it's hard to understand why they were not pushing the upcoming release of Batman 2 at the time of this house ad. You may be right - they were trying to get those remaining copies sold although 1 1/2 month to 2 months on the stands for Batman 1 sounds like a long time to me.

Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos perhaps? Try here https://www.comics.org - you can key in any comic book title and start from there. Sometimes our memories play tricks on us and we blend things to come up with false memories. When you mentioned marionettes, this cover came to mind. There's also Fantastic Four 8 and future issues that feature the Puppet Master - and the Thing did like cigars...

This label has me questioning why there would be a house ad for Batman 1 as it went on sale in late April 1940. I can see an ad for All-Star 1 being in there based on "on sale" dates but not Batman 1 - an ad for Batman 2 maybe but not 1. Any thoughts?