Yorick Posted September 28, 2019 Share Posted September 28, 2019 I just couldn't resist this awesome cover. Makes me think of Action Comics #2. I would like to upgrade... if someone here wants to sell me one. King of the Mounties #32. All interiors are signed by Jim Gary, so I imagine the cover is his work as well. AJD, sagii and Point Five 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted September 29, 2019 Author Share Posted September 29, 2019 I was tempted by that one too @Yorick . Now you mention it, it does have a little Action 2 about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Electricmastro Posted October 3, 2019 Share Posted October 3, 2019 Gem Comics #16 (1947), featuring the only appearance of the Vampire: AJD and porcupine48 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted January 26, 2020 Author Share Posted January 26, 2020 EC reprints in Australia It's January 26, or Australia Day, so time to give this thread a bump. I'll do it in two parts. The first is a look at EC reprints in Australia. Everything that follows should be preceded by "as far as I know" because that's the way it is with these little documented Australian reprints. Speaking of which, I should give a shout out to James Zee for his work in maintaining the Ausreprints website, a source of a lot of information you can't find anywhere else. https://ausreprints.net/ As we'll see, there are still plenty of gaps in the galleries, but I always make sure to add "missing" books when I come across one. The cover scan count at the moment is 72% of the 34,105 known Australian printed comics of all ages. I think the GA % would be a fair bit less than that. While some publishing houses seemed to feature extensively in Australian reprints in the 1940s and 50s (Dell, Fiction House, DC and Atlas, for example), the range of EC reprints seems to be pretty limited. Until yesterday I only knew of two. The longest run seems to be Two Fisted Tales, which ran from #1 to #11 in 1954-55. Here's the Ausreprints gallery, showing 5 of the 11 issues. Some of them have the Two Fisted Tales title banner, others have a separate title with the TFT subtitle. The GCD has more - missing only #2 The covers were sometimes taken from the US editions: Sometimes they were taken from interior panels: Sometimes they were redrawn (badly, in this case) from the US covers: And this one seems to have been locally drawn. The cover story is not an EC story, but comes from an ACG comic of around the same time. There is also a genuine EC story inside. A mixture of source material wasn't unusual in Australian comics. @Duffman_Comics can add another scan from this title. (Which I'll pass on to Ausreprints) I think - though can't be entirely sure - that Two Fisted Tales is the only one of the New trend titles to be reprinted in Australia. No horror or sci-fi that I've found so far. Mad reprints in Australia started much later. Of the New Direction titles, there are three issues each of Piracy and Extra! - the latter being printed as Ace Reporter. Neither the GCD or Ausreprints has a scan for Piracy #2 or Ace Reporter #1. I hadn't made the connection between Extra! and Ace Reporter until a recent thread here showed a photo of a boy reading a copy of it in 1956. I don't have any copies of this title (yet) but I'm pretty sure they are ECs because the covers of all three come from panels in Extra #1 or 2. So, barring new discoveries (I've had a good look through the output of the publishers of these and haven't found any other candidates), a complete Australian EC reprint collection would be 17 books. Two Fisted Tales #1-11 Piracy #1-3 Ace Reporter #1-3 Half the fun of collecting these is working out what's out there to be collected. And since I didn't know of the Ace Reporter link until yesterday, who knows what else might turn up. Get Marwood & I, Point Five and porcupine48 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted January 26, 2020 Author Share Posted January 26, 2020 Part 2 - examples of censorship in Australian comics By 1955 there was public criticism of comics in Australia that echoed the times in the US. There's a post earlier in this thread about the Queensland Board of Literature that discusses it. One result was that Australian publishers took to self-censoring Here's an example from an EC reprint. These are the last two pages of the John Severin story Showdown in TFT #37 (scanned from a hardcover, so excuse the issues near the spine). And here are the same two pages from Australian reprint Two Fisted #9. In last row of panels the guy getting shot and his body on the ground have been edited out completely. On the previous page the only art in one panel was a guy getting shot, so... we'll just leave it out entirely! Here's another example. Australian Planet Comics #9 ... which originally looked like this Looks like the Australian editor thought the skeleton showing wasn't going to cut it. (I suppose it's also possible that he was an offended anatomist, but that's less likely.) Get Marwood & I and Point Five 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duffman_Comics Posted January 26, 2020 Share Posted January 26, 2020 Duffman_Comics reporting for duty. I figure this is the comic AJD is referring to: The censorship in the fifties was really random. Panels cut, liberal use of whiteout, word balloons and captions ham-fistedly changed. Just no clear rhyme or reason. Get Marwood & I and AJD 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Get Marwood & I Posted January 26, 2020 Share Posted January 26, 2020 Some great posts here guys @AJD @Duffman_Comics - very interesting. I like threads which look at the history of comic production, especially in areas where next to nothing is documented. I find it fascinating that there are still genres where we can't even be sure what titles / issues exist in the first place, let alone any variant details beyond that. Andy, does the censorship of the 'bones' on the cover of Planet #58 continue inside? Or does that aspect not feature in the story. Great stuff. Point Five and porcupine48 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sagii Posted December 12, 2020 Share Posted December 12, 2020 For the OP, (well not 'for') but he get's it Robot Man, AJD and porcupine48 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Man Posted December 13, 2020 Share Posted December 13, 2020 On 1/25/2020 at 9:49 PM, Duffman_Comics said: Duffman_Comics reporting for duty. I figure this is the comic AJD is referring to: The censorship in the fifties was really random. Panels cut, liberal use of whiteout, word balloons and captions ham-fistedly changed. Just no clear rhyme or reason. Very cool, I have never seen an Australian EC before. Now, being an EC guy, I guess I need to find this too. Amy other ones? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duffman_Comics Posted December 13, 2020 Share Posted December 13, 2020 Refer to AJD's exhaustive analysis above. In essence, only 11 New Trend E.C.s were censored and (re)printed, all under the "Two-Fisted Tales" banner. Good luck in the quest - there is quite a bit of competition for any of the comics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porcupine48 Posted December 13, 2020 Share Posted December 13, 2020 (edited) On 9/28/2019 at 7:52 PM, Yorick said: I just couldn't resist this awesome cover. Makes me think of Action Comics #2. I would like to upgrade... if someone here wants to sell me one. King of the Mounties #32. All interiors are signed by Jim Gary, so I imagine the cover is his work as well. Thought you might like this Canadian book--with grape nuts gone that is Edited December 13, 2020 by porcupine48 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porcupine48 Posted December 13, 2020 Share Posted December 13, 2020 (edited) Nevermind!Oooopsies Edited December 13, 2020 by porcupine48 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorick Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 1 hour ago, porcupine48 said: Nevermind!Oooopsies I like it anyway! porcupine48 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted December 14, 2020 Author Share Posted December 14, 2020 11 hours ago, porcupine48 said: Nevermind!Oooopsies Keepin' it in the Commonwealth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJD Posted December 14, 2020 Author Share Posted December 14, 2020 Xsince my post on ECs above I have got one more. These come along very infrequently. porcupine48 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porcupine48 Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 Love the colours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
