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Comic book collecting with a foreign variant focus
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Started by Define999,

4,874 posts in this topic

andyborehol

andyborehol

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, gadzukes said:

I've been picking up some of these Brazilian comics.  The covers are so colorful and unique. 

This one is doubly special because it has WWII Sub-Mariner on the front looking at a German U-Boat, and an awesome Superman WWII back cover.  I believe that Superman back cover is unique to this issue too.... has anyone seen that art on a US comic?

IMG_4911.jpeg

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That’s a beaut! It’s crazy to think that US comic franchises were already being exported to South America before the end of WWII. Are the interior pages just translated American material or are they original content?

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gadzukes

gadzukes

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, andyborehol said:

That’s a beaut! It’s crazy to think that US comic franchises were already being exported to South America before the end of WWII. Are the interior pages just translated American material or are they original content?

Interiors are black & white reprints with Portuguese translations.  With a great variety of comics: Sub-Mariner, Superman, Human Torch, Vision, Steel Sterling, Black Hood, The Wizard & Roy, Espionage, etc.... 

The issues are quite thick and they are a hair bigger that US Golden age in height, but they still just barely fit into a GA bag/board.

 

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Kromak

Kromak

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 4/8/2021 at 2:03 PM, gadzukes said:

I've been picking up some of these Brazilian comics.  The covers are so colorful and unique. 

This one is doubly special because it has WWII Sub-Mariner on the front looking at a German U-Boat, and an awesome Superman WWII back cover.  I believe that Superman back cover is unique to this issue too.... has anyone seen that art on a US comic?

IMG_4911.jpeg

FullSizeRender-5.jpeg

I even know where this originally came from :P. One of best covers IMHO

Edited by Kromak
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Qalyar

Qalyar

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Posted

At first glance, these might look like normal copies of Black Hole. But if you're familiar with the series, something might seem just a little off about these covers. For me, the bottom-left one seems most out of place, because the title in the original is in all lower case... and not at all that weird green color!

That's because this is the six-issue German edition of Black Hole, published by Reprodukt. Each of these is a hefty square bound book that reprints two issues apiece of the original English series, which clocks them in at around 64 pages. On fairly good paper and with stuff cardstock covers, they feel bigger than that. Quality is pretty solid, in part because these sorts of heavy covers hold up way, way better as square bound books than folded and cut by blades that aren't up to the job (nope, that's not a dig at the originals, nope...). Except for the covers and some section titles, the interior has received full German localization.

But boy are some of those covers weird. Book 1, containing English issues 1 and 2, uses the art from 7, which seems to have been chosen utterly randomly. The remaining issues use the English covers from 4, 5, 8, 9, and 11, respectively, which means they at least have a cover from one of their constituent stories. Except these covers also aren't quite the same; for several of these books, they re-styled and/or re-colored the title text. The covers originally used for 7 (German 1) and 8 (German 4) are the most noticeable. I really have no idea why they re-matted the titles on these covers but opted not to localize them into German (in contrast, the Spanish release DID retitle them in translation).

Regardless, these were released over about a six year period by Reprodukt, who then made full sets available in a sort of slipcased box set. These copies are from such a box set, but as far as I can tell, they are indistinguishable from individual copies.

PXL_20210410_224932420.jpg

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Kromak

Kromak

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Posted
On 4/11/2021 at 1:04 AM, gadzukes said:

Where did that image come from?

This comic book was part of collection of a Brazilian comic book creator and plastic artist called Daniel Azulay. He past away last year and then was made a partly beneficent auction with many of his stuffs. Including a lot of comic books. Among the first items, there was a batch of Gibis Mensais A, around eighteen numbers if my memory serves me well. It included the first three, if I am not mistaken and also a few without cover. It was also the most expensive comic book batch sold. This book was among them. Them I imagine that the owner sold this book to you, that took the photo :)

 

 

On 3/30/2021 at 12:26 AM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

I have been after a higher grade version of this book for years. Due to paper quality and it being from Germany in 1966 there just are not good examples of it to be found easily. I had the only graded copy for the longest time, but several years ago sold it to a collector back in Germany. That one was a lone census CGC 4.5.  It still to date is the only graded copy. It was the first time Superman appeared in comic format in Germany.  I finally found one , that from the photographs would be higher and promptly bought it in November.  I thought it was lost, but today this arrived.  I could not be happier.  :cloud9:

20210329_185053.thumb.jpg.bfa9886d3b9ae774650821b4d610546e.jpg20210329_185102.thumb.jpg.3252fee00a3f0c5379e0addf7bbf2429.jpg

That's definitely a foreign key in great shape. Congrats.

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Kromak

Kromak

Posted
Posted
On 4/11/2021 at 4:54 AM, Qalyar said:

At first glance, these might look like normal copies of Black Hole. But if you're familiar with the series, something might seem just a little off about these covers. For me, the bottom-left one seems most out of place, because the title in the original is in all lower case... and not at all that weird green color!

That's because this is the six-issue German edition of Black Hole, published by Reprodukt. Each of these is a hefty square bound book that reprints two issues apiece of the original English series, which clocks them in at around 64 pages. On fairly good paper and with stuff cardstock covers, they feel bigger than that. Quality is pretty solid, in part because these sorts of heavy covers hold up way, way better as square bound books than folded and cut by blades that aren't up to the job (nope, that's not a dig at the originals, nope...). Except for the covers and some section titles, the interior has received full German localization.

But boy are some of those covers weird. Book 1, containing English issues 1 and 2, uses the art from 7, which seems to have been chosen utterly randomly. The remaining issues use the English covers from 4, 5, 8, 9, and 11, respectively, which means they at least have a cover from one of their constituent stories. Except these covers also aren't quite the same; for several of these books, they re-styled and/or re-colored the title text. The covers originally used for 7 (German 1) and 8 (German 4) are the most noticeable. I really have no idea why they re-matted the titles on these covers but opted not to localize them into German (in contrast, the Spanish release DID retitle them in translation).

Regardless, these were released over about a six year period by Reprodukt, who then made full sets available in a sort of slipcased box set. These copies are from such a box set, but as far as I can tell, they are indistinguishable from individual copies.

PXL_20210410_224932420.jpg

Now, I didn't know about this series, but that's a quite nice story. This kind of stuff, of using unrelated covers used to be quite common here in the 80's and 90's and I think it was a global behavior. From the 2000's and on, I think it became quite unusual.

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Kromak

Kromak

Posted
Posted
22 hours ago, batman_fan said:

An odd ball group of books I bought back in the late 90s from the Lost Dutchman in Phoenix.

forBatman.jpg

These Editorial Novaro are in great shape. Doesn't seem easy to get Mexican stuff in this condition. I love Mexican stuff, one of my favorite countries to collect, so I am definitely a bit jealous!

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flashlites

flashlites

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Hey all you foreign comic fans! Duke from dotcomcomics has done 4 youtube videos this week going over a collection of Mexican Spider-Man comics. I'm sure you know all about these semi famous comics from the 70's, I had no idea. (They are pretty interesting even for a Flash Fan:insane:) He is calling out for some help as he is indexing them for the GCD. He is trying to identify some of the swipes. I thought I would share with you to see if you can help. Plus I thought if I had fun watching, actual Spider-Man fans would really, really like it! 

 

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thecollectron

thecollectron

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Posted
On 5/12/2021 at 8:31 PM, flashlites said:

Hey all you foreign comic fans! Duke from dotcomcomics has done 4 youtube videos this week going over a collection of Mexican Spider-Man comics. I'm sure you know all about these semi famous comics from the 70's, I had no idea. (They are pretty interesting even for a Flash Fan:insane:) He is calling out for some help as he is indexing them for the GCD. He is trying to identify some of the swipes. I thought I would share with you to see if you can help. Plus I thought if I had fun watching, actual Spider-Man fans would really, really like it! 

 

I've watched some of the videos now and a few swipes leaped out at me. I shared my thoughts with Duke. There are tons of panels that look familiar to me, particularly a lot of references to Ditko, Romita, and Kane, but I also spotted some borrowing from DC. I heard about these comics several years ago but they weren't turning up very often and now they're expensive :frown:.  I enjoyed seeing them flipped through page by page.

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