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AJD's comic notebook
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1,132 posts in this topic

Since the maelstrom of responses to my previous post has died down in the more than a week since I posted it... meh ... it's probably time for something new.

@mycomicshop recently got in a long run of Planet Stories, the Fiction House pulp partner to the wonderful, but increasingly expensive, Planet Comics. I showed them to my wife (who loves the Planet books) and we picked out a few to purchase. They are much more affordable than the comics, and have some great covers. Here are a couple of the ones I bought. My criteria were (1) cool cover and (2) Ray Bradbury (of whom more in the next post).

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More after the tumult from this post ebbs away. :baiting:

 

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I like pulps, too, but the covers seem to be far more delicate than their comic book brothers and as for the interiors - the pages start at brown, and then get darker.

Second "Planet" has a great comic book connection with a Gardner Fox story too.

Happy with the response so far? And you are not allowed to give the knee-jerk rejoinder "Yes, but it's only you" lol

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One like and one "response", such as it was. Thus heartened, I shall continue. Here are the other couple of pulps I bought.

The first is Vol 1 #4, fall of 1940. Like Duffman said, the covers are often fragile because they were made with an overhang. (They are often trimmed because the edges got ragged too.) But with careful handling I've been enjoying reading these. In the VGish grades they are, they're solid enough to read but already dinged enough that I don't worry too much about harming them.

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This one (Fall 1946) was a must have for me. The Bradbury story The creatures that time forgot is one of my absolute favourites. I first read it in a Scholastic books edition of R is for Rocket sometime in the first half of the 1970s. In that edition it had the much better and appropriate title Frost and fire, being a tale of the lives of the descendants of humans shipwrecked on Mercury and eking out an existence in the hour of twilight between extreme heat and cold. (Synopsis here.)  It was nice to be able to read it in its first printing, but I must check the ending in the anthologised version - this one didn't gel with my (probably faulty) memory.

969988997_PlanetStoriesFall1946.thumb.jpg.121cd33840f0240d3db503dc61f254b7.jpg

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Since the old journals are kaput, those of us still pecking away had to find a new home. I hope you guys don't mind this popping up here. I thought I'd start by putting up some group shots of my Australian Fiction House books. This represents about three years of buying 80% of the books that have come to market - the other 20% were too low in grade, or I was outbid.

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34 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

Australian reprint editions are neat, but what I'm really curious about is whether the Australians had their own superheros like the Canadians.  Did they?

Yes, quite a few. See the GA in Australia thread for more, but here are a couple:

Crimson_Comet_13_sm.thumb.jpg.ea1b5ffb1361c9369005a6da40a88ccf.jpgSilver_Starr_4.thumb.jpg.a5f01ab993b64890aadad99cd49ab562.jpg

 

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11 hours ago, AJD said:

Yes, quite a few. See the GA in Australia thread for more, but here are a couple:

Nice socks!

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2 hours ago, AJD said:

I'd say about par for the course for GA superhero stories - which is to say not so great. Here's the Crimson Comet's origin from #1:

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"Drop your weapon, or I'll show you the contents of my massive holster!"

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"Would you shut the window Dave! It's freezing in he-JESUS, look at the size of his holster!"

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(Cut to the scene of an ongoing robbery)

"What the - it's Ralph Rivers! How did you know we'd be robbin the bank tonight Rivers!?"

hb.PNG.8db545c87cb050c100179802dec3a9f2.PNG

"I had a hunch"

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6 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

You ought to consider a Kickstarter to get these Austrailian "whites" back into print.  Hope Nichols and Rachel Richey have done quite well in getting support for the Brok Windsor and Nelvana books.

Well, this about as good a segue as any to plug the local "100 page Phantom" comic that's produced quarterly.

I got issue #6 Monday, and that's exactly what the "Frew Crew" are doing - reprinting Australian yarns along with new stories, some with the old characters and some with the Phantom et al.

Nicely packaged, and the covers of the old books are included in the reprint - in glorious "newsprint" colour:

 

 

100 Page Phantom

 

Screenshot_2018-08-28 Giantsize Phantom Issue No 6, 2018 + Phantom's Universe Card #8 Miss Mist.jpg

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7 hours ago, Duffman_Comics said:

Well, this about as good a segue as any to plug the local "100 page Phantom" comic that's produced quarterly.

I got issue #6 Monday, and that's exactly what the "Frew Crew" are doing - reprinting Australian yarns along with new stories, some with the old characters and some with the Phantom et al.

Nicely packaged, and the covers of the old books are included in the reprint - in glorious "newsprint" colour:

 

As well as the GA reprints (that's where the Crimson Comet #1 pages came from above) I like the 'new stories with old characters' they're doing too. This new Shadow story from #6 (The Shadow was a 1950s Australian character unrelated to the US version) has a great noir cover with some excellent negative space work:

NewShadow.JPG.bc26c31dc47a839fa767864160af5257.JPG

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1 hour ago, AJD said:

I had a great day in collecting today.

Cor,  they look good AJD. Nothing better than a great comic day is there. We'll done on the score - looking forward to seeing more, and also finding out what the 10 year wait book is :banana:

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