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Big Easter Gift Comics
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11 posts in this topic

Need some help identifying these books; among the silver Dells/Gold Keys I picked up recently were these 2 books that I initially thought were kids coloring books ... upon closer inspection, they revealed reprints of western and romance stories from the GA ... and, although they have the same cover, the stories reprinted on the inside of each book differ from one another ... They seem to be Canadian eds. ... ever seen these before? Any history behind them would be much appreciated ... I cannot find them in the OSPG (maybe they are there, I'm just looking on the wrong place) ...

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55 minutes ago, BuscemasAvengers said:

Further, inside one of the books was this letter, and a list of Timely/Marvel books under the headings "Red Unit" and "Blue/Yellow Unit" ... curious as to what these are ...

That's an anti-Wertham editorial that appeared in a few Timely books published in the U.S. in November and December 1948.  Which tells me that you have one of those comics which rebinds remaindered comics together under a new cover.  

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3 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

That's an anti-Wertham editorial that appeared in a few Timely books published in the U.S. in November and December 1948.  Which tells me that you have one of those comics which rebinds remaindered comics together under a new cover.  

Yep ... Familiar with the anti-Wertham tone of the editorial ... How about the colored lists?

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Just now, BuscemasAvengers said:

Yep ... Familiar with the anti-Wertham tone of the editorial ... How about the colored lists?

That's just how Timely Comics editorially organized itself when that comic was published. (I assume it was an editorial grouping like All-American and D.C., but a Timely guy could nail this down for you.)  I am going to correct myself, though, that particular editorial appeared from January 1948 to March 1949, which is a bit more consistent with remaindered comics which show up in a 1950 re-binding.

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Grand Comic Database lists this as a Canadian one-shot "re-print," but it sure looks like remaindered comics to me.  The GCD version is all Fawcett comics, whereas yours appears to be Timely/Altlas.  My guess is that there would be different covers depending on what publisher they were remaindering.  It's one of those attempts by someone to cash in on comic book returns, this time by re-packaging them for Canada.  Would have been a deal for kids.  I think it is one of those oddities like Weatherbird, except the cover makes this cooler.

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27 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

Timely Comics editorially organized itself when that comic was published

IIRC, rather than an editorial organization, it may have been an advertising grouping. You could decide to run your ad in the one group or the other or both.

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Cool books!  Based on the pics and a couple minutes' digging at GCD, I'd say you have a mix of Quality and Timely.

It looks like from Timely, you have Wild Western #5 and Tex Taylor #7, plus another book with anti-Wertham editorial #2.  Many of the books that contain anti-Wertham editorial #2 are listed here:  The Seduction of the Innocent website, chart of anti-Wertham editorials

From Quality, it looks like you have Hollywood Secrets #2 and Love Confessions #2.

Given that GCD is saying the book is Fawcett reprints, it would seem that somebody out there has one or more copies with Fawcett books.  I'm wondering if perhaps this was a distributor, with access to all publishers in an area, who was doing the repackaging for the Canadian market?

 

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Definitely remaindered by a Canadian publishing company ... One of the Toronto based companies that did this in 1949-1950 was Export Publishing.  A fire destroyed their facility in 1950. There is no notice of the publishing company on both these books.  The anti-Wertham editorial was the 2nd of 4 published by Marvel/Timely (Stan and Marv) ...

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