Thursday, September 3, 2015

All-Star Comics - High-Priced Society!


Love this warm image of the smiling Justice Society of America rendered by Don Newton for Robert Overstreet's influential Comic Book Price Guide. This "All New 4th Edition" hit the racks in 1974 and the heroes had a lot more reason to smile considering what absolute bargains vintage comics went for back then. Sums for comics were sometimes big, but never enormous and never spectacular nor especially newsworthy. It even makes the dour Spectre evince a wry smile and I bet Sandman is downright giddy behind that fashionable gas mask. Only Atom looks a bit down, likely because as usual he's distracted by how his mother just threw out his comics before he came to the meeting.


And here's another early Newton rendering of the team, this time in glorious black and white. They look like what DC editor Julie Schwartz was afraid the kids would think of a group calling itself a "Society", a bunch of bankers toting up the weekly earnings. That's why he insisted the name get changed to the more adventurous and less chummy "Justice League of America". 

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4 comments:

  1. Sweet JSA art! (Much enjoyed yesterday's Marshall Rodgers double-cover as well.) A smiling Spectre is just a little bit creepy...I think Dr. Midnite and Hourman always intrigued me the most as they had no Silver or Bronze Age counterpart.

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    1. I'm with you on Hourman and Dr.Midnite, both of them always were faves of mine. Hourman was always portrayed as a bit of a loser and I always rooted for him.

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  2. Newton's fan art was so great. He was one of the few modern artists to have a handle on how to draw Captain Marvel (the original) mostly because his love of the character shone through. I wish he'd been able to ink more of his pro work while he was with us. His work on the Phantom, including those painted covers, seemed to be a wonderful extension of his glory days at RBCC and other fan projects. We could sure use a retrospective on him.

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    1. Hopefully those glorious Phantoms by Newton will at long last see reprint when Hermes gets around to them, hopefully sometime early next year.

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