I don't much follow comic book press anymore, so it was a surprise indeed when I saw an over-sized "Famous 1st Edtion" of DC's very first comic book -- New Fun Comics #1. The asking price was twenty bucks and given the relative values of things in the market today, I thought that a reasonable price if not necessarily a bargain. Because of my long love of comics, pulps, and films the 30's have long had an enchantment for me that other decades lack. Certainly living in those times would've been likely difficult and unromantic (my father was a boy during those days in the poverty-stricken hills of Kentucky) but the impact of the pop fiction of that time has been resonant even down to the modern day. Much of what we think of as the modern world was invented in the 30's or at the very least given voice. So it's always nifty to sample a time capsule from those days and that's what this vintage and important comic is.
Apparently, this is a scuttled project originally intended to be part of DC's impressive Millennium reprint series from twenty-five years ago. (Those are still remarkable books, and this might boost me to dig them out and give them a proper review.) What this also is, is the return of DC's tabloid "Famous 1st Editon" series from the 70's. In those pre-archives days such books really were a look back at the early days of a medium I adored. This book is no less and in addition to the book itself (in black and white) the reader gets a hefty dose of historical and biographical info on the folks who made this book possible especially the man who created DC Comics -- Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. This one is for the historians out there, those who want to see what it was like.
If you 'd like to read New Fun Comics #1 for yourself, check out this link.
Here are several of those Millenium comics from a quarter century back.
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