Lost Comics

[Kid Monster]

Forgive me if this has been brought up before...

Movie buffs often claim that 50% of all films made before 1950 are lost forever. Old silents got broken down for the nitrates for munitions during WWI, nitrate prints tended to explode into flames and take whole collections down with them, studios just threw out old films for more space, etc. Movie buffs spend alot of time obssessing over films like London After Midnight, hoping against hope that a single copy survives somewhere.

Today, I just finished reading David Hajdu's devastating THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE, about the anti-comics hysteria of the 1950s. According to Hajdu, this grim period was far worse than previous accounts had led me to think. Particularly disturbing were the accounts of organized, city-wide burnings of comic books. Millions of comics. In philistine, mob-rage spectacles to match any book-burning in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.

This got me to thinking... are there any famous "Lost" comics? Golden-Age comics that we know were published at one time, but that have no known copies existing today? Comics erased from history forever by WWII paper drives, book-burnings, and the simple fact that at the time they were considered disposable junk entertainment that no one thought worth saving? There are some early comics that are very, very rare, but are there any noteworthy ones that no longer exist in any form?

Just morbidly curious.

[Drusilla lives!]

Off hand I'd venture to guess that almost any comic that is listed as "scarce" in the Overstreet price guide is likely on the endangered species list. What is worse is the original art situation... some companies just trashed the work after a time. :(

[Scott Shaw!]

I've never heard of any "lost" comics, but after over fifty years -- jeez, that's half a century! -- of collecting funnybooks, I'm always surprised that every once in awhile I come across a comic book that was published after, say, 1956 or so that I've never actually seen or even heard of before (for example, Gold Key's MOD LOVE.)

And occasionally, a box full of a supposedly "scarce", high-priced comic surfaces (usually found in a warehouse) and suddenly, it ain't so scarce -- or high-priced -- any more!

So, like Sasquatch or Raymond Burr's wives, so-called "lost" comics certainly may exist (or have existed) even though no one has actually seen a copy!

Aloha,

Scott!

[Drusilla lives!]

Good point. Once they're lost, no one will know they're gone. This would be true of Golden Age comics... before people started to seriously collect comics (late 1960's). Nevertheless I think the question is still a valid one. Some comics have the potential to disappear, or for some reason are so rare they might as well be considered "lost." And as you say, that goes not just for Golden Age books. I'm still looking for Blazing Combat #1... and I'm told the anthology (sold via mail order in the late 70's) is extremely rare (I know it exists, since I ordered one back then and still have it).

And lets not forget the oversized WHAM-O giant comic. Much like the dodo it has the great potential to leave this earth for good IMO. I had two of them at one point... both sadly disintegrated into dust.

[spoon_jenkins]

I'd guess it would be much more difficult for a comic book to become "lost" than for a film to become lost. A big difference is that there would be a larger supply of copies of each comic than prints of each film. For each comic, you need to produce about one copy per reader (although siblings/friends may share comics). But for a film, one print can be suffice for the many people who pass through each theater. In fact, I think I've heard in early days a movie wouldn't premiere everywhere at the same time. Some theaters, rather than getting their own copy of a movie, would get a copy from another theater after the movie finished its run in the other theater. It's much easier for a film to become extinct because of the smaller starting population.

[KidCommando]

Short Answer: Yes, there are comics that are suspected to not exist.

Long Answer: ...tomorrow...I'm tired.

[MichikoS]

I would echo spoon's sentiment that comics, printed in the MILLIONS for mass entertainment purposes, are much less likely to become "lost" as opposed to the dozens (or fewer) prints of auteur and specialty films that were made. Remember, too, that comics began life wholly as a commercial product, and were part of an organized system of mass production and distribution. There were no such things as "indie" or "self-published" comics in the early days, as we understand those terms today. Comics were disposable, mass entertainment. Paper, even cheap newsprint, is far hardier than film stock, especially the nitrate film base used in the earliest day of cinema.

So-called "ashcans" and promotional comics are the exception, of course. Some may have never been commercially distributed. According to Overstreet, there are exactly eight copies in existence of the legendary 1939 Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1 with the first appearance of Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner. Closer to our time, in 1978, there was Canceled Comics Cavalcade #1 &2. Supposedly only 35 sets of these comics were produced, for copyright purposes.

Michi

[Drusilla lives!]

I would echo spoon's sentiment that comics, printed in the MILLIONS for mass entertainment purposes, are much less likely to become "lost" as opposed to the dozens (or fewer) prints of auteur and specialty films that were made. Remember, too, that comics began life wholly as a commercial product, and were part of an organized system of mass production and distribution.


I'd say you are right in the sense that particular issues of a given comic title will survive, but not all issues of that title will. Yes, comics are produced in the "millions" in the aggregate. And it is probable that when considered in total, an "example" issue can be found of any title. But can that be said of a particular issue of that title?


... Comics were disposable, mass entertainment. Paper, even cheap newsprint, is far hardier than film stock, especially the nitrate film base used in the earliest day of cinema.


This is why some comics are "lost," they were considered disposable and printed on the worse kind of paper imaginable, pulp. It's a shame that the film stock of many great movies rot away in studio vaults, but early comics (and even some more recent ones) face the same problem from decay due to neglect. It's due (thankfully) to the change in attitude on the part of people toward comics that has made "lost" comics less of a problem than the problem of "lost" film works.

[Kid Monster]

Short Answer: Yes, there are comics that are suspected to not exist.

Long Answer: ...tomorrow...I'm tired.

More, please!

[Kid Monster]

I've never heard of any "lost" comics, but after over fifty years -- jeez, that's half a century! --

Slightly off-topic, but just out of curiosity, is that fifty straight years, or, like me, do you have 2-5 year periods here and there in your life where you temporarily got out of comics (For me: 1) In the 90's because so much of comics then sucked IMHO (and because the "Heroes World" debacle screwed up availiability of Marvels in my area, so even if they put out something I would be willing to try it was a crapshoot to actually get it) and 2) Currently, because I don't have a real comics shop anywhere nearby). I'm not trying to nitpick or anything, just curious if other long-time collectors follow the same pattern.

Fifty years is pretty darn impressive either way.

[Scott Shaw!]

That's over fifty years straight. I'm 57 and started "reading" comics as a toddler, teaching myself to read before I entered kindergarten. By the time I was 7, I already had a collector's mentality -- UNCLE SCROOGE, DONALD DUCK, WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES and RUFF AND REDDY were all must-haves, as well as TUROK, SON OF STONE and any other comic with a dinosaur or gorilla on the cover. By the next year, I entered my Mort Weisinger phase, and added other new Hanna-Barbera titles to my list.

Aloha,

Scott!

[Kid Monster]

That's over fifty years straight.

Wow, very impressive!

For weird personal reasons, I chuckle whenever anyone mentions TUROK, SON OF STONE: As a kid in the early 70's, the only place I ever saw that comic was in the stacks of kid's books at various local barbershops when I went in to get my hair cut -I never actually saw it new for sale anywhere. I just assumed with my goofy child-logic that it was specially printed just for barbershops.

To this day I associate poor Turok with haircuts.

[MDG]

Richard Lupoff's book "The Comic Book Killer" centered on an academic who was doing a paper on "Extinct publications"--publications where no example had survived.

I'd think that there are far fewer "lost" comics than pulp magazines, big little books, and "popular" magazines. Even comic strips--I think there have been cases where publishers putting together strip collections haven't been able to find certain episodes (I'm pretty sure this happened with the Johnny Comet collection).

[TheHistorian]

The Gerber Photo-Journals are probably our best source to confirm that something exists. Almost everything is in there. And of the few that aren't, many have been found over the years. The ones that are still missing... who knows?