The Big Sixteen

Good goggley woggely, look at the entertainment a dollar-sixty cents could buy for a kid in just one month's time, from just one publisher back in the 1940s. What a great time to be a kid!

The Mightiest Heroes of Our Time

When I was just a wee lad, starting to cruise the DC universe, this house ad popped up in one of the lesser titles, and I just went all popcorn. I had to have it! Well, none of my wee friends read comics and there were no back issue catalogues or stores. Even the drugstore didn't carry the JLA title until #9 , the first JLA I bought off the spinners (the cool origin issue which I read a gajillion times). I only finally got to read this issue once I bought the hardcover JLA Archives many years later.

This ad was for JLA #1, yet the actual cover had no number on it. A 1st issue DC comic, with no #1 emblazoned on it? JUST IMAGINE!

Rampage Against Crime

Grand Adventure

What a grand adventure style Bob Lubbers brought to Fiction House comix back in the golden age—full of DANGER, MYSTERY, ACTION, & ROMANCE (and I'm not kidding).

The golden age was so much more than just superheroes. I love the sense of believability and the depth of space and perspective on covers like this:

Be Sure to Get Your Copy Today!

And geez, for just one thin dime . . .

65 Cents

It's numbing to think, in any given week of his WWII army life, what my dad could've bought at the PX for a measly 65 cents. And for all I know he did, read 'em and tossed 'em. Of course I know that some weeks he might've been tied up, what with combat and all.

Still, geez, 65 cents.