MY BEST COMIC BUYS THIS WEEK

On a recent trip to Birmingham city centre, I nipped in to the mighty Nostalgia & Comics. There I found 3 boxes of classic silver & bronze age for sale. After deciding how much I could actually afford to spend, I came away with a variety of great silver age DC..

The first was this great Justice League 'all sorcery' issue, featuring the full length Gardner Fox  story 'The Fantastic Fingers of Felix Faust' - this is a minor classic and has the Justice League pitted against 3 demons under the control of the aforementioned Mr Faust, a great cover and excellent artwork by Mike Sekowsky & Bernard Sachs, see the excellent splash pages above and below.
I love the DC 80 page giants, its a great way to read old stories that would be unaffordable usually and its also really neat to have them contained in one themed issue, this is my fave so far, the fantastic 'Things & Creatures' 80 page Superman

A pretty fantastic issue. I've just finished the 'Creature of a Thousand Disguises' story featuring a monster called Gollo which can change its shape, foxing Superman with its various changes from skyscraper, to steamboat etc.. There is a veritable cavalcade of great monsters to be found in this special, I got it pretty cheap £2.00, as you can see, its not in the best condition, but I love it! The cover is wonderful, give me any silver age comic, full of great artwork and monsters and I'm sold!

Also amongst my buys from Nostalgia were a stash of 'Doom Patrol' comics, not a title I'm familiar with, but I was sold on the great covers, especially the art by Bruno Premiani, and the madness & diversity of the stories, unlike Marvel, DC don't let a lot of soap style worries & problems drag their heroes down, its pretty much straight on with the action.
Another classic I picked up was 'Detective Comics 412'  with a striking Neil Adams cover, this is an issue I've been looking for for a while now, only to be constantly outbid on E bay whenever one turned up.

There's a little corner damage to the bottom left, but overall, a great looking issue and a pretty good bargain at £4.00.
'Challengers of the Unknown'  is another title I wasn't that familar with, being a total Marvel fanatic for years, I missed out on a lot of DC comics, thinking they were never that great, how wrong I was. Doom patrol is excellent, especially this recently aquired issue, not in the greatest of condition, this has never bothered me, as I like to read them and show them to people. This issue features the artwork of the great Jack Kirby who, along with Steve Ditko & Neal Adams, is one of the giants of the comic book industry.

Great Kirby Monster!

Splash Page.

I love the Kirby villian 'Karnak' pictured below, in part 3 of the story, he duplicates himself using an ancient vial, the panels are bigger than the usual Marvel size so you get to see more detail.

Demon From the Depths -  part 2 of  the story.

I love seeing the great ads for stuff we could never get in the UK, these ads for ghosts & monsters always fascinated me as a child..

Another great issue below, featuring the Sea Devils, this time with art by Bob Brown.

The Fantastic Sponge Man