Introducing the Bottorff Comic Backs Price Guide & Checklist 2025 Edition

 Years ago, Ray Bottorff, Jr and I were members of the Grand Comics Database, and wrote a paper on the origins of the group. Years have gone by since we've worked on anything together, even though he lives about 10 miles from me. Recently I reached out to him with a question about his longtime bibliography which he's been working on for a long time. We chatted on the phone for almost an hour and put together a version for distribution on the Internet Archive. Here's the link, and an excerpt from Ray's introduction.

 The Bottorff Comic Backs Price Guide & Checklist 2025 Edition
Ray Bottorff, Jr.
Greenbelt, MD: Ray Bottorff, Jr.
https://archive.org/details/the-bottorff-comic-backs-price-guide-checklist-2025-edition

What Exactly Is a ComicBack?

Basically, it is a neologism meaning a cartoon or comic related mass-market-sized paperback. In 2001, I was going through my two boxes of comic paperbacks and discovered that no one had done anything cataloging them. A little bit of brainstorming later, I came up with the term for them, ComicBacks. 

I decided to record all printings and editions that I could. I began with the obvious choices, comic strip and comic book reprint paperbacks, which are still the vast bulk of my listings. Then it became clear I needed to add new and reprint cartoon paperbacks. Then prose novels of comic characters which had been in vogue then. With a bit of mission creep, that was followed by prose novels of those proto-superheroes, pulp hero reprint paperbacks, which expanded to include new paperback stories of those characters, and then new prose novels about non-comic originating superheroes or superhero themed paperbacks. Then I added movie and TV show novelizations based on comic characters. Dime Novel hero reprints joined the list. I was adding joke books with cartoon or cartoon-like illustrations and paperback books about the history of all of the above and animation. That led to adding animated-related paperbacks and paperback comic book price guides. As I write this, there are over 9400 entries in my ComicBacks listings, with probably hundreds, if not thousands of titles and printings, to still identify and add to this list.

 

Flea Market Finds, with some modern bootlegs

As regular readers of the blog know, I look for comics and cartoon oddities, especially at antique shops and flea markets. Here's this weekend's haul, with hi-res scans of some to come on Flickr later, and donation of the postcards to the Library of Congress later this summer.

  A flyer from the Dunes casino is Las Vegas - is this by Frank Frazetta?

 

 

A 1938 tearsheet by Jimmy Swinnerton of Canyon Kiddies. I don't usually buy tearsheets, but it was a dollar. I'm no purist though; I tearsheet the newspaper and New Yorker regularly.

A Disney World postcard, probably circa the 1970s

 

 

...and a few I didn't care about but bought to get a deal... 

but this one is interesting...

 

 

It's a stupid pun, and not a great drawing, but the reverse of the card says, "This is an original etching by W.M. Standing Noted Indian Artist." More research is needed, but not on a Sunday night.

 

 

 

 

This was the card that caught my interest.  It's signed H. Empie and credited to Empie Kartoon Kards in Arizona. Again, more research is needed.

 

Another dumb scatological cartoon, only of interest for the the reverse noting "Not for mailing. Suitable for framing." By who? I guess you could put this under doctor cartoons (aka graphic medicine) though.

 

 

A weird 19th-century trade card "Playing Bank President Dining with a Wall St Bull." selling crackers and cakes in Reading, PA

 

 

 

 

Another trade card, and I think this is a gag cartoon, "A Long Tramp." It's advertising H.F. Brammer  Manufacturing Co. of Davenport, IA which would sell you a washing machine, refrigerator, and step ladder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Percosi, a book, in Italian, which I don't read, about Giorgio Cavazzano. 

 

 

A truly lovely #37 issue of Marvel Fanfare by Charles Vess, which I bought new, but couldn't say no to a second time. Marvel should really reprint his work for them.

 

 

A reading copy of Sidekicks, a graphic novel by Dan Santat, of more interest after I saw him speak this year. 

 

I originally bought some of these Bob & Bobette British reprints of Willy Vandersteen's Suske and Wiske in the 1980s. They're lovely, stupidly fun comics. I couldn't remember which ones I had so picked three that seemed unfamiliar.

 

 

 

 

 

Another Herblock cover for Time magazine. this time of Khrushchev and Castro visiting New York in 1960.

 

 

A couple of little books of military gag cartoons that need more research. Prost by Niles (above), and You've Had It (below)

 

 

 Some American comic books...

 

 

 

The anti-Nixon cover of this has fascinated me for years. I think that's Murphy Anderson art. 

 

Abbie an' Slats by Raeburn ... a successful comic strip, now completely forgotten. 

 

 

 

 

Two issues of Titan's Undersea Agent, which I think was in the THUNDER Agents universe, back when starting a new comics universe was really rare. The art in one of them is by Frank Robbins, and definitely not Wally Wood.  

 

 

I almost certainly have this Weird Wonder Tales 19 already, but I'm a sucker for character introductions (or at least I was when they were rarer), and it's a Kirby cover.

 

Speaking of Kirby, Our Fighting Forces 161-162 featuring the Losers had Kirby interiors but Ernie Chan and Joe Kubert covers. 162 sees Kirby returning to his perennial comics interest in kid gangs. As you'd expect in the Silver Age, the covers misrepresented the stories. The story in 161 is a particularly demented story of a dream-haunted British soldier 

 

 

This is a seriously beat-up copy of second issue of the Marvel Treasury-sized reprint of the first Star Wars movie adaptation. Actually, it's a reprint of a reprint because it's Whitman's version which were usually sold in discount stores, aka Five and Dimes. Oddly enough, I think these really did become collector's items.

I bought these children's stamps when they came out years ago because an argument could be made that Seuss and Falconer were cartoonists. Again, it was a dollar. I'll find a stamp collector friend who needs it.

And I got some 3-D stuff too.

 

 

This Best Dad in the Universe mug shows how much Superman's iconography has penetrated the world. 

 

 

An Avengers Endgame metal popcorn bucket for when they could be re-used as trashcans and weren't the head of Deadpool or Galactus. 

 

 

A couple of the 1970s Sunday Funnies drinking glasses featuring Brenda Starr and  Terry and the Pirates. I think these were promos for the NY Daily News. 

Something not bought (it happens) - 2 posters signed by Joe Quesada. I really enjoyed The Ray, but who has the room. 

 

And finally the modern bootlegs. Green Kush marijuana is probably not a licensed Green Lantern product, and I'm also thinking that Kevin, while an excellent firework, isn't really part of the official Minion merchandise. I love a good counterfeit though.

Gib Crockett's original art, ties of friendship, and the ephemeralness of editorial cartooning

by Mike Rhode

 I was looking up information on Gib Crockett after buying the FDR drawing previously posted here. It led me down a rabbit hole, as cartooning history often does. My previous posts on him* are barely worth linking to.

This drawing** popped up in my search: Gib Crockett Washington Star Cartoonist Signed Humorous Sketch Surgeon & Nurse - it was very reasonably priced and hit two of my interests - DC cartoonists and medicine. The description read in part, 

 This humorous sketch, drawn in pencil by Gib Crockett (1912-2000), political cartoonist for the Washington Star, was a gift to my grandfather (the "Walter" mentioned in the caption). Gib Crockett and my grandfather were friends and played squash together. My grandfather was a member of the University Club in Washington, DC. and passed away in 1987. I do not know when this was given to my grandfather. 

I reached out to the seller, who told me it was dedicated to his grandfather, Walter M. Macomber, and wrote, " I'm so glad that this has gone to a good home where it will be appreciated. My grandfather lived on Arlington Ridge Road up until the 1960s, so it's going home."

I asked if he had any more information, but "All I know for sure is that my grandfather played competitive squash at the University Club, up until he was in his 80’s. He used to play Gib Crockett, even though Gib was younger. How much of a friendship outside of the University Club existed, I am not sure."

image from eBay

 Crockett was one of the major political cartoonists in DC, working at the Washington Star alongside Clifford Berryman, and his son Jim Berryman as a sports cartoonist. He moved to editorial cartooning in 1948, and when he retired he was replaced by Pat Oliphant.  

Crockett is largely unremembered today, and he doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.  A nice essay by Marjorie Wedderburn, "Gib Crockett: DC Editorial Cartoonist"  talks about her family connection through her great aunt and uncle, similar to this eBay seller, although they appear to have had a much deeper friendship.

Syracuse University Library has a small Gib Crockett Cartoons Collection. The Library of Congress has original art, but you need to visit to see anything more than a thumbnail.

His WaPo obituary is at "Editorial Cartoonist Gibson Crockett; Drew for Washington Evening Star," Washington Post February 20, 2000, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2000/02/20/editorial-cartoonist-gibson-crockett/2eef05a5-0218-4882-9fc1-324f8c7b97ba/  For the collector like me, it noted, "In addition to his editorial cartoons, Mr. Crockett illustrated the covers of the program for the Army-Navy football game for 41 years until 1984." I'm going to try to avoid pursuing them... space is too tight and live is too short.

Mr. Macomber seems to have been an interesting man as well. An architect and architectural historian, he worked on Mount Vernon archeology, the renovation of the Old Fairfax Courthouse, and the State Department's Diplomatic Reception Rooms. He served on the Commission of Fine Arts, and his papers are at Colonial Williamsburg. ... well except for this cartoon that I'll be glad to own until I pass it on to the next owner.

*I don't seem to have followed up writing about Gib Crockett tumblers, and 18 years later, I have no idea what I was thinking about. 

**Hi-res scans in color and b&w are now available.

Secret History of Comics - Ephemera Finds in TN

 One of the things I like to do is wander around antique stores and junk shops. Here's some stuff I found in Tennessee last month.

This is a Herblock cover caricaturing Art Buchwald for Newsweek that I didn't know existed, so I was quite surprised by it.

This appears to be an advertising card for Union Pacific Tea from the latter half of the nineteenth century. It's being donated to the Library of Congress soon.

This matchbook looked like a New Yorker cartoonist to me so I reached out to historian/cartoonist Michael Maslin:

Maslin wrote back, "Not all of the faces, but a few (figs a&b), look like Steig's early work. The fellow extreme lower right most especially (fig. a) . But I'm not confident enough to say it is Steig's work."

fig. a

fig. b

Beetle Bailey original comic strip 9/13/1993. 

Note that the dealer thought it was a print, and not the original, and priced it accordingly.

A Buck Rogers post-production mini-poster by Dave Perillo that's being donated to Library of Congress.

Three British digest-sized comic books that will be donated to the Library of Congress comic book collection. The cover photos have been added to the Grand Comics Database already.

WorldCat doesn't list any copies in the United States, and almost none worldwide. When Randy Scott was at Michigan State's comic book collection, I would feed material such as this to them.

Love Story Picture Library #1259

Star Love Stories #591

Love Story Picture Library #1254

World War II cartoon postcards are easy to find, but the antique mall was waiting 

on me to close so I felt compelled to buy something.

Note the dental drill, for graphic medicine fans.