The Comics Census, 1983-1986: Results

by Lawrence Watt-Evans


     This article is the culmination of more than three years of reader-participation research. Starting in March, 1983, I listed supposedly-rare comics in my column in Comics Buyer's Guide and asked readers to report any copies they've seen. The idea is to establish just which really are rare, and which aren't.
      My original list was just eight issues, but from the very first contributors had their own candidates; I added more issues steadily until the list got hopelessly unwieldy. This was probably partly responsible for a decline in reader interest. By the time I decided to wrap the whole thing up, the list included over 1,100 issues.
      Does this huge number of issues mean that I listed every genuinely rare comic book?
      No. Not even close.
      There are, beyond doubt, hundreds, perhaps thousands, that should have been listed, but which I never found room for, or never knew about. I filed away dozens of suggestions, excluding them only because I had reached the limit of what my computer software of the time could readily handle, and I'm quite sure there were plenty that were never even suggested.
      Out of the 1,100+ I did list, a few were eliminated along the way because it was demonstrated to my satisfaction that they either were rare (press proofs, printing mistakes, etc.), or that they weren't rare (more than twenty copies reported). Some were also found to be nonexistent, the result of confusion about titles or numbering. Since I've listed these results in previous articles, they won't all be included again here.
      Looking at these results, a few important overall observations deserve to be made.
      First, I'm absolutely certain that I didn't find most of the existing copies of these 1,100 issues. Most people, even if they read CBG, couldn't be bothered to go through all those lists, let alone to write to me about it if they found something. The fact that about three hundred people did contribute information is pretty amazing. The data I have are only a tiny portion of what's out there; as a rule of thumb, I'd say that if I found more than three or four copies, then there are probably dozens of that issue around; if I found ten or fifteen, there are probably hundreds. If I found twenty or more, there could be thousands. I don't consider much of anything really rare if I have more than two copies reported.
      There are a few exceptions to this, where a particular issue is unusually well-researched -- such as Lucky Fights It Through, where I may well have found every existing copy -- or where the reports I received came from unusual sources, such as the Disney Archives, the Library of Congress, the DC Comics archives, publishers' heirs, the New York Public Library, etc. If the only copies reported are in various libraries and archives, or the publisher's files, as is the case with some of the Spirit sections, for example, then those issues may be scarcer than other issues with the same number of reports.
      And some issues were listed very late in the process, so that they only appeared in print once, or not at all. I've noted these as "inadequate sample" issues; they probably aren't anywhere near as rare as they appear.
      Second, scarcity and price aren't as closely related as most collectors think. The scarcest issues tend to be ones that were published a long time ago, by small companies, and which sold poorly. The most expensive comics tend to be the early superhero comics from major companies, most of which sold quite well -- the same qualities that made them successful when they were new make them sought-after forty or fifty years later.
      There are a few exceptions, but those always involve freakish circumstances of some sort -- the fact that Motion Picture Funnies Weekly wasn't distributed, or that Harvey Kurtzman's first work for EC was something as weird as a giveaway on veneral disease, or whatever. The regular newsstand comics that are now worth thousands or even millions of dollars are not rare. Not Action Comics #1, nor Marvel Comics #1, nor any of the others. They aren't common, but they aren't genuinely rare, either.
      The really rare comics are ideas that didn't work, or badly-distributed last issues from companies going out of business, or concepts with extremely limited appeal, or almost anything that's simply really old.
      If you look over the lists of issues where I received reports of none, or one, or two copies, you'll find that a very high percentage were published before World War II, and mostly before 1938. In those early days comic books didn't sell particularly well, were largely strip reprints, and generally weren't considered worth saving, particularly when the wartime paper drives made a stack of old comics in the attic seem downright unpatriotic.
      You'll also find comics you never heard of, titles nobody remembers and only really dedicated collectors care about.
      Anything from after World War II, or anything with much intrinsic interest, isn't likely to be there. The Census covered a huge number of DC comics, including dozens, maybe hundreds, from the 1950s, but none of those turned out to be really rare. Overstreet lists such titles as Congo Bill or Phantom Stranger as "scarce," but the evidence I've gathered indicates that they aren't really in short supply, but merely in high demand. There are a lot of DC collectors out there. This means that when a DC issue is less common than, say, a typical issue of World's Finest, that people notice, because there are a lot of people looking for it. It will seem scarce, because hundreds of copies are stashed away in established collections, so that it doesn't turn up in the marketplace very often.
      But how many people are looking for The Illustrated Stories of the Operas -- Rigoletto? Or My Personal Problem #4? So these genuine rarities go almost unnoticed.
      After the mid-fifties it appears that there are no rare comics except for giveaways and flukes. Supergear, Vicki #4, and the limited editions of Captain Canuck #4 are the only ones I know of, though I admit not having gone through the entire list carefully. I attribute this to the sharp drop in competition that resulted from so many publishers going out of business in 1954 or 1955, and the rise of collecting as a hobby.
      A curious feature of the census list is the issues that simply don't exist, that were listed in Overstreet or elsewhere by mistake, or because of misunderstandings, or perhaps as copyright protection gimmicks. I'll start with those, and then proceed to the others in ascending order of copies reported, winding up with issues which are definitely not rare.

 

Apparently don't exist:

None reported but probably real:

One of each reported:

Two each reported:

Three reported:

Four each:

Five each:

Six each:

Seven each:

Eight each:

Nine each:

Ten each:

Eleven each:

Twelve each:

Thirteen each:

Fourteen each:

Fifteen each:

Sixteen each:

Seventeen each:

Eighteen each:

Nineteen each:

Twenty or more:

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