Posted in: ComicConnect Sponsored, Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: golden age, marvel, Marvel Mystery Comics

A Complete Run of Marvel Mystery Comics, Up for Auction

Completists and run collectors are a vanishing breed among vintage comic book collectors.  To state the obvious, it's vastly more difficult to find and afford a complete run of a substantial Golden Age comic book series than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.  Golden Age collectors tend to pick their shots these days, focusing on particular covers or keys, or buys of opportunity.  All of which serves to make ComicConnect's offering of a complete run of the foundational Marvel comic book series, Marvel Comics #1 plus Marvel Mystery Comics #2-92 even more impressive than the sum of its individual issues.  This run from a single collector is also the top set of Marvel Mystery Comics on the CGC registry.  It might be a very long time, if ever, before we see a complete set of Marvel Mystery Comics from a single collector sold at a single auction again.

This series, which started out titled as Marvel Comics with issue #1 but was renamed as Marvel Mystery Comics with issue #2 for reasons that have yet to be unearthed (but I suspect someday will be), was Timely/Marvel publisher Martin Goodman's entry into the comic book business.  American comic book history would have played out in a very different way without the launch of this series.  It also happens to be one of my favorite comic book series of all time, so I'm just going to list my personal top 10 issues from this historically important series:

1. Issue #92: Not just an origin retold for the Human Torch, but an attempted reboot of the character. The end of the Marvel Golden Age of Superheroes seems to have started happening before the publisher was ready for it.  Marvel Mystery #92 contains a retelling of the Human Torch's origin with a few changes (most notably, the Human Torch and Professor Horton do not part ways on bad terms at the end of the origin, as they do in Marvel Comics #1), and the ending blurb of the story in this issue promised, "More about the early days of the Torch in the next issue of Marvel Comics!"  Of course, that issue would never come. What would come next was something else entirely — Marvel Mystery Comics would be renamed Marvel Tales, becoming part of the publisher going all in on the horror genre.
2. Issue #13:  Well known as the first appearance of the Golden Age version of the Vision by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, but vastly underappreciated for the fact that John Buscema's legendary cover of the first appearance of the Vision we know and love today on Avengers #57 (cover-dated October 1968) is a clear homage to the Vision title splash of Marvel Mystery Comics #13.
3. Issue #82: The origin and first appearance of Namora, with a great cover heralding her debut.
4. Issue #84: A cover by Syd Shores, one of the most eye-catching post-WWII covers of the run, with the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Captain America, and the Blonde Phantom all on the cover.
5. Issue #34: The lead feature of this issue is hands down my favorite Golden Age Marvel comic book story.  It's an explicit admission of the power of WWII-era propaganda in comic books; as the story mentions, "it's amazing and unbelievable what comic book propaganda can do."  This saga is also a meta-story in which the Human Torch and Toro visit Torch creator Carl Burgos in his apartment to give him the idea for this story.  Burgos gets the ok from Marvel/Timely publisher Martin Goodman, and then the staff of Funnies, Inc is also shown getting involved.  Once finished, a large quantity of the print run of the issue is then shipped to England, where the Royal Air Force then air-drops it into Germany.  As German citizens read the comic, it has the desired effect, and the Nazis become laughing stocks.  Enraged, Hitler orders Nazi agents in New York City to retaliate against Burgos.  Burgos later meets Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett at the corner drug store to celebrate the success of the comic but is served a poisoned soda by an undercover Nazi agent.  The Human Torch and Toro capture the Nazi agents involved, and Burgos is shown in the hospital having survived the attack.
6. Issue #36:  Perhaps my favorite Alex Schomburg cover of the Marvel Mystery Comics series, and that's saying something.  The cutaway labeled diagram style is sort of a callback to old-school science and science fiction illustration.
7. Issue #26:  Might be the best Sub-Mariner cover in this run. Also by Schomburg.
8. Issue #49:  Origin and first appearance of Miss America, a character with a long legacy at Marvel.  The character got her own series, Miss America Comics, the next year. Interestingly, with issue #2 of the series, the title was rebooted into Miss America Magazine, a magazine-format publication with photo covers that targetted teenage girls as a readership, and which was a mix of comics, fiction, features about celebrities, subjects of interest to teen girls, and advice columns.  In addition to its Miss America comic feature, issue #2 debuted Patsy Walker in her own comic serial.  Publisher Martin Goodman's wife Jean Goodman was supervising editor of the magazine.  The title returned to comic book format in 1953, and lasted through 1958, though without the character Miss America and with Patsy Walker as the star.  In the modern era, America Chavez became the second character to use the Miss America name in 2011.
9. Issue #9:  I've discussed this one at length in another post recently, but as Marvel Senior Vice President of Publishing Tom Brevoort has stated, "It set the template for the eventual Marvel Universe, a world in which all of the assorted heroes and villains live together in the same shared space."
10. Marvel Comics #1:  The first Marvel comic book, and one of the most important and valuable comics of the Golden Age.

But really, there's so much good stuff here it's possible to come up with a substantially different top 10 list for the title than mine, and I know many collectors have other favorites here.  It's not every day that you see a complete run of this important title up for sale at once, so be sure to check out this Marvel Comics #1 plus Marvel Mystery Comics #2-92 run ending tomorrow at ComicConnect.

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