Posted in: Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: gardner fox, justice league, mike sekowsky, Silver Age, starro the conqueror

Brave and the Bold #28, First Justice League, Goes for Record $810,000

The debut of the Justice League of America in Brave and the Bold #28 has just gone for a record $810,000 at auction.

In perhaps the biggest surprise of today's session of the 2024 January 11 – 14 Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction #7358 at Heritage Auctions, Brave and the Bold #28 CGC NM+ 9.6 and the sole highest-graded copy has just gone for a record $810,000, far outdistancing the previous mark of $120,000 set in 2013 by a CGC 9.2 copy.  Notably, no copy higher graded than CGC 9.4 had ever traded hands at public auction before during the CGC era. This issue by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, with a cover by Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson, is the first appearance of the Justice League of America and Starro the Conqueror.

Beyond the obvious inspiration of the DC Comics Golden Age's Justice Society of America, the influences behind this key DC Comics issue are fascinating. Justice League of America co-creator Gardner Fox was a well-known fan of HP Lovecraft, as well as a fan of other fiction from the pulp era during which he grew up. It's pretty well-known that the villain of The Brave and the Bold #28, Starro the Conqueror, was inspired by the story Tarrano the Conquerer by Ray Cummings, and also by Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Sinister cosmic menaces and the other-worldly dimensions they came from made their way into their into Gardner Fox's DC Comics work quite often.  Fox is also credited with starting the Multiverse "Infinite Earths" concept at DC in Flash #123 from 1961, for example.

And there's plenty of Lovecraft Country to be seen in The Brave and the Bold #28, even beyond Starro. For example, let's take a look at one of the main locations depicted in this comic, which would have lasting importance in the DCU: Happy Harbor.  A Rhode Island town of some size, Happy Harbor is established here as the home of the Justice League's original headquarters. It's a place where strange things often happen, and the home of some highly unusual people.  And of course, it's a town with a harbor in Rhode Island. Created by a writer who is very obviously a huge Lovecraft fan, this can only mean that Happy Harbor is the real city in Rhode Island that matches that description exactly, and by no coincidence, it was HP Lovecraft's hometown.  The Justice League of America's original home base was thus originally located in Providence by HPL fan Gardner Fox. The team's actual base of operations is described as a cavern in this issue, and is shortly thereafter named the "Secret Sanctum." Sometime later, it is described as a cavern secreted inside a mountain nearby Happy Harbor. This can definitively be identified as Jerimoth Hill, which is a few miles away from Providence.

Gardner Fox would pay homage to HP Lovecraft and other pulp authors throughout his career in comics, but the shadowy origins of the Justice League of America might just be the most strange and unknown example of this in all of his comics work.

The Brave and the Bold #28 Justice League of America (DC, 1960) CGC NM+ 9.6 Off-white to white pages. The debut of the iconic Justice League of America! And the scarcity in this condition is something we can't emphasize enough. The last time we even had a 9.2 copy was 15 years ago, and we had people flying in from all over the country just to bid on that. Nor has the census report changed much in the ensuing years — this is the only 9.6 with none graded higher, there is just one 9.4 and only three 9.2s. The issue also features the first appearances of Starro the Conqueror (who made his big screen debut in The Suicide Squad feature film) and Snapper Carr, and incidentally it is the first-ever comic book cover appearance of Aquaman who had been appearing in stories for 20 years at that point! The cover and story art are by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson. This issue currently holds the esteemed #8 position on Overstreet's Top 50 Silver Age Comics list. Overstreet 2023 NM- 9.2 value = $94,000. CGC census 12/23: 1 in 9.6, none higher.

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