Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Edgar Church

DC's Answer to Archie, Edgar Church Copies of Buzzy, Up for Auction

The creation of George Storm for All Funny Comics, Buzzy became DC Comics' first teen humor title, lasting for 77 issues 1944-1958.

It didn't take the rest of the comic book business to introduce more teen humor titles to comics in the wake of MLJ's monster success with Archie.  Archie Andrews first appeared in 1941 in Pep Comics #22, which was followed by the launch of Archie Comics #1 in 1942, which was in turn followed by an entire franchise. The publisher which had until then been called MLJ was renamed Archie Comics in 1946.  In the meantime, DC Comics introduced the teen humor character Buzzy in All Funny Comics #1 in 1943.  Buzzy got his own series the next year, which is considered DC's first teen humor title.  The series lasted for 77 issues 1944-1958.

The title character, Buzzy Brown, was a trumpet-playing, record-collecting teenager sort of in the Harold Teen mold.  The character was the creation of George Storm, a longtime newspaper strip artist best remembered on that front for his Bobby Thatcher strip, syndicated for 15 years by McClure Syndicate.  Bobby Thatcher was reprinted in the earliest issues of All-American Comics, and Storm then went on to create the character the Whip, who appeared in Flash Comics #1-4.  Storm and scripter Al Schwartz stuck with the character for a few issues of the Buzzy title launch, and it was then taken over by several others, primarily Henry Boltinoff.

There are several issues of Buzzy up for auction in the 2024 October 3 – 5 Good Girl Art and Romance Comics Showcase Auction #40269, and two of the issues available here, Buzzy #8 (CGC 9.8) and Buzzy #24, (CGC 8.0) are from the Edgar Church / Mile High pedigree. This comic book pedigree is a collection of almost 15,000 comic books 1937 to 1957 amassed by Denver, Colorado commercial illustrator Edgar Church.  The collection, much of which has been preserved in incredible high grade, has become the stuff of legend since it was discovered by longtime retailer Chuck Rozanski (also known as Bettie Pages) and began to hit the collector market in the late 1970s.  The Church copy of Action Comics #1 is widely considered the most valuable comic book on the planet, and the collection as a whole set the standard for the sale of high-grade Golden Age comic books for decades.  Likewise, copies of key or otherwise important comic books from the Edgar Church pedigree have often been held in private collections, unseen by the market at large, for years or decades.

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