Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alex Schomburg, Black Terror, Ned Pines

Filling in the Blanks for Schomburg's Exciting Comics #28, at Auction

Exciting Comics #28's Black Terror cover by Alex Schomburg is one of the 44 fabled Gerber "white space" covers.

Published Thu, 18 Sep 2025 02:37:03 -0500

Article Summary

Exciting Comics #28 features a wartime Alex Schomburg Black Terror cover tied to key 1943 World War II events.
This issue is one of the 44 famed Gerber "white space" covers, adding to its legendary status among collectors.
The Gerber Scarcity Index rates Exciting Comics #28 as an 8, indicating fewer than 20 known copies exist.
The comic's stories reflect the global nature of World War II, with settings from the UK to Egypt and the Pacific.

By mid-1943, the comic book industry was nearing its commercial peak for the Golden Age, as superheroes served as the perfect method of patriotic escapism during the war. And as we've discussed here before, publishers frequently collaborated with government agencies like the Writers' War Board to ensure their stories supported the national cause while hoping to maintain their access to paper continued as sales remained strong. Exciting Comics #28 reflects a range of recent developments in the war effort of mid-1943. The Alex Schomburg cover might be seen as a reaction to Black May. The lead Black Terror story is set in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, reinforcing the importance of the UK's role as the staging ground for the eventual invasion of Europe. Crash Carter, Air Cadet found himself in air combat over Egypt, perhaps reflecting the successful end of the United States' Egypt–Libya Campaign. Another story features naval aviator the character Larry North battling the Japanese fleet, acknowledging the ongoing war in the Pacific, where key battles like the Battle of Vella Gulf were being fought as this issue was on newsstands.

Exciting Comics #28 (Nedor, 1943).An illustration from Exciting Comics #28 shows a superhero in a black outfit with a skull emblem, wielding a chain underwater. He faces an antagonist who is underwater, screaming, while another character holds a weapon and bubbles surround them. — Exciting Comics #28 (Nedor, 1943)

Exciting Comics #28 might be most famous among collectors as a "Gerber white space" issue. In 1989, comic book dealer, collector, and inventor of the Mylar Snug Ernie Gerber published his original two-volume The Photo-Journal Guide To Comic Books, which showed photographs of 21,000 comic books from the Golden Age era, along with his informed opinion as to their relative rarity as a longtime participant in the business of comic book collecting. The eleven-point Gerber Scarcity Index rated comics from common to nonexistent, with Gerber 11 meaning known to be published but with no copies known to exist, Gerber 10 designated as less than 5 known copies, a Gerber 9 meant to indicate 6-10 known copies, and a Gerber 8 indicative of less than 20 known copies, for example. Additionally, Gerber could not track down 44 of the 21,000 covers he wanted to show in time for publication, and had to print those entries with blank white spaces where the cover images were meant to be shown. These 44 comics developed a mystique of their own.

Gerber rated Exciting Comics #28 as an 8 on his scale, and additionally, it was one of the 44 missing covers. As of this writing, there are 28 copies of this issue on the CGC census, with only 24 of those Universal unrestored copies. A tough issue from an important moment in history and featuring a great Schomburg cover, there's an Exciting Comics #28 (Nedor, 1943) CGC GD+ 2.5 Off-white pages up for auction in the 2025 September 18 Golden Age Comics Century Showcase Auction II at Heritage Auctions.