Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: heritage auctions, ogden whitney, Romantic Adventures

Ogden Whitney's Blues for a Songbird, Romantic Adventures at Auction

Ogden Whitney's artwork plus the mystery of the TrueVision 3D process, all wrapped up in a rather strange 1950s ACG romance comic book.

Romantic Adventures #48 is a book of its time, that is for sure. Every gimmick in the book was used here to sell this one: a singing cover, black borders, and even 3D! Really all they needed was to let people know that Ogden Whitney was responsible for the cover. That should have been enough to get people to buy it back then. Really though, the question looking at the cover has got to be, what exactly is Truevision 3D? It says right there that there is no glasses, so how exactly did they pull that one off?

Essentially, the art is separated into three planes: a foreground plane colored with the four-color process of that era and true blacks sometimes drawn to break out of the panel borders, a midground that has less use of color and soft black or gray line art, and a background that is often just gray line art.  The non-black line art enhances the illusion because it has a perceptible line screen effect due to the coarser line screen of that era.  The entire page border is pure black to the trim, rather than white as usual.  It's a mildly interesting effect, though of course it doesn't pass for 3D and is nothing like the Anaglyph 3D effect that uses red and blue glasses.  Nevertheless, the ACG comics of this period are an interesting artifact of the 3D boom of the 1950s and there's a nice copy of Romantic Adventures #48 up for auction in the  2024 February 29 – March 1 Golden Age Romance Featuring Fox Comics & Comic Art Showcase Auction #40258.

What Kind Of Romantic Adventures Need To Be In 3D Anyway?

Romantic Adventures #48 (ACG, 1954) CGC FN 6.0 Off-white to white pages. 3-D effect "Truevision" stories. Ogden Whitney cover. Ken Landau and Bob Forgione art. This is the highest-graded of the four copies currently on CGC's census, and the book has sold for almost 10 times its guide value over the past two years. This is the nicer of the two copies we've encountered so far. Overstreet 2023 FN 6.0 value = $48. CGC census 1/24: 1 in 6.0, none higher.

Man, it is nuts that there are only four graded copies on the CGC census. To get the highest-graded copy is pretty epic as well.  Whitney's art is always telling a story and draws your eyes in.

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