Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: golden age, l.b. cole, Star Publications

The Lurid Saga of L.B. Cole's All-Famous Police Cases #11, at Auction

Published Sat, 09 Jul 2022 19:47:09 -0500

Legendary artist L.B. Cole might have thought more about what made comic book covers sell on the newsstands than any other artist of his era. His use of eyeball-searing color and empty space, composition, and cover design makes his covers unique and identifiable among the comics of the period. For some of his cover work at Star Publications, he added some unusual storytelling to the mix. The combination of a border-less image sequence and a lot of explanatory text revealed the premise of one of the interior stories of these comics. With the ominous caption explaining, "He was a small-time crook and very sure of himself, he was going to travel far on the crime road, but he wouldn't budge an inch without the advice of his soothsayer, and her words were… I predict Death," the cover of All-Famous Police Cases #11 is a good example of this technique, and there's an All-Famous Police Cases #11 (Star Publications, 1953) Condition: GD up for auction in the 2022 July 10-11 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122228 from Heritage Auctions.

All-Famous Police Cases #11 featuring an L.B. Cole cover (Star Publications, 1953)

Cole partnered with attorney Gerhard Kramer to form Star Publications in 1949. The company published 49 short-lived series for a total of 279 issues 1949-1954. All-Famous Police Cases lasted 11 issues, its numbering continued from five issues of the title All-Famous Crime. The publisher's titles included horror, humor, romance, westerns, and crime, with True-to-Life Romances lasting the longest at 23 issues. Blue Bolt was perhaps the company's best-known title, having been acquired from Novelty Press, which had published the title since 1940.

All-Famous Police Cases #11 is a particularly tough get compared to most other issues of this series, but there's an All-Famous Police Cases #11 (Star Publications, 1953) Condition: GD up for auction in the 2022 July 10-11 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122228 from Heritage Auctions.

All-Famous Police Cases #11 (Star Publications, 1953) Condition: GD. L. B. Cole skull cover art. Water damage, musty. Overstreet 2021 GD 2.0 value = $22.