Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: action comics, dc comics, golden age, Lamont Larson

The History Behind Lamont Larson's Action Comics #16, Up for Auction

Vintage comic books are more than just the sum of their contents; they're also a historical record of our culture. The very best collections (often denoted as comic book pedigree collections) help us understand what the world was like when these comics were new. Provenance has always been important to serious comic book collectors, and the Lamont Larson Pedigree is one of the best examples of why this is true.  Lamont Larson (1927-2020) purchased more than 1,000 comic books at Creutz Drug Store in Wausa, Nebraska from 1936-1941, and his collection has subsequently become one of the most famous, sought after, and historically important comic book pedigree collections ever assembled.  Larson comic books often reside in private comic book collections for years if not decades, and are always highly sought after when they do hit the market.  There's a rare chance to get an early Action Comics issue from Lamont Larson's collection with this Action Comics #16 Larson Pedigree – Incomplete (DC, 1939) CGC Qualified VF- 7.5 Off-white to white pages is up for auction at the 2022 March 27-28 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122213 from Heritage Auctions.

Brought to market by dealer Joe Tricarichi in the 1980s, Lamont Larson's collection became famous and recognizable because his name was written on the cover of many of his comic books.  The collection became even more historically important when historian and collector Jon Berk was able to track down Larson based on a coupon filled out in Larson's copy of All-Star Comics #1 which gave an address of Wausa, Nebraska.  Berk eventually spoke to Larson and wrote an article about him and the place where he got his comics in Overstreet's Gold and Silver Quarterly #6 (Oct.-Dec. 1994).  From this starting point, the vintage comics community was able to connect with the historical details of this collection and to Lamont Larson himself, who was a guest of honor at San Diego Comicon in 2005.

From the information that Larson was able to provide, a universe full of details unfolded surrounding the context of his purchase of the comic books in this collection.  For example, he bought these books at the Creutz Drug Store in Wausa, Nebraska.  According to the Nebraska Historic Buildings Survey, Creutz Drug Store was established in Wausa in 1889 and apparently it was run by successive generations of the Creutz family for over a century.  There is still a Creutz Drug Store in Wausa to this day, it appears.  The family took the drug store business very seriously over the decades, and various members of the Creutz family were noted to be attending industry conferences or otherwise garnering mentions in trade journals such as The Northwestern Druggist.   It was Fred Creutz, the son of founder P.G. Creutz, who was running the business in Lamont Larson's day and who suggested to Lamont that they develop what today we would call a pull box system of sorts. According to Berk, Larson recollected that Creutz told him, "Well, I tell you what. We'll put them away and put your name on them…and when you want to come in and get them, they'll be here."

Fred Creutz was known to be an advocate of just that kind of service over the years to his small-town customers, whom he considered his personal friends.  Furthermore, The Northwestern Druggist quoted Creutz as noting that the shorter hours of small-town business life "proved a factor in enabling him to get and keep good clerks."  Such was certainly the case for longtime Creutz Drug Store clerk Tryg Hagen (sometimes also spelled Tryge or Trygve), who listed his occupation as clerk in a drug store for United States Censuses from 1920 to 1940.  When Berk talked to later-generation Creutz Drug Store operators Norman and Bob Creutz, they indicated that it was Hagen who wrote the familiar flowing cursive "Larson" which appears on many of the copies of this collection that have the name on the cover.

Also according to Norman and Bob Creutz, clerk Cecil Coop helped out in the drug store after Tryg Hagen died in 1940, and would have been the other person responsible for writing on the covers to save Lamont Larson's comics for him — but this may be a case of mistaken recollection.  Records show that Tryg Hagen actually died in 1942, and a quick browse through the Heritage Archives seems to confirm that Hagen's flowing cursive remains consistent (for those copies which have Larson's name on the covers) through the collection's endpoint in 1941.  This would also seem to eliminate the alternative possibility that Hagen retired in 1940-41.

Did Cecil Coop help out here and there before Hagen's death?  Very possible, though there may also be another answer.  This Action Comics #16 clearly does not have the flowing cursive Tryg Hagen handwriting, and the only other Larson I can find with this same handwriting at a glance is this Amazing Mystery Funnies V2#9 — which likely came out in the same week as Action Comics #16.  From newspaper notices, it appears that a man named Melvin Rosen was known to help out in the store at times when Hagen was out for a few days, so it's possible that this is his handwriting as well.  It's also worth noting that this person used the full "Lamont Larson" when Hagan often stuck to "Larson", "L. Larson", or sometimes "Lamont".  The full usage might indicate a clerk temporarily filling in who was less familiar with the store's regular routines and customers and had been told to "mark these down for Lamont Larson" perhaps.

As a final comment, it is perhaps worth noting some particulars of the "coupon cut out of page 17" note on the CGC Qualified Grade on this copy.  This seems to indicate the page of stamp ads which is on the back of the final Superman story page.  There's further ambiguity because that page is actually page 16 if you count the covers, and by that count page 17 is a page of sports cartoons by Sheldon Moldoff.  But not counting the covers would put page 17 in the middle of the Pep Morgan story, which contains nothing that could be mistaken for a cut-out coupon.  In any case, presuming the stamp ad page is the page in question, the tiny ads that might have been actually cut out are a fair bit smaller than a traditional coupon.

Whatever the case there, this Action Comics #16 is a unique and important example of the Lamont Larson pedigree and as an early Action Comics, a very desirable early appearance of Superman.   The Action Comics #16 Larson Pedigree – Incomplete (DC, 1939) CGC Qualified VF- 7.5 Off-white to white pages is up for auction at the 2022 March 27-28 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122213 from Heritage Auctions.

Action Comics #16 Larson Pedigree – Incomplete (DC, 1939) CGC Qualified VF- 7.5 Off-white to white pages. Contains a Martian Manhunter prototype. Superman, Zatara, Clip Carson, Tex Thompson, and Pep Morgan appearances. Fred Guardineer cover and art. Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, and Bernard Baily art. CGC notes, "Coupon Cut Out of Page 17, Affects Story. Incomplete." Overstreet 2021 GD 2.0 value = $780; VG 4.0 value = $1,560; FN 6.0 value = $2,340; VF 8.0 value = $5,850.

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