Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: crime comics, Ellery Queen

Ziff Davis' Ellery Queen #1 From 1952 With Bids Of $129 At Auction

Ellery Queen was created in 1928 by cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee as part of a writing competition. He was a fictitious mystery writer living in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve murders. Not only did the resulting books from 1929 onwards star Ellery Queen but the conceit was that Queen actually wrote the novels as well, more than thirty in total as well as short story collections. Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee also edited Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the pseudonym and commissioned other authors to write crime thrillers using the name, that didn't feature the character.

The Adventures of Ellery Queen were was a radio adaptation that ran from 1939 to 1948, and also a number of movie adaptations in the thirties and forties. The TV series The Adventures of Ellery Queen began in 1950 with The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen returning in 1958. There were also a number of television movies and a new TV series that ran in the seventies. But what about comics?

Well, stories featuring the character first appeared in 1940's Crackajack Funnies, a four-issue series under the name Ellery Queen from Superior Comics in 1949 and a two-issue series by Ziff Davis in 1952. Later Dell would publish three such comics in 1962 and he would also appear in Mike W. Barr's Maze Agency. But it's the first issue of the Ziff Comics edition that's up for auction today, from Heritage Auctions, with a cover painted by Norman Saunders and with bids currently totalling $129. It will go under the hammer later today, but bids can be taken in advance now.

Ziff Davis, was founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, as a New York publisher of hobbyist magazines, but is unrecognisable today. Since 1980, Ziff Davis primarily published computer-related magazines, then websites and now primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, and software services. In 2010, Vivek R. Shah and Great Hill Partners bought Ziff Davis to build a digital media company, then bought by cloud computing services company J2 Global for $167 million in 2012. So maybe they might be interested in bidding for a bit of their history…

Ellery Queen #1 (Ziff-Davis, 1952) Condition: GD/VG. Norman Saunders painted cover. Staining to back cover, and spine split from bottom. Overstreet 2021 GD 2.0 value = $52; VG 4.0 value = $104.

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