Vintage Paper

Vintage Paper is about old comics and more: whether you're interested in the Platinum Age, the Golden Age, the Silver, Bronze, or Copper Ages — or the history behind it all — Bleeding Cool has you covered on that. Featuring articles and research from some of the best experts in the field for comics, pulps, dime novels, and much more.


The Confessions of Charltons True Life Secrets Up for Auction

The Confessions of Charlton's True Life Secrets, Up for Auction

After entering the genre with the short-lived title Pictorial Love Stories, the series True Life Secrets became Charlton's first successful romance title.  The series would be the publisher's only romance title throughout the early 1950s, until the acquisition of Fawcett's Sweethearts and Romantic Story in 1954.  These and other titles followed, and Charlton became one of […]

Kamen Feldstein Seduction of the Innocent: Fox Romance at Auction

Kamen, Feldstein, Seduction of the Innocent: Fox Romance at Auction

Long considered one of the most notorious publishers in comic book history, Victor Fox was seemingly a desperate man by 1947. With the superhero genre well into its post-War decline, in August 1946, remaining Fox flagships Blue Beetle and Green Mask were halted, and Fox's rising tide of funny animal and other humor titles completely took over […]

Treasury of Comics #1 and the Drama of Abbie an Slats at Auction

Treasury of Comics #1 and the Drama of Abbie an' Slats, at Auction

St. John was over a year away from its true beginnings in romance comics books when it got into the market with Treasury of Comics and Comics Review, but Treasury of Comics #1 featuring Abbie an' Slats could be viewed as a stealth entry into the genre for what comic book history now remembers as […]

The Mystery of Al Fass on Romantic Hearts #1 Up for Auction

The Mystery of Al Fass on Romantic Hearts #1, Up for Auction

Romantic Hearts was a romance anthology comic, first published by Story Comics from 1951 to 1953  and then taken over and relaunched by Master Comics from 1953 to 1955 before it closed. Up for auction from Heritage Art Auctions is the first issue from the first run of Romantic Hearts #1. Experiment with Love is […]

Marilyn Monroe as Vulnerable Babysitter on Sweethearts 119 at Auction

Marilyn Monroe as Vulnerable Babysitter on Sweethearts 119, at Auction

1952 was a year that helped make Marilyn Monroe an icon. Early that year, she began a romance with New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio. In March, with her studio film career taking off, photos taken of her for a nude calendar in 1949 became public knowledge, and she leaned into the scandal by admitting to […]

Ziff-Davis Disney-Inspired Comic Romance Cinderella Love at Auction

Ziff-Davis Disney-Inspired Comic Romance Cinderella Love, at Auction

Hitting newsstands in January 1951, the title of the Ziff-Davis Cinderella Love series was likely inspired by the success of Disney's Cinderella throughout 1950.  The now-legendary animated classic also prompted a wave of Cinderella-themed consumer goods and created the kind of phenomenon that had people attempting to insert the concept of Cinderella into cultural conversations […]

The Ridiculous Rarity of the Romance Fox Giants Up for Auction

The Ridiculous Rarity of the Romance Fox Giants, Up for Auction

The late 1940s to early 1950s were a boom time for giant comics from several different publishers.  Some publishers like St. John had an entire line of rebound remainder giant-size comics with new covers, while Fawcett's giants were a mix of reprints and new material.  Farrell's giant Voodoo Annual #1 is a highly collected 100-page […]

The Startling Shift in Lev Gleasons Lovers Lane Up for Auction

The Startling Shift in Lev Gleason's Lovers' Lane, Up for Auction

Best remembered for what is arguably the most notorious comic book title in American comic book history, Crime Does Not Pay, publisher Lev Gleason also put out material ranging from superhero titles like Daredevil to romance comics like Lovers' Lane. Gleason started his career in 1931 with Open Road for Boys magazine before moving on […]

John Buscema Covers Orbits 1952 Romance Comics Up for Auction

John Buscema Covers Orbit's 1952 Romance Comics, Up for Auction

Legendary comic book artist John Buscema began his career in the late 1940s, significantly shaping the landscape of Marvel Comics during its pivotal growth in the 1960s and 1970s. He initially pursued a career in commercial illustration after graduating from Manhattan's High School of Music and Art and taking courses at Pratt Institute and the […]

Simon &#038 Kirbys Groundbreaking Title Young Romance Up for Auction

Simon & Kirby's Groundbreaking Title Young Romance, Up for Auction

Comic book genres have sometimes risen to prominence on the success of a single title, and such was the case for romance comic books with Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Young Romance in 1947.  When Time Magazine covered the romance comic book boom in 1949, it was already citing Young Romance as the originator of […]

Love Espionage and the Atomic Cannon in G. I. Sweethearts at Auction

Love, Espionage and the Atomic Cannon in G. I. Sweethearts, at Auction

The Korean War era combined with the post-WWII concerns of the Cold War to transform war comic books into their own distinct genre that lasted for decades, and like other genres, war comics often had specific themes.  For example, the nature of war and the impact of service on relationships made for natural romance-war genre […]

Love Like Winning the Lottery in Dear Lonely Heart #1 Up for Auction

Love Like Winning the Lottery in Dear Lonely Heart #1, Up for Auction

Dear Lonely Heart #1, from Artful/Comic Media, was published in 1951, and features a pretty cool cover that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside when you see it. It is also a rare book. While this raw copy, taking bids right now at Heritage Auctions, is at $36, it might go much […]

Wally Woods Early Comic Book Work in Fox Romance Up for Auction

Wally Wood's Early Comic Book Work in Fox Romance, Up for Auction

Legendary comic book creator Wally Wood is known for a wide variety of work including EC Comics material, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Marvel's Daredevil, but his got his first assignments in the comic book field with Victor Fox's romance comic book line. He told Comics Buyers Guide in 1981, "The first professional job was lettering for […]

Jack Kirby &#038 Joe Simons My Date Comics #1 From 1947 at Auction

Jack Kirby & Joe Simon's My Date Comics #1 From 1947, at Auction

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby may be best known for creating the patriotic political superhero with Captain America, espousing military intervention in a foreign country at a time when US politics favoured isolationism, and Nazis held rallies in New York. But after the war, they also invented the American romance comic, the success of which […]

Pete Morisis Boxing Love Story in All True Romance #11 at Auction

Pete Morisi's Boxing Love Story in All True Romance #11, at Auction

Best remembered for his creation of Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt at Charlton, the versatile and prolific Pete Morosi's career ranged from the 1940s through the 1980s and included virtually every comic book genre.  After serving in the U.S. Army from 1948-1950, Morosi worked for a wide range of publishers throughout the early 1950s, including Fox, Marvel […]

1954s I Sold My Baby in Confessions of the Lovelorn Up for Auction

1954's "I Sold My Baby" in Confessions of the Lovelorn, Up for Auction

"ACG's brief flirtation with grim, sensationalistic stories remains one of the great mysteries of comic book history," noted Michelle Nolan in her indispensable Love on the Racks: A History of American Romance Comics.  We've already covered two of the issues from that "brief flirtation", Romantic Adventures #49 and #50, and Confessions of the Lovelorn #52 […]

The Sure Thing and Other Tales in Dear Lonely Hearts Up for Auction

"The Sure Thing" and Other Tales in Dear Lonely Hearts, Up for Auction

Throughout its brief lifespan,  Allen Hardy Associates repeatedly asked for "the unusual" in the comic book market columns of magazines like Writer's Digest and Author & Journalist.  The blurb sometimes further elaborated that the publisher wanted, "Artists and writers who don't have a hackneyed approach to comics." Better known today as Comic Media, Allen Hardy […]

Addiction and Romance in Youthful Hearts #1 Up for Auction

Addiction and Romance in Youthful Hearts #1, Up for Auction

Youthful Hearts publisher Pix-Parade and its most closely associated company Youthful Magazines were both part of a larger constellation of publishing companies with loose connections to DC Comics founder Harry Donenfeld. One principal of the company, William K. Friedman, had acted as Donenfeld's lawyer on numerous occasions, while another, Adrian Lopez, had previously co-founded a […]

Bill Ward and the Forbidden Love of Broadway Romances #1 at Auction

Bill Ward and the Forbidden Love of Broadway Romances #1, at Auction

Bill Ward's cover for Broadway Romances #1 is one of the best romance covers Quality Comics published during its 1949-1956 romance era.  Best remembered for his character Torchy, Ward was well suited for the romance genre, during this period likely worked on at least 200 comic books at Quality, at least half of those romance.  […]

Roy Lichtenstein &#038 the Mystery of Dells Private Secretary at Auction

Roy Lichtenstein & the Mystery of Dell's Private Secretary, at Auction

Dell Publishing is American comic book history's most important publisher of comic books licensed from television, film, and other media.  In partnership with Western Printing & Lithography and on their own, the company published an enormous volume of licensed material ranging from Disney comic books to comics based on comic strips, movies and television shows.  […]