Print

[roxburylib]

I'm curious if there are any published comics that have been lost forever. I'm not interested in ashcan versions or deliberate tiny print runs. The question is about nationally published comics for which no known copies have yet to be found. These would most likely be comics published before World War II that weren't collected and saved or were destroyed in war paper drives.

[SuperScrounge]

I read somewhere that Key Ring Comcis 1b (Greg Gilday) is believed lost.

Hopefully there is a copy out there somewhere, and it can be scanned.

[OtherEric]

There are a couple of books by Fox- Sabu and Dorothy Lamour- which had issues that are only known to exist rebound inside Red Circle #4 covers.  Given that most of the Red Circle #4 covers are on rebound issues that we know were published, there's at least a slight chance that those issues were published but not distributed, and no copies with the original covers survive.

It's probably more likely that the original covers were never printed.  But we really don't know.

[roxburylib]

That's surprisingly not many. I was wondering about this after reading an article that there are some Whitman comics that were only released in 3-pack bags in a few department stores with rarities as few as two copies for one of the comics. In the article, one of the commenters in Europe said they were as common there as other issues because they were in kiosks of comics. Those would mostly have foreign currencies on the cover. I guess that makes the US ones rare.

If a 1980s comic could be rare due to distribution oddities, there would have to be Golden Age comics lost to time. I would expect that there could be some comics, during the scares in the 50s, that were printed up and either not distributed or poorly distributed or not put on newsstands in areas of the country. In some cases, they may have been burned and declared as print losses.

[mr_goldenage]

Not to  be rude or anything....but why do you ask? I am curious to what the point of this is.....again no offence intended. Just curious about the question in general.

[OtherEric]

That's surprisingly not many. I was wondering about this after reading an article that there are some Whitman comics that were only released in 3-pack bags in a few department stores with rarities as few as two copies for one of the comics.

Do you happen to have a link to the article?

I've never heard that the rare Whitman issues were as few as 2 copies, even the notorious DC Comics Presents #22 Whitman variant is up to over 10 known copies last I heard.  There is a theory that they were primarily if not exclusively distributed in Canada and Australia rather than the US.  (The DC Whitman variants mostly don't have a price on the cover at all, but there are a few exceptions.)

[The Australian Panther]

The dialogue indicates that your question is primarily about American Comics and not in comics in general. I would imagine that there were comics in Europe pre-WW2 which may no longer exist due to bombing and destruction. Many comics, books, magazines and papers were pulped and recycled during WW2 owing to paper shortages. There may have been comics destroyed in Japan. I'm pretty sure that there would be Australian Pre-50's comics known to have existed that can't be found now.Possibly also in the UK. Where you would look to find that kind of information I can't say. 

[mr_goldenage]

Here is an USA comics that no longer exists. Sharp Comics

Mr_Goldenage

[POWPUCK]

https://lostmediawiki.com/Category:Lost_comics

This what you're looking for? I haven't check the veracity of these, but LostMediaWiki is apparently of some repute.

[SuperScrounge]

Man, Lost Media has a vague definition for lost comics.

To me a lost comic would be one printed/published and now no copy is known to exist.

Pages drawn for publication, but lost or destroyed is terrible, but it's like calling an egg a chicken. It could have become a chicken, but it didn't quite make it.

If you are interested in info on lost pages however, a page from a second Wonderman story was found and printed in an issue of the comics magazine Nemo many years ago, indicating that a whole story had been worked up.

A personal example. In 1982 a Tacoma, WA, company tried creating a comic called Mega Fantasy Illustrated. I had written a comic script for issue 3, and about 10-15 years later I was told that pages of my script were seen being drawn. It's tantalizing and a little frustrating that there may be pages out there of my story that I've never seen.

Lost storylines are even less comics than lost unpublished pages. Sad if you're a fan, but it happens.

Lost webcomics is kind of like mourning goldfish. So many have been lost because of site crashes and computer crashes.

[paw broon]

If it's of interest, I've been trying to find out if Valentines of Dundee - greetings and post cards printers to the gentry - ever published comics.  Being in Dundee, which was a centre for journalism and comics, there was always the chance.  I recently discovered that Len Fullerton/Nat Brand worked for Valentines after his stint at Soloway (see our Soloway section under British Comics).
Today I got confirmation from Calum Laird, of D.C. Thomson, that Valentines produced 2 titles, Ace Comic and Super Bumper Comic (info. on Wiki) and that one of these 2 titles is believed to no longer exist.  No idea which one though.
Although Soloway and Valentines were very much lesser known publishers, an artist of the stature of Fullerton/Brand working for them, raised the quality of their books.  Len Fullerton was a respected and well thought of wildlife artist as well as comic book artist.
After the Edinburgh Con on Saturday, I was sitting in a local bar with Ian Kennedy and Ferg Handley chatting, as you do, about a lot of stuff including comics, and the subject came up. Ferg asked around but we didn't get much, then he offered to forward my question to Calum, who got back to me.  Comic folk are nice folk.

[roxburylib]

Do you happen to have a link to the article?

https://dellcomicfan.blogspot.com/2012/03/rare-whitman-comics-from-aug-to-dec.html

It was a question asked solely out of curiosity, partly based on the Whitman rarities due to a nonstandard distribution. There are lost movies due to deteriorating stock and, for silver nitrate prints, for recycling the silver from them. Movies didn't have have large consumer distribution, so it's not quite the same. Movies tended to be publicized, so the lost ones are mostly known. Comics got less public notice. About the only way a loss would be noticed if there were other comics that referred to it or there was a break in numbering.

I would guess that most of what we know about what comics were published is based on what comics exist. If no comic reader saved a one-shot title, there may not be any knowledge that it was ever published. I don't know if copyright records can be easily searched by publisher. It's very possible that there are many more lost comics for which there simply isn't a record of their existence. With all the comic book publishers that disappeared over the decades, many probably left no written records of their output.

Where did you find a cover for Sharp Comics? If it was advertised in a comic, it probably was published, but may not have. Amazing Fantasy #16 was advertised in #15, but never published. It's mentioned in a blurb at the bottom of the last page of the Spider-Man's story and also mentioned in what's titled as a Fan Page in the comic: "As you can see, we are introducing one of the most unusual new fantasy characters of all time--The SPIDERMAN, who will appear every month in AMAZING. Perhaps, if your letters request it, we will make his stories even longer, or have TWO Spiderman stories per issue." This goes to show how faulty Stan Lee's memory is because he's often said that Spider-Man was published in that comic because it was going to be the last issue.

I'd also quibble with Lost Media's definition of "lost." I'm more interested in what was published and can no longer be found than in what was created, but not published. That's akin to saying that there's a lost Star Wars movie starring Kurt Russell and William Katt or the myriad numbers of screenplays that were never turned into movies.

There are tons of comics that were made, but never published--most of which we'll never know about because the pages were destroyed. These were comic stories that were commissioned and not used either because the editor didn't think they were good enough or the title was canceled. There's the story of Atlas/Marvel where Martin Goodman found a closet of stories that had not been published and let go artists and published the unused pages. A similar thing happened at DC's romance department and resulted in John Romita not getting enough work to support himself while the unused work was published. That led him going to work at Marvel; with Gene Colan following from DC a short time later for similar reasons. It's odd that two of Marvel's top superhero artists weren't given superheroes to draw when they were working at DC. Jack Kirby was blacklisted at DC over a financial dispute with an editor that helped him land a comic strip. That resulted him going to work for Marvel. Marvel owes its early success to artists DC stopped working with.

[narfstar]

Doesn't Gerbers mention some books as 10-may not exist? I think there is one called Kokonuts. Somehow an issue of Talullah #2 made it out in the wild.