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[proofman]

I have a few golden age comic cover proofs that were never printed so I can not find any info on them. One thing that I have spent a lot of time on is trying to identify the artist. I have been told that unless you were well know they did not allow your initials to be put on the cover. This comic comes from the mid 40's and right at this time I do not know who the publisher was either, the majority of the covers I have are from, Fox, Fawcett, rural etc...,  Any information on it would be very helpful, especially who the artist was, LGS . I have one or two more by him, but would love to start with this one. The main character looks like Mandrake the magician. Any info would be great and really appreciated.
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[narfstar]

picture did not come through proofman

[proofman]

Sorry guys, I am going to try and get some lessons on resizing these photos. Because of there age I took pics of the collection and now that I am posting a few I see I took them all in a size to big to post to most sites. In the meantime here is a link to the pic and a link to some of the collection if you are interested.

Greenband, the LGS Artist Who Is he ??  http://s992.photobucket.com/user/printguy12/media/032_zps950dc35b.jpg.html?sort=3&o=96

Some of the collection, http://s992.photobucket.com/

I have found out that some of the covers I have are covers of comics that were printed earlier, they changed the title and some of the pics but if you put the two covers side by side you can definitely see someone was trying to use the earlier characters, just with different names, LGS was one of these cover illustrators, and maybe if I find out who he was, it would give me a good indication of who was doing this and what company he worked for. Thanks again and sorry for the picture issue.

[bchat]

Great collection, especially the "Occult Comics" cover from Nicholson Publishing.  I'd love to learn more about that title.

[proofman]

bchat, I haven't spent much time on that one yet, but what I have learned from it doesn't make sense. I believe it was to come out in the mid 40's and from what I understand Nicholson was out of the business and in Florida. I have a lot of correspondence material from publishers and other material that will help me more, I just have not spent the time going thru it all, it would be nice to tie it in with him, we'll see. Thanks

[narfstar]

I asked one of our resident art spotting experts JVJ and he has a maybe on  Louis Schroeder

[proofman]

Thanks narfstar, I tried looking him/her up but couldn't find any info. Is jvj on this site ? Thanks again for taking the time, I appreciate it.   

[JVJ]

Thanks narfstar, I tried looking him/her up but couldn't find any info. Is jvj on this site ? Thanks again for taking the time, I appreciate it.

Yes, I'm lurking around here and posting when I have a moment. There isn't much known about Louis Schroeder. The only place I've seen his work is at D.S., primarily on their western titles. He initials several covers and draws some interior strips. I'm sending all the rest of the D.S. books to rangerhouse for scanning on Saturday, so you'll be seeing some of his work in the upcoming month. This unpublished cover is earlier and slicker than I'm used to, and so I'm hesitant to be adamant about the ID. Plus I don't know if Schroeder's middle initial is G. But it's the best I can come up with. When you see the D.S. stuff, you'll have to judge for yourself.  Peace, Jim (|:{>

[proofman]

Thanks JVJ for taking the time to look, I appreciate this. I am thinking that if I can identify some of the artist on these covers I will be able to identify where they might of come from. I have one or two more with the same initials, LGS and one is very interesting. I just found out a few months back that one of the covers with his initials is a copy of an earlier cover with a few adjustments in the characters. This comic below has the same background as Action Comics #8 and the figures are positioned the same, just with a different theme and faces. I guess this shows part of the culture back then, which it looks like to me they just kept recycling characters and stories until one of them struck a chord with the public.
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Below is link to a picture of Action Comics #8
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Action_Comics_Vol_1_8

So whoever this LGS guy is did a lot of copying of other peoples work, at least this is what I am thinking right now, unless he was the original artist on Action comics. This Lance comic I believe was never published to the public as far as I know. This cover was from the mid 40's. Thanks for your help again.

[proofman]

Bchat, Occult Comic. Went through some of the correspondence material and I found this concerning the Occult comic. Anything you could add would be helpful, thanks.
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[Captain Audio]

It would have been nice if other comics followed the lead of this one.
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=13180
Each story has an intro with comments by both the author and the artist, with protrait drawings of each at the top of the first page.

[proofman]

Not sure if any one is going to see this, but it was confirmed by David Saunders yesterday that the LGS inititials is the artist Louis G Schroeder . It's been a while, but just happy to get a confirmation. I believe I have three pieces by this person. Anyone know if this has any significance ? Anyone out there know if this artist work is sought after ?  Thanks all.

[narfstar]

you can check sold items on ebay to see if his are bringing any significant money

[proofman]

These won't be on e-bay or anywhere else. Very few people have seen these, they were never printed for the public. From what I have found out since being on here is that these are what are called " black market comics ", part of a group of comics that were confiscated by the government in the mid 1940s. There company used to much paper ( over there given limit ). If you did this and the govt found out they confiscated your comic and used it for packing material for the war. This and maybe one or two more I have are what is left of the era and of these comics, so what you are seeing are truly one of a kind material. These are progressive proofs of the comic, from the now defunct printer of which is said to be Victor Foxs' press in PA. , the book does not exist, just the cover.

[betaraybdw]

I looked up the artist on ebay and there are a few items with his art in them. Magazines and illustrated books, most with a sporting theme of some sort and none for high dollar. Old LGS did nice work, but does not seem to be as prolific and well regarded as say Baker or Schomburg. That being said, as you point out these pieces are very unique. I would consider getting them formally appraised and if you are looking to sell, I would use an auction house. With the right promotion you might indeed get a very pretty penny for these.

I wonder how much "packing material" went home with defense workers? 

[mr_goldenage]

Well I can tell you that the Green Mask covers are Green Mask Vol # 2 in the mid 1940's I think 1945-46 but I don't have my stuff gathered @ my new location). A lot of the covers I saw in your photo-bucket were actually printed. However you do have several of what I coined (way back in 1999) "Cover Only Characters", that given they are of minor interest only to geeks like me.

It was common to "proof up" for Trademark reasons for new titles. Sometimes images from previous comics were used and sometimes (rarely though) whole new COC types were created (Mr Liberty from [Is it Green Pub?] from Liberty Comics to cite one example). I can only comment on the Super-hero oriented ones as those are the ones I know about the most. We did a feature on my old website "Identify" the character (of course I cheated because I used mostly COC characters) and if they could they would win the collected Good Guys And Gals of The Golden Age works (which ended with issue # 22 in 2005). For the rest I recognize as actual comics published as I was (and still am) a slave to the Gerber Books. So I cannot actually place them without consulting  the Gerber books, which I do not have off hand handy....but take my word for it, a lot of them did see the light of day.

Thank you for the photo-bucket pics..... I especially liked the Firefly character (no, not the MLJ one) a nice swipe of Toro.... :-)

Kindly

Richard Boucher Aka Mr_Goldenage