MORE FUN COMICS #31 * Hootch-Hustling Porn Peddlers * Action 1 Ad

Heading: Early House Ad for Action Comics #1
Author:
Title: MORE FUN COMICS No. 31
Place Published:
Publisher:DC [Indicia: Detective Comics Inc.]
Date Published: May, 1938
Description: CGC certified: Good+ (2.5). Grader's notes: "Tape cover; heavy staining to cover; moderate spine splits to cover." Off-white to white pages. Provenance: The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION.

GPAnalysis: A 2.5 sold for $1195 in 8/17.

Overstreet: "Has ad for Action Comics #1." CGC Census: 11 graded copies (9 Universal, 2 Restored). Gerber Photo-Journal Guide Scarcity Index: 6 ("Uncommon: 50-200 copies").

Credits: Cover: Creig Flessel. Scripts: Jerry Siegel, Creig Flessel, Russell Cole, Sven Elven, Bob Kane, Bill Ely. Art: Bill Ely, Joe Shuster, Creig Flessel, Tom Hickey, Russell Cole, Fred Guardineer, Homer Fleming, Henry Kiefer, Sven Elven, Bob Kane, Stan Asch, Ed Winiarski.Q: Say, what's this I hear about the Major's nemesis, Harry Donenfeld, being some kinda gangster-pornographer?

A: We thought you'd ask about Donenfeld's rum-runnin', porn-peddlin' past sooner or later, so we boned up on the topic by reading Gerard Jones' 2004 book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book. According to Jones, fast-talking wiseguy Donenfeld was chummy with gangster Frank Costello, and may have used his underworld connections to sneak bootleg hootch into Prohibition-era America from Canada, concealed in Canadian pulp-paper shipments. As for the porn allegation, that's somewhat overblown. True, Donenfeld hustled racy pulp mags in the mid-to-late 1920s, with lurid covers and salacious-sounding names like Hot Stories, Joy Stories and Juicy Tales, but it was pretty tame stuff by modern standards, with hardly a nipple or mons Venus in sight.

"The Donenfelds were leading the way into a new genre, the sex pulp — 'smooshes' they called them in the business.... The long party of the Twenties got wilder as the decade rushed to a close, and right in the middle of it danced Harry Donenfeld — salesman, printer, smuggler, loyal Democrat, and smoosh publisher." — G. Jones, Men of Tomorrow, p. 60. For what it's worth, author and funnybook scribe Gerard Jones turns out to have been a far dirtier bird than a dozen Donenfelds. According to Wikipedia, Jones was tossed in the jug in 2018 on a kiddie porn beef, after police found "numerous electronic devices containing tens of thousands of images and hundreds of videos of child pornography" in his home.****************************************
The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION comprises over 40,000 comic books, encompassing every single DC comic published for retail sale from 1934 to 2014. The collection was amassed by British music producer Ian Levine over the course of several decades, and it's been hailed as the single greatest collecting accomplishment in comic book history. This collection served as the basis for former DC Comics president Paul Levitz's monumental book 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, published by Taschen in 2017. PBA is proud to present this epic collection in a series of themed sales, including The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION Part 3: The GOLDEN AGE, coming this summer. To join the DC Universe Collection notifications list, contact pba@pbagalleries.com.

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