MORE FUN COMICS #43 * Flessel, Moldoff, Siegel & Shuster

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Author:
Title: MORE FUN COMICS No. 43
Place Published:
Publisher:DC [Indicia: Detective Comics Inc.]
Date Published: May, 1939
Description: CGC certified: VG- (3.5): Restored (B-2). Grader's notes: "Spine split top of; staple detached top of cover; centerfold reinforced; light creasing to cover; light staining to cover; small amount of color touch on cover; spine split sealed cover B-1; tear seals front cover B-1." Off-white pages. Provenance: The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION.

GPAnalysis: No reported sales in this grade. Only 2 Restored sales, both 0.5, one for $127 and the other for $133, both over a decade ago. For comparison purposes, an unrestored 3.5 sold for $225 in 2004, and an unrestored 4.5 sold for $850 in 2018.

Overstreet: "Beany (1 pg.) and Ginger Snap centerfold by Bob Kane." CGC Census: 12 graded copies (1 Universal, 2 Restored). Gerber Photo-Journal Guide Scarcity Index: 6 ("Uncommon: 50-200 copies").

Credits: Cover: Creig Flessel. Scripts: Fred Schwab?, Tom Hickey, Bob Kane, Joe Donohoe, Jerry Siegel, Bob Jenney, Homer Fleming, Terry Gilkison, Sheldon Moldoff, Bill Ely, Joe Sulman, Bob Hirsch, Bernard Baily. Art: Fred Schwab?, Tom Hickey, Bob Kane, Joe Donohoe, Joe Shuster, Bob Jenney, Homer Fleming, Terry Gilkison, Sheldon Moldoff, Bill Ely, Bob Barton, Joe Sulman, Rusty Lehman, Bernard Baily.Chabon Speaks: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon captured the spirit of these fat Golden Age mags in his 2000 roman à clef about the early days of the funnybook biz: "In 1939 the American comic book, like the beavers and cockroaches of prehistory, was larger and in its cumbersome way, more splendid than its modern descendent. It aspired to the dimensions of a slick magazine and to the thickness of a pulp, offering sixty-four pages of gaudy bulk (including the cover) for its ideal price of one thin dime. While the quality of its interior illustrations was generally execrable at best, its covers pretended to some of the skill and design of the slick, and to the brio of the pulp magazine. The comic book cover, in those early days, was a poster advertising a dream-movie, with a running time of two seconds, that flickered to life in the mind and unreeled in splendor just before one opened to the stapled packet of coarse paper inside and the lights came up." — Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Klay. Random House: 2000, p. 74.****************************************
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