Boxes of Progress

Well, as you can see, the sorting process is moving along well, as a result of a few minutes here, a half an hour there and the occasional multiple hour session. I've managed to sort the bulk of my comic collection into a dozen different longboxes. I've left the image large, so you can try to souse the logic behind why certain things are stored together...but to be honest, there's a randomness, too. Sometimes, it was just a matter of what run of titles happened to fit in the available space remaining.

But I tried to keep some thematic sense about things, too. Solo titles by characters from various Titans titles are grouped with those titles. Same with the various versions of the Justice League and their stars. Assorted Legion of Super Heroes titles are collected with related mini-series, and a few crossovers which threatened to impact timelines and/or The Future. Spooky titles like Spectre and the Demon got a box together. You get my drift.

Still remaining in the project (and make no mistake, it's a pretty vast chunk of the collection) are titles featuring both Superman and Batman and their costars. At the moment, I'm guessing another four or five boxes may do the trick. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I also stumbled across this issue of Whiz Comics 102, dated October 1948. It's possibly the oldest book in the entire collection, something I stumbled across at a flea market a number of years back.

The cover, featuring Captain Marvel facing off against the Dangerous Dollar is a classic piece of late Golden Age magic. How cool and surreal it might've been if Cap had actually been going up against an animated, human-sized dollar bill...but I suppose they might've gotten letters from the folks over at Dick Tracy for that kind of frivolity.

Inside, Billy Batson finds a dollar that the breeze carries to his feet, and he is quickly set upon by assorted gangsters looking to reclaim it. Of course he says the magic word ("SHAZAM!") and makes short work of these thugs, but then recognizes the mystery at hand, and before long figures out that one of these gangsters has hidden a considerable sum of loot, and the directions for finding said cache are coded onto the face of the bill.

Now, for ten cents, you got an awful lot of comic back then. In addition to this Shazam tale, there's also a post-war adventure of Commando Yank (yawn), an old West adventure of the Golden Arrow (double-yawn), four pages of inanity from Colonel Corn and Korny Kobb (puns too dreadful to mention, as their names suggest) and a seven page tale of Ibis the Invincible being turned into a bat.

You know, in light of all that (even for a dime)it's no wonder Fawcett Comics went out of business.