I hope you'll forgive this temporary diversion into American comics but there is a slight British connection if you'll bear with me. Also, I think these books are worth plugging regardless of their country of origin.
If, like me, you bought the occasional UK Tarzan comic in the 1970s published by Top Sellers, you'll know that they reprinted the American Gold Key Tarzan comics, which were usually drawn by Russ Manning. However, they later reprinted stories by Jesse Marsh from the Dell Tarzan comics. At the time I didn't know that the Marsh strips were from the 1940s/50s, just that they looked "old". Not that it was a bad thing. I actually preferred Marsh's work to Manning's slicker style.
Now, Dark Horse Comics in America have just published Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years Omnibus Volume 1, - and it's a huge brick of a book! A walloping 700 pages, reprinting 18 Tarzan comics that were published by Dell from 1947 to 1950, including covers and feature pages.
You must be thinking that's quite a hefty and cumbersome book? Not at all, because it's softback and printed on a nice matt paper that isn't as heavy as the glossy stock used in many archives like this. In fact, the look and texture of the paper is very similar to that used in those Top Sellers reprints of 45 years ago, and even the ink smells like it did in those old comics.
The strips have been scanned from the comics and restored, so we get the original linework and colours preserved. None of that nonsense of redrawing and garishly recolouring the pages like Marvel used to do with theirs. (I only wish Dark Horse had used this method for their Crime Does Not Pay volumes.)
The artwork of Jesse Marsh may seem crude or simplistic to some comic fans, but his style has inspired artists from Alex Toth to Los Bros Hernandez. This is really good stuff, and at a reasonable price too.
If you prefer slightly more contemporary Tarzan artwork then Dark Horse have another collection that may interest you. Tarzan: The Complete Joe Kubert Years is a done-in-one book featuring all the Tarzan strips that Joe wrote/drew for DC Comics in the 1970s. Over 600 pages, and on glossier, heavier paper stock than the Jesse Marsh book, it contains some of Kubert's best work of the period.
Both of these books are out now, at $29.99 each, and can be ordered from online booksellers or bought/ordered at your local comic shop.
Going back to the old Top Sellers comics I mentioned earlier, I did a blog post about them a few years ago which you can find at this link:
https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-comics-that-were-always-top-sellers.html
Back in the late 1960s to the late 1970s there was a company that unleashed numerous different titles into British newsagents. I'm not talking about DC Thomson, or IPC, but another outfit called Top Sellers.
In fact it appears that Top Sellers was only one name the company traded under, as some comics were published by Williams, and I think World Distributors were also part of the set up, along with Thorpe & Porter, who distributed DC Comics to the UK back then. (More info on Dez Skinn's website: http://dezskinn.com/warner-williams/)
The comics they produced in the sixties and seventies were an attempt to cash in on the growing interest in American comics. Top Sellers had gained the licence to publish some of the Dell and Gold Key comics in editions for the UK and Europe, so we saw an explosion of comics in the American size, with 32 interior full colour pages. Titles included Bonanza, Rin Tin Tin, Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, and, the most popular, Tarzan, all priced 1/- (5p) each.
One comic that stood out for me though was a giant sized 64 page one-off for King Kong, as seen at the top of this article. I bought this much-treasured item in 1970 for 2/6d (12 and a half pence) and found the artwork by Alberto Giolitti completely absorbing. Bear in mind that in 1970 there were no videos, this was the next best thing to owning a visualisation of the classic movie. Here are some pages from the book:
Top Sellers also had a range of humour comics, including the Larry Harmon version of Laurel and Hardy (which was really nowhere near as funny or clever as the movies)...
...and my personal favourite, Fox and Crow...
I didn't know back then that Fox and Crow was a reprint of a 1950s DC Comics series. The strips hadn't dated and were still funny 20 years later.
As I mentioned earlier, Top Sellers/Williams also produced foreign editions, which I think must explain why, in 1972, issue 17 of Fox and Crow mistakenly carried the title banner Flax. Presumably the logo wasn't changed before printing the UK editions.
The earliest edition of these comics that I have is one which I think may well have been the very first comic I was bought, a large format comic album called Huckleberry Hound Chuckleberry Time under the World Distributors imprint who also produced lots of annuals such as Huckleberry Hound, Superman, Flash Gordon, and many more. Here's the Chuckleberry comic, a little worse for wear now considering I had it when I was three or four years old...
The comic was a UK edition of a Gold Key title from 1961 although it must have been around 1963 or 1964 when I had my copy. The strips include Huckleberry Hound of course...
...plus Augie Doggie, Quick Draw McGraw, Hokey and Ding-A-Ling, and Pixie, Dixie and Mr Jinks...
By 1970 Top Sellers were featuring Hanna-Barbera's Motormouse and Autocat in Fun-In comic, and were also producing comics for younger children such as Benjy and Pellephant. (Being a near-teenager by then I never bought those comics so I've no idea whether they were Euro-reprint or new material.)
It was Tarzan though that proved to be the most popular, (thanks to a new Tarzan TV series featuring Ron Ely) and the comic soon moved from monthly to fortnightly frequency, reprinting stories by Jesse Marsh, Russ Manning, and others...
The company was also behind Super DC, which I covered here five years ago. Here's the ad for the comic from the inside front cover of Tarzan No.1 in 1970...
Here's a few more ads from Top Sellers comics, concerning their distribution arm for DC Comics...
This post is really only the tip of the iceberg regarding Top Sellers/Williams/Warners/World Distributors. They were enjoyable comics but, for me, they were the sort of thing you'd buy if there weren't any real American comics you wanted. Subsequently I gave away or threw out most of the ones I had back then. They were second best to my young eyes, and I cleared space for Marvel and DC titles. However, in retrospect they featured some good, clearly told tales that were perfect for children. The paper stock was nice too, with thicker covers and pulpy paper coincidentally similar to that now used by Dark Horse for their Gold Key reprints.
At a time when comics were plentiful in shops, the Top Sellers titles were another range to add to the wide choice we had back then. Happy days!
