My first Golden Age Comic: Detective #126

Photo from early 1975 of the actual comic I bought!

We all remember our first Golden Age comic purchase. 

Mine was Detective Comics #126, Aug 1947 (lead story : The Case of the Silent Songbirds).  Bought for £4 from Alan Austin sometime between September 1974 and February 1975, the comic was a milestone for me, because I would be buying a comic from that mythical age prior to DC’s being imported into the UK in 1959. That 20-year period held such a mystique for me ; I had seen a few Golden Age comics at the Emsworth Comic Con in May 1974, but the total scarcity in the UK of any DC comics from the 1939-1959 era made the idea of being to lay one's hands on any issue seemed amazing,

The exact date I acquired Detective #126 is hazy in my mind, but I remember opening it on the breakfast room table in our house in Nettlecombe Avenue, after the postman came, leaving me little time to peruse it before I had to jump on my bike to school.  It was the first comic I ever got in a mylar bag - one of those early rigid mylar sleeves with sharp edges with an open top that risked slicing the comic when returning it to its bag.

Looking back through past issues of Alan Austin’s Fantasy Unlimited, I can find no mention of the issue in the “for sale” pages, so I expect that I became aware that it was for sale as a result of a “sales update” newsletter than Alan sent out to subscribers between issues of F.U., or attached to an invoice for previously ordered comics. Alan knew that I was a Batman fan, and the comic may very well have come from his personal collection.

©DC comics. Not a brilliant splash page. Our heroes should dominate the scene

Although the post-war DC comics lacked the vigour of some of the earlier Golden Age comics, Detective #126 was a solid entry. Looking at a digital version of the comic now, the main Batman story was drawn by Jim Mooney (always a favourite 40s and 50s Batman artist if Dick Sprang was not on pencil duty).  The story concerns the Penguin’s attempts to extort night club, radio and opera singers by using a gas so they lose their voices during live performances. In the story's denouement, Batman impersonates one of the tenors in the opera to intercept Penguin’s plan (but naturally keeping his Bat Mask on, in a scene worthy of Adam West in the TV series two decades later).

©DC. Batman replaces one of the tenors and no-one notices the mask!

The comic also had three back-up stories which introduced me to characters with whom I’d not previously been familiar - an adventure with Slam Bradley, another with Air Wave (and his parrot sidekick), and a final tale of the Boy Commandos drawn by Curt Swan, approximating an early Kirby style. 

Air Wave was a strip that was shortly to be cancelled, and has yet to find its way back into the wider DCEU. (I wonder what Zack Snyder would make of a parrot sidekick).

©DC. Parrot sidekick on shoulder.

I've included a panel from the Boy Commando's story as well as the splash; Curt Swan makes a good fist of the action scene, as well as capturing the rather grotesque faces that was a Kirby hallmark from his 1940s work.

©DC.

©DC. Curt Swan with some faces in the Kirby style

I held on to the comic for a decade, eventually selling it to Paul Hudson’s Comic Showcase in 1984 in that period when I divested myself of my complete comic collection so that I could pull together a down payment on my first flat. However, I did take a photo of the actual comic cover at the time in 1974 for posterity, which you see at the top of this post. With 20-20 hindsight perhaps I should have held on to it.

Well, SuperStuff followers - what was your first Golden Age comic?