You could always find a deal if you looked hard enough in the most famous comic related fanzine, The Rocket's Blast Comic Collector, and issue 90 from 1972 was no exception. As well as ads from the bigger dealers in this budding new hobby of collecting original comic artwork, there were a few private collectors with some great deals. John Vargas, out of Los Angeles was one of these "dealers" that had a full page ad selling his Silver Age pages at slightly higher prices...for the day. One of his advertisement's had a mere twenty one pages by eleven different artists, but what fantastic pages they were, from some giants of the field. Starting off at the top of the page was none other than a Jack "King" Kirby Fantastic Four #81 pg. 8 piece for $22.50, or you could have Captain America #112 pg. 16 for the very same price!
Next came two nice panel pages for $18 dollars each, one from Tales of Suspense #92 pg. 10 and The Mighty Thor #154 pg. 3. But the high priced Kirby was @$25 for a Journey into Mystery #107 pg. 7 to round out his "King" pages. Two John Romita Amazing Spider-Man pages were listed from issues #51 pg. 14 and #52 pg. 18 for the unheard of price of $16.50 each. Jim Steranko was up next with page 10 from issue 51 of Marvel's X-Men for the grand sum of $36.50, the highest price piece in his ad and a tie with Neal Adams' Brave and the Bold #85 page 4. This collector really had a "A" list of original comic art offering his Wally Wood Thunder Agents example from the fourth story of issue #15 page 5 for only twelve fifty. How about another giant in the field, Joe Kubert, and his seminal work on Hawkman from Brave and the Bold #44 page 3 for $16.50. I don't know why this guy didn't round up these gems to a whole dollar amount, but with these kooky low price, who really cares.
John Buscema's page one splash for Sub-Mariner #1 as next for $26, you must have to pay more for the splash I guess, but a Captain America piece from issue #115 pg. 13 ran only $15. Perhaps the next two covers were the best deals in print, you could either have Barry Smith's cover to Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #12 for thirty American dollars, or if that's too high, settle for his X-Men #53 cover for only $25! You want more splashes you say? Well, how about two from the talented Marie Severin, take your pick of the Incredible Hulk #102 page one for sale at $26, (more than a Barry Smith cover) or the affordable example of Strange Tales #160 featuring Dr. Strange at $18, go figure? Oh, and this seller also had the first page of Iron Man #1 for only $24 by Gene"The Dean" Colan. Rounding out our ad from the past is the bargain bin prices of $7 each for Don Heck, his Avengers #35 pg. 12 or #42 pg. 8, or a nice X-Men #43 pg. 12 , but if you bought all three Vargas would knock off a buck so the set was only twenty USD.
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