NUMBER 562

WWW; Wanted to Buy

April 30, 1996

[NOTE: This column was written in early 1996; the web has changed and grown a lot since then. If any of the links listed below still work when you see this page, consider yourself lucky! As of late 1999, four of them are dead. I am not going to be updating this page, rather i shall leave it here as a memento of the web in its youth.]

WWW: For the past month or so i have been busily converting my old archives to html (hyper-text mark-up language) files to be placed on the world wide web. At this point there are dozens of pages up and online, both in the narrow category of Fit to Print reprints and in other topic categories that interest me, such as lucky amulets, Co-Freemasonry, karezza, and sacred architecture. Those of you who are web surfers -- and i happen to know that there are a lot of web surfers in comics -- may enjoy a trip to my home-page: https://www.luckymojo.com -- which is a jumping-off place for the big ball of wax that represents my current contribution to global brain contents accessibility.

One of the biggest thrills of web surfing is finding sparkly bits of polished knowledge that one had no way of producing oneself. For me, these gems of brilliance include such complex yet non-commercial sites as The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World page (http://pharos.bu.edu/Egypt/Wonders/), Christopher Siren's Myths and Legends site (http://pubpages.unh.edu/~cbsiren/myth.html), Shannon's Vodoun Information pages (http://www.vmedia.com/shannon/voodoo/voodoo.html), The Freemasonry index (http://freemasonry.org/wwwmason.html), the complete Burma Shave sign web site (http://www.iea.com/~dgookin/burma.html), the Kook's Museum run by Diane Kossey (http://www.teleport.com/~dkossy/index.html), and Psychospy's Guide to Knowledge (http://www.cris.com/~Psyspy). But, of course, your mileage may vary.

You will note that i didn't list a comics-related site above. That's because i have not yet found a really great, concise, complete, well-maintained comics industry web page. Yahoo and Lycos do maintain fine search engines, but a simple all-on-one-page list of links to the homepages of comic book and comic strip publishers, creators, syndicates, distributors, libraries, and scholars would be useful to me, so if you have or know of such an industry links page (which is kept up to date), can you point me to it?

SPIN-OFF EPHEMERA COLLECTIBLES: People who collect old comics (and i donÕt mean Todd McFarlane's pre-Image work) often find themselves poring through stacks of crumbling paper ephemera from non-comics publishers, stuff like vintage railroad time-tables, pulp magazines, recipe pamphlets, postcards, childrenÕs books, cigarette cards, and trade catalogues. These non-comics paper ephemera collectibles are found everywhere, in junk and antiques stores and in flea markets -- and many is the time i have run across a great stash of confession magazines or road maps and wished i knew someone i could direct toward them. But as far as i know, there is no magazine like the CBG for general paper ephemera, so most of us who delve into this stuff get our best leads by spreading the word on our interests among fellow comic book fans, especially those who have retentive memories and helpful dispositions.

If you haven't guessed by now, that was an introduction to a request: if any of you "old-paper folks" come across copies of illustrated catalogues from the Standard O & B Supply Company, the King Novelty Company, or the like, will you let me know?

These catalogues were published in the 1930s-1950s and they are extremely similar to comics digests in appearance, being illustrated with hand-lettered four-colour line-art on newsprint. (For a sample art page, go to http://www.sonic.net/yronwode/Lodestone.html.) The material offered for sale includes cosmetics (e.g. Lucky Brown Face Powder and Slick-Black Hair Dressing) and hoodoo "curios" (lodestones, incense, oils, John the Conqueror roots, and figurative candles).

What are these catalogues worth to me? Well, condition counts a lot, but iÕll pay $5.00 to $50.0 each, depending on date, page-count, and the overall quality of artwork and colour.

I am also buying labels for these goods, from makers like Famous Products, Valmor, Sonny Boy Products, the Hussey Company, Lucky Mon-Gol, and Mojo Brand Products. (For a sample, go to https://www.luckymojo.com/luckymongol.html.)

Thanks for keeping me in mind.

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