Foreign Editions 401
This week, David takes us to the exotic land of foreign editions and there are some amazing comics here. I personally didn’t know about the Mexican Spider-Mans for example, and now I need to have them!!!! As always, if you want to feature a specific part of your collection in this section, please send us an email to admin _AT_ comicbookinvest _DOT_ com
Hello everyone, my name is David. I have been a collector of comic books for over thirty years. About ten years ago, I began to grow tired of the hobby. Anything I could want was now readily available on eBay, if you had the right amount of money, and the whole idea just seemed stale. The thrill of the chase was gone. I know many of you feel the same way. Currently, chasing these low ratio variants seems to be filling this void for many collectors.
One fateful day, I purchased a small lot of books. Included in this lot were three strange books I had never heard of. They had silver age Superman covers but were in a foreign language I did not recognize, published by a company called “Ebal.” A quick internet search found nothing. In a hobby where people pride themselves on knowing the exact issue where Clark Kent first blows his nose, I was shocked and intrigued that there was no information about these books. The language turned out to be Portuguese and the books were published in Brazil. This would lead me down a dark rabbit hole of research to a whole new genre of collecting. Now, a decade later, I am completely obsessed with finding rare and unknown international editions of American comics. Those four Brazilian Superman comics have ballooned into a collection of over 800 international key books from every corner of the world.
I have found a dedicated group of collectors at foreigncomicdb.com and we are basically writing the book on this massive, undocumented section of comic book history. Our shared goal is to create awareness of these underappreciated books and to provide data for those looking to search them out. Our group is actually discovering previously unknown international editions of key books all the time. We think it’s an exciting little niche’ and we invite you all to stop by and peek into our forum. Here are a few from my collection I thought would be of interest to the readers here:
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This first book is from Brazil. It was published by Ebal in August of 1971, only eight months after the American edition of Batman 227. Brazil had two Batman series, “Batman” and “Batman Bi.” The “Bi” was for bi-monthly. We assume the print run was smaller on these because the Bi’s are much more difficult to find. Brazil has possibly the oldest American superhero comic history. Action Comics 1 was published in the A Gazeta newspaper in December of 1938. |
| This copy of Mystic 55 was published in the UK by L. Miller in 1965. There is a “pence edition” of Avengers 4, so this would be the second UK edition. The first question I am always asked is “are they worth as much as the U.S. editions?”. The answer is complicated and it varies from book to book. What collectors need to understand is that these should not be compared in value to US editions. Investors should see them as unique editions and compare them to past sales of the same book. Sales data is difficult to find because of scarcity, but if you follow the market you will see a sharp curve in these UK books.
A few years ago, these could be had for under $50. A recent sale of a similar Alan Class edition of Tales to Astonish #39, also published a year after the original, sold for $800. Not as much as the US, but a rise of 1600% is a better investment value. This copy of Mystic 55 is much tougher to find than the US or the pence edition. You cannot go on eBay and instantly buy one. UK collectors have shunned these for nearly 50 years. High-grade examples are almost non-existent. |
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This is a Goodwill Bookstore edition of Avengers 96 from the Philippines. When it comes to condition, it takes experience to know what is acceptable on which foreign books and what is not. Places such as Germany and Italy had larger print runs and collectors who kept books in mint condition. Other places did not. The Philippines is the perfect storm of scarcity. The books had a print run for a relatively small population with a high percentage of impoverished people. Take into consideration the age of the books, extreme island weather, lack of perceived value, civil war and a lack of readers who read English. Needless to say, the Filipino books are among the rarest editions on earth. A copy in any condition is a win.
We have found many key books from the Philippines by Marvel, DC and Gold Key, but we believe many more exist (or did exist). Unfortunately, there is no record of what was published. Among them, we have strong evidence to believe there is a Batman 227 and an All Star Western 10 possibly waiting to be found, someday. |
| El Sorprendente Hombre Araña 148 was published in Mexico by La Prensa in 1973. La Prensa published translated editions of Amazing Spider-Man starting from issue 1 up until around issue 119. Then a curious thing happened and Mexican collectors are still hotly debating exactly what. La Prensa either lost the license to Spider-Man, lost the license to the American material or, as it is also rumored, believed Mexicans would no longer read Spider-Man if Gwen Stacy was killed. It is here that La Prensa began, for whatever reason, to create their own original material.
An alternate Mexican Spider-Man universe was created where not only does Gwen Stacy live on, but marries Peter Parker. There is a wonderful wedding cover issue. It would seem that these issues had a smaller print run, as they are more difficult to find. They feature unique covers by Mexican artist Luis Jose Duran. Many are reminiscent of Steranko’s classic Strange Tales run with that mod spy aesthetic. If you are a Spider-Man fan, I highly recommend researching this run. I picked this book to share because it is one of the tougher issues to find and I love the knock off Vampirella / Spider-Man cover. |
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Korku mayis 77 from Turkey, published in May of 1977. This series is rare but if you look them up on eBay, there are a few Turkish sellers with copies. For whatever reason, this edition seems to never come up for sale. This is the first and only copy we have ever seen.
Korku published mostly Warren material such as Creepy and Vampirella. Why this has Bob Larkin’s Marvel Preview #7 cover is unknown. The inside is all Warren material and it does not contain the Rocket Raccoon story. We collect these for the covers so I don’t really care. I love it! |
| This edition of Batman 205 is one of my favorite foreign variants ever. Indonesia is a hidden treasure trove of comics waiting to be discovered. People have no idea. They have official Marvel and DC books that were published there. However, there is an awesome amount of wild bootleg editions of Marvel and DC material featuring incredible covers. There is a facebook group trying to document some of these books but little information exists. What we have found so far is mind-blowing. |  |
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Iron Man 55 from Greece published by Hellas Kabanas in 1976. Kabanas key books can be very difficult. There are currently two known copies of this book in the US. Some of you may recognize this one. I had it up on eBay for $5,000 for the past year. I was not actually trying to sell it. In fact, if someone met my price, I would have been heartbroken. My eBay listing received over a thousand hits. That is some good promotion.
Some of these books are so rare that hardly anyone knows they even exist. This is a huge problem. If no one knows they exist, there is no demand. If there is no demand, they are worthless. If people in other countries perceive their books as worthless, they do not bring them to market. This was the case with books from Yugoslavia / Croatia. They were incredibly rare until a Yugoslavian edition of Amazing Spider-Man 129 sold for $300. Very soon after, more Croatian sellers began popping up with more vintage Yugoslavian books. |
 La Reina De La Costa Negra vol.2 #1 published in 1965. This is the crown jewel of my collection. For those of you who have never heard of this series, I recommend reading Jeffrey Shanks’ article La Reina De La Costa Negra : Mystery of the Mexican Conan comics on his blog.
In Robert E. Howard’s story Queen of the Black Coast, Conan is on a merchant ship that is captured by pirates, led by the pirate queen Belit. Because of his prowess in the ensuing battle, Belit spares Conan’s life and recruits him as her first mate. There is a short paragraph explaining how they spend two years adventuring together. It then flashes forward to them landing on an island where Belit is killed by a witch and Conan carries on. This entire comic series takes place in that undescribed two years where they are adventuring. Joma created these comics without any kind of license or permission. When contacted by a curious August Derleth, who held the rights in 1966, they completely ceased production. The first known appearance of La Reina is in a small pamphlet size anthology in the early 50’s. Next was an over-sized self- titled series in 1958. A complete first issue of that series has never been found. One collector has a copy but it is missing a cover so we still don’t know what it looks like. Finally in 1965, they produced a standard comic sized self-titled series that lasted at least 54 issues that we know of. The first issue of that series was also unknown until this one here came to market four years ago. They belonged to a collector who claims to have been chasing them for thirty years. The same collector sold one more copy, stated to be his personal copy, one week later. These two that were sold are the only known copies of #1 to exist at this time. Every issue of La Reina de la Costa Negra should be considered extremely scarce. It would really be wonderful if these could someday be collected and translated. They are filled with monsters, over the top violence and gore. I cannot personally read them yet, but they look like a lot of fun. |
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When I first began searching out international editions, I came across a Hungarian copy of The Killing Joke published in 1989. It was amusing to see the “smile” word balloon in a different language. I began searching out how many different “smiles” I could find. Soon, I had quite a few. Early on, I thought I was some kind of genius maverick who had created a new style of collecting by bringing together these different editions for the first time.
A few months later I would find out I was dead wrong. Not only were there others quietly doing this, they had collections that I could scarcely believe. We call them “key sets.” They are the basis of our obsession and never-ending research. The database at foreigncomicdb.com was created in order to keep track of how many editions of each key book exist, mainly to help us with our “set building.” In my next article, I will be sharing more keys sets full of unknown editions of some of your favorite books.
I would like to thank the good folks at comicbookinvest.com for this opportunity to share my collection with you.
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Awesome write up. We’ve dabble a bit on foreign editions here but the extent and knowledge brought in this article was really eye-opening. Thanks!
superb article, really interesting read
Hi. Great article, lovely books.
I picked up about 20 or so Filipino reprints from the 50p bin at my LCS a couple years back. Been sitting on them and looking to flip them, but as they never come up on the bay I have no idea how much to list them for. It’s a mix of Marvel and DC all in at least Fine condition, but most VFN probably…
Great stuff David,id recommend showing the asm 129 reprints in one of your article,im sure people will like it,
The number 1 thing i hate when it comes to foreign editions is when people ask “is this worth as much as the US one” ive heard it so many times it just makes me fuming mad, after seeing the US version of a comic 150,000 times, and just ONE of a brazilian, german, french or asian print, people will actually devalue them because they cant understand the text or read the cover, its insane. In the art world, if anyone had found out that picasso had done a blue period painting while visiting asia and it was a one of, people would lose their minds because of its rarity. Thats why im glad at least sometimes people see a bit of the appeal in dell otto, because hes european and most of his covers were europe exclusives. But the amount of times ive seen foreign ASM #1 , 14 or 129, or even once scandinavian Superman issues from the 50s and they sell for 20 maybe 30 bucks, its almost mind boggling.
Unless theres a massive, and i mean 20+ year gap in the printing of the foreign edition , theres no reason not to value them at or above the US prints. especially if 1 appears on eBay once a year. Like the 1960s UK prints that actually came out a few weeks or days before the US copies, and were around 20% of the US print run, how those are undervalued, ill never actually know.
Great article! I’ve picked up some foreign editions over the years. Nothing major but they’re still a cool item to have for the PC. And I would note, the majority of the books I have were found on the shelves of Goodwill stores. Especially the foreign Disneys…stuff like a few 70s & 80s German & Italian Donald Ducks.
One of the things I like is that they did some of the oddest things, stuff you would never see in a US edition. For example, I have a couple old B/W Australian westerns from the 60s. Anthology style books, they have DC Johnny Thunder, Marvel Two Gun Kid, and Charlton stories…all under one cover!
Love that Batman 205 painted cover! They just took the Frank Robbins original andvredid it, flipping the gunman pose and changingv the smile to a demonic Joker grin!
Please do more stories in these!
I am very happy to hear so much positive interest in these editions. Many of the opinions expressed in these comments are exactly how we feel as well. As more collectors find out about the existance of these books, hopefully the perception of importance will begin to change.
Really interesting article. Would love to read some of those “Gwen Stacy never died” stories. Also, looking forward to the keys article, and if you could include Batman #608 (and any Hush international variants), that would be really awesome and appreciated as I see those pop up from time to time.
Love this article especially the Spider-man stuff. I recently picked up nearly the entire Kirby’s 4th world run UK pence editions for a song.