More Fun Comics #73: Aquaman and Green Arrow, Same Issue

In November 1941, DC published an anthology called More Fun Comics. The cover featured Doctor Fate. Inside, in the back, two new features started with no fanfare at all: a green-clad archer, and a man who could breathe underwater.

Two characters who have each carried a film or a television series debuted in the same comic, in the back, as filler. Aquaman and Green Arrow, both first appearances, both in this issue.

Nine documented sales, including a rough one

That bottom line is the most valuable thing on this page. A documented 2.0 sale is worth more to most sellers than a documented 9.0, and this book has one.

A CGC 2.0 is a comic in poor shape. Heavy wear, probably creasing through the cover, corners gone, possibly a tear or two. It is the sort of comic an owner tends to describe apologetically before I have even seen it. It brought $46,555.

Most Golden Age guides you will read are built entirely from high-grade results, because those are the sales that get written up. That leaves the owner of an ordinary copy with nothing to work from and a tendency to assume the worst. Nine documented sales let you see the whole shape, and two things are going on in it. Grade still moves this book less than most Golden Age keys through the middle of the scale: leave the January 2022 result and the pedigree 9.4 aside and the ladder runs from $144,000 at 8.0 down to roughly $47,000 at 2.0 — about three to one across six grade points, a shallow curve. The Edgar Church copy is the exception that proves the rule: $460,127 for the 9.4 is a provenance price as much as a grade price. The date on the sale moves this book about as much as the grade does, and that is the second thing.

The result I set aside is the strangest number in the table: a 6.5 that brought $192,000 in January 2022 — more than every copy above it except the pedigree 9.4. A second 6.5 brought $120,000 in November 2023 — the same grade, twenty-two months later, down about 38 percent. I come back to what that pair means further down, because it belongs with the screen-attention story rather than the grading one.

The 7.0 outselling the 7.5 by ten thousand dollars is the usual noise — different sale, different date, different page quality. So is the 6.5 that beat the 7.0 by six thousand two months later. I would not read anything into half a grade on this book.

Why the back of an anthology is where the money hides

This issue is a good lesson in how Golden Age value actually works, and it applies well beyond this one comic.

The cover feature was Doctor Fate, who had been running for a while and was the reason the book sold. The new strips went in the back because nobody knew whether they would work. That was standard: a publisher tried a character in six or eight pages at the rear, and if the mail was good it moved forward.

Which means first appearances of Golden Age characters are very often buried, uncredited, and invisible from the cover. You cannot sort a stack of 1940s anthologies by looking at the fronts. All Star Comics #8 has no Wonder Woman on the cover. This issue has no Aquaman and no Green Arrow on the cover.

If you are going through a run of anthologies — More Fun, Adventure, Detective, Marvel Mystery — the issue numbers matter far more than the pictures, and that is exactly the material people price by the inch.

Two characters that grew into the value

It is worth understanding why this book is worth what it is, because the mechanism is not the one people assume.

Neither Aquaman nor Green Arrow was a major character for most of the twentieth century. Both spent decades as second-string members of team books, and for a long stretch this issue was a solid Golden Age key rather than a six-figure one.

What changed is screen presence. A film that grossed over a billion dollars and a television series that ran eight seasons brought both characters to audiences who had never opened a comic, and first appearances respond to that. The interesting part is that one comic carries both, so it caught two separate waves.

The caution that goes with it: value driven by screen attention behaves differently from value driven by scarcity. It can soften when the attention moves elsewhere, and on this book the softening is not a hypothetical — it is documented. A 6.5 brought $192,000 in January 2022 and a second 6.5 brought $120,000 in November 2023, the same grade down about 38 percent in under two years. I cannot tell you how much of that is this book and how much is the whole vintage market coming off its early-2022 peak, but the direction is not in doubt.

That is not a reason to panic about this book, which has genuine scarcity underneath it too, but it is a reason to treat any single peak result carefully — and to price a copy from the 2023-2025 sales, not the 2022 one.

Selling a More Fun Comics #73

1. Do not write off a rough copy. The documented 2.0 brought $46,555. Wear does not take this book out of the money.
2. Confirm the issue number from the small print. Anthology covers look alike across a run and the neighboring issues are worth a fraction of this one.
3. Check the whole run. Issue 52 is the first Spectre and issue 101 is the first Superboy. This title has several keys hidden in it.
4. Leave it as it is. No cleaning, no pressing, no tape, and no attempt to flatten a bent cover.

I will tell you what the beaten end of the ladder does, on the rare occasions somebody has recorded it. On this book somebody did, and it is good news for most of the people who will read this page.

Related

• More Fun Comics #52, the first Spectre, from the same title.
• The 100 most valuable Golden Age comics, and what each one really sold for.

Cover images on this page are shown small, for identification, with the publisher credited in the caption. If you are a rights holder and want an image removed, contact me and it comes down.