They were only playing leap-frog, but this fresh 1945 Magic-Beano Book leap-frogged to £1155 almost completing the high grade set of a dedicated collector, built up over the last twenty years. The 1946 year with Big Eggo a la carte was also a tasty ostrich at £715.

Our collection of early Dandy comics continues to attract powerful bidding and the two Xmas issues for 1940 (yes, two) 159 Bumper Christmas Number and 160 Christmas Holiday Number took £242 each.

Dandy 86 featured an ad for Magic Comic 1 as well as a Wild Man of Borneo cover, who soon calmed down with £132. Dandy 83 had Korky's tiger on the loose but he was swiftly captured for £181, the highest price of the day.

Tigers were certainly on the loose in our June auction. Issues 1-16 were not in that good a condition with worn spines and rusty staples, but bidding was tiger-like and £400 put Roy Of The Rovers well onside. The following 17-69 numbers were in two bound volumes and pencilled 'Pepper' in the margins. Roy's creator, Frank S. Pepper, having to order his own copies from the local newsagent. Roy scored again with £451.

This was a seminal Roy Of The Rovers front cover artwork by David Sque for Tiger 4 October 1975. Marking twenty-one years in Tiger, Roy Race, the world-famous player-manager of Melchester Rovers, plays his testimonial match - and he's interviewed by ITV Sport's Dickie Davies. £550 was the winning bidder's testimonial. The writers and publishers, IPC, created a brilliant football scenario with their eponymous hero by drafting real life football stars into the action. Bobby Charlton was a headline story writer, Bob Wilson and Emlyn Hughes were brought out of retirement to play for Melchester and Roy was even interviewed by Sky TV's Richard Keys and Andy Gray. Whatever happened to them?

There were 34 Mickey Mouse Weeklys from the first year of 1936 with issues 1, 2, 4-6, 9-14 and intermittently up to No 45 on offer. These brightly coloured numbers were in VG to FN grades and sold at £340. There are lots of collectors out there. The following lot featured the first Xmas and Fireworks issues and a sparkling £71.

Not to be outdone, Donald Duck's first annual, published by Collins in 1938, was bid very well. As well as his feathers, the book was flying at £396. It is rare.

Here was the complete 1940 run of Thriller/War Thriller up to the last issue number 588. Propaganda war stories of Nazis in the New Forest, The Brand Of The Swastika and Storm Troop Of The Baltic Skies by W E Johns were taken to a winning bid of £341, 19 issues at around £15 a copy.

Knockout was offered in the complete year of 1945 with accompanying Annual and these publisher's file copies starring Deed-A-Day Danny, Sexton Blake, The Gremlins and Our Ernie were knocked down for £330.

The Giant Monster Comic was comics polymath, Denis Gifford's unpublished mock-up annual for 1944. In 92 pages Gifford drew Roy Rogers, Lawson Drew - Master Detective, Magical Monty and the front page of a fictional newspaper, Curley's Courier where the editor captures a Nazi pilot in his back garden. An original piece of British comics history taken to £439.

TV Boardman is a hotly collected publisher whose UK editions of US titles Smash, Feature Comics, Mystery and Super Funnies don't come along that often individually, so Smash's complete five issue run and 9 others found £15 each at £205.

Hotspur, Adventure, Wizard and Rover from the 1950s still attract collectors, especially when issues are in high grade in bound volumes. Here was the complete year of Hotspur from 1954 starring The Avenging Eye and Dirk, The King's Dog-Boy at £154.

Beezers are generally hard to find in good runs and due to their large format, even more difficult in reasonable grades. We featured The Beezer's first four years 1956-59 in four lots starring Ginger, The Banana Bunch, Calamity Jane and Pop, Dick and Harry. 1956-58 made close on £300 each and 1959 made £110 with only one issue of that year missing - a bargain £2 each.

Complete in two bound volumes, this 1954 year of The Sun comic starred old favourites Billy The Kid, Robin Hood and The Happy Hussar and charged to £220. Steady the Buffs.

We had noted in our Home Page letter that a 1951 board of Frank Hampson's Dan Dare had sold at auction in France this year for 3000 euros so our estimate on this later 1957 artwork at £880-1000 had some way to go to match the French record. In fact it was surpassed with this Rogue Planet story journeying into space at £3025. However, it should not be assumed that all Hampson's boards are now worth this kind of moolah as two strong bidders created this Compal record and now one of them is potentially satisfied.

Our WWII artwork collection gathered strong pace this June with War Picture Library nos 3 and 9 front covers by Giorgio De Gaspari. Bombarded on the gun deck in Action Stations, and up to your neck in sand and bullets with Bombs Away, £605 and £880 provided our winning bidders with a high-priced truce.

We offered the complete 63 page artwork for Commando No 83: Send For Spitfires. A set like this never comes up for auction, especially as publishers, DC Thomson, are renowned for keeping their artwork in their own archives. Special though this lot was the quantity of pages was a display factor and the Spitfires just reached take-off at £2000. Bandits at four 'o'clock, skipper.

Ron Embleton was the major artist of Express Weekly, later retitled TV Express and his brilliant work included cover hero Wulf The Briton, Battleground, Biggles and Col. Pinto. 85 issues from 1958-60 and 88 issues from 1960-61 (illustrated above) made a fiver apiece at £450 and £455 respectively.

Our US section started with a selection of glamour magazines, iconic now for the insouciant sexuality of their cover girls by legendary artists Enoch Bolles and Peter Driben. £44 and £32 whisked Film Fun and Titter breathlessly away whilst Wink, Flirt and Beauty Parade exhibited their derrieres without so much as a backward glance.

Crimes By Women #1 headlined the true story of Bonnie Parker, taken away for £91 whilst Red Dragon #5 was actually #1 and starred Rex King and Jet (his faithful pet) for £93. Here, boy.

The copy of Avengers #1 was a [vg-] pence issue taken to a very strong £410 whilst two founder members starred in their own right; Journey Into Mystery #83 the first Thor at £495 and Tales Of Suspense #39 the first Iron Man at £252.

I used to be a super-hero. About seven years ago we sold a copy of the first Dandy comic with free gift Express Whistler for £20,350, a record price for a British comic that still holds today. That was in 2004 and Comic Book Auctions was flavour of the year after that and I took every possible opportunity to cash in on the ongoing publicity. This unfortunately included daytime TV and I found myself on a programme hosted by Philip Schofield where (so-called in my case) experts in their field were asked to bring one of their favourite items on to the show, answer a few questions and get a hundred pounds to spend on comics or whatever their hobby was. Of course you had to get the questions right or your own item was forfeit, in my case a high grade copy of Desperate Dan's first annual from 1954. What they didn't tell me was that I had to dress up as Batman to answer the questions and I seem to remember Eric Knowles as Robin and I think he'd brought in an old cup and saucer. The studio was hot and the ridiculous nylon suit was hotter and this was the reason my final question 'What year was the Dandy first published?' was answered as 1938 instead of 1937. My muffled protestations were not helped by the mask, where a mixture of black dye and spittle began to drip in rivulets down my bright blue bodysuit. Then under the full glare of TV lights, Philip, Eric and 2 million sofa-bound critics I watched my beloved Dan desperately slip away.
I used to be a super-hero.

Malcolm Phillips
Director
Comic Book Auctions Ltd.