COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Showcase 34 Universal
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Grade:
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9.6
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
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Pedigree:
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Western Penn
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Certification #:
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4190254001
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Owner:
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Mississippi Mudcats
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Showcase #34 features the origin and first appearance of the Silver Age Atom, Ray Palmer. It also features the first appearance of Jean Loring.
In the first story, “Birth of the Atom!" we meet physics graduate student Ray Palmer who finds a White Dwarf Star Fragment, which he creates a lens out of it. When ultraviolet light is shone through the lens, it becomes a shrinking device. However, all of his tests find that every object he shrinks with the lens explode after several minutes.
One day while taking out his fiancée Jean Loring and a hiking club to a cave, they get trapped by an avalanche. Going on his own to find a way out, Ray decides to use his Dwarf Star lens to shrink himself down in size to climb up to an opening and make it larger, using an engagement ring he has for Jean.
After succeeding in making an opening, Ray returns to his original size, and believes that he survived the experience when drippings from the cave landed on the lens. However, after everyone is safe, Ray finds that his lens still causes items to explode after an hour, leaving Ray to realize that perhaps something in his own body prevents him from being destroyed when staying at a small size for an extended period of time.
In the cover story, "Battle of the Tiny Titans!" one of Jean’s friends, Alma Wilson, is accused of stealing money from the bank where she works as a teller, Alma explains that a little man appeared and stole the money. When Jean tells Ray that her friend Alma is a trustworthy person, Ray decides to see what he can do with his shrinking powers.
Having created a costume and dubbing himself the Atom, Ray springs into action; however, before he can investigate he finds the strange little man appearing in his laboratory. After a battle against the little man, he learns that his opponent is an alien named Kulan Dar. Dar is from Julnar, where the inhabitants can teleport across the universe when they injest the element Europium. However, arriving on Earth, he became prisoner of a crook who took control of his will bending device, the Dominator, and has been using him to commit robberies on his behalf.
With the help of Kulan, Atom tracks the criminal down and after a battle against Dar, who is back under the crook's control, Atom manages to defeat him and turn him over to the authorities. Kulan Dar literally appears in court and clears Jean's friend Alma of all charges before returning to his home planet.
In addition to being the first SA Atom, this is probably our favorite cover in the entire run. We were in search of a high-grade Showcase #34 for years before we started this Atom collection, but for many years none of those books ever hit the market. We finally bought a very clean 9.0 from the September 2020 Pedigree Comics auction to complete this set. Then in late 2022 we were fortunate enough to make a deal with the owner of this gem, which we finally received in February 2023.
The book is obviously the highlight of this set. It comes from the Western Penn Collection and is the single highest graded copy out of well over 800 examples certified by CGC. We acquired it in a private transaction from a friend and fellow collector.
Interestingly, there was a fake sale of a 9.4 copy of this book reported on CGC for $230,000 in April 2022. I assume it was fake because (1) it is so far above market, and (2) that book has been listed for sale for several years with no bids ever recorded on it. In fact, it is still listed for sale on Pedigree with no listed price and on ComicConnect for $225,000. I’m not sure what to make of it all, but I guess it’s safe to say that you cannot always rely on reported sales when valuing a book. At any rate, I assume if the book ever does sell at some inflated price, it would be great for the value of ours. And I can assure you I paid nowhere close to that price and the person who sold me the book is as savvy as they come when it comes to valuing comics. Certainly, someone is trying to perpetrate a fraud with that phony sale, the magnitude of which I have not seen in my collecting history. Keep it real, man, that one is so far out of line, it’s absurd.
Still, this 9.6 really should be worth a lot more than 14,750 registry points, you could not find a 9.4 for twice that amount in dollars.
2024 Update: Well the Slobodian 9.4 copy of this issue is no longer listed for sale anywhere, but there is also not a second sale reported of the book. However, GPA still shows the $230,000 sale from April 2022 in its database. I assume at least the dealers (CC, CL and Pedigree), all of whom listed the book for sale on their sites, must know the actual owner. In all my years of collecting I have never seen an attempted fraud of the magnitude that was tried on that book. There is nothing wrong with listing a book at a ridiculous price and hoping you find the bigger fool, but the reported GPA sale is certainly troubling. At any rate, other than that, not much to report here as the census stayed the same over the last year with our book sitting atop two 9.4s.
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