Set Description:
Personal profile: Discovering Marvel Comics printed in other languages, by publishers in other countries, happened slowly for me, over some time. Thumbing through boxes at comic shows or even local comic shops, I would occasionally bump into one of these comics. While I always thought they were interesting, it wouldn't be until sometime a half dozen years or so ago that I actually developed the desire to collect them. While I collect many publishers and many languages of comics that print mostly Marvel Silver Age comics, it was the Mexican publisher La Prensa that captured my strongest interest and sent me searching out more information about how and when they began printing Marvel's stories at the dawn of their Silver Age. Seeking information about La Prensa was similar to trying to acquire their comics; you find some here and a little there, slowly assembling a larger picture. Seeking both information AND comics will be an enjoyable ongoing project, expected to unfold over many years.
The publisher: La Prensa appears to have acquired the rights to publish some Silver Age Marvel stories by the late 1950s, as I have a goodly number of what have been nicknamed "Pre-Hero Marvel" issues of titles like, Journey into Mystery, Tales of Suspense, Strange Worlds, etc. It appears La Prensa gained the rights to publish Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man title very quickly after its first issue, as they were publishing it congruently in the single digit issue numbering. In fact, La Prensa was publishing the title bi-weekly, which is how they caught up to being current with Marvel's numbering. This bi-weekly publishing caused La Prensa to need to supplement their title with stories from other Marvel titles, mostly Ant-Man stories from Tales to Astonish or Avengers stories from that title. Evidently, those other hero stories weren't as popular with the Mexican readers and La Prensa went back to featuring Spider-Man stories and a once-a-month publishing schedule.
Set goals: I will attempt to complete what would be considered a Silver Age Amazing Spider-Man set of La Prensa comics. A lofty goal to be sure, some of these comics are pretty difficult to find. Often times they just aren't found in anything above mid-grade and they frequently have lesser page quality. Many of them don't have any example graded and the ones that do are usually the only graded copy.
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