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As a kid in the early eighties, I was introduced to the characters through Dutch reprints. In particular, there was a pocket-size publication called "Superhelden Strippaperback" (Super-Heroes Comics Paperback) which was about two hundred pages long and contained Gold Key characters such as Magnus, Turok, Space Family Robinson, Dagar and the occasional Dr. Solar story.
I was handed these by my older brother because they were not "real" superheroes. He read "Spider-Man" and "Hulk" and the paperback was just too odd for him.
Since until then most of my comics reading experience had been with funny animals and other humor titles, the books were quite a culture shock for me. I vividly remember scenes in which Magnus chopped off robot heads and Turok shot arrows into humungous dinosaurs' backs and loved every panel of it!
I did not understand all of it -- some of this had to do with me being too young, some with the sometimes dodgy translations -- but I was a fan for life. That is, for all eight issues of the series.
An older cousin, seeing how I tore these books up, brought me a stack of tattered old comics from the late sixties and early seventies. The main title was "Avontuur Classics" (Adventure Classics) which reprinted a whole slew of Gold Key heroes, from Magnus and Solar to Lone Ranger, Flipper and Green Hornet. Quite eclectic!
But there was one problem with these comics, at least in my young mind: they were in black-and-white! This made me cringe at every page, thinking these must be some substandard versions of my heroes.
Skip almost ten years. In the meantime I had become quite a comics fan. Aside from European comics, I read three Spider-Man series each month, X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Conan and anything else I could put my hands on. I was a comics fan, not just a reader, and hoarded each issue I had found on the newsstands.
I had slowly started collecting some US titles as well, mostly because the Dutch publisher had skipped a few issues here and there and also because some titles were hinted at but never translated into Dutch. Then one day, someone in the magazine/comics store pointed out a new title: "Solar, Man of the Atom".
From then on, I was hooked. I quickly bought or traded all issues of the "old" titles Magnus, Solar, then moved on to the new titles. For a couple of years, I bought every single issue Valiant put out. I even went so far as to start collecting the old Gold Key (and even Dell!) issues and managed to get a fairly complete collection in just a few short years. Seems like, despite the popularity of the Valiant heroes, no one really wanted the older versions. Quite a few older collectors were pleased to trade them off to me.
But as time went on, I stopped buying the newer titles, only sticking with Magnus, Solar and Turok out of a nostalgic sense. Sure, I'd pick up back issues of other titles if I came across them in the 50 cent bins, but my heart was no longer in it.
Over time, a friend of mine started a comics store and asked me if I had any old issues I wanted him to get rid of for me. I went through my collection and got rid of some 15,000 issues I no longer wanted to keep. When I came to the Valiant/Acclaim boxes, I had no problems getting rid of many series. Harbingers? Fun, but had to go. HARDCorps? Nah. Secret Weapons? Gone without a second thought. Shadowman? Hmmm, hesitated for a while, but after rereading the first ten issues, it could also go. But when it came to the old trinity, Solar, Magnus and Turok just could not be abandoned.
Worse, I found that over the years, some holes had appeared in my collection. Trading, missfiling, lending out or simple not purchasing them when they came out meant that I now had an incomplete collection. So I set out, roughly three years ago, to fill the holes up.
This started out easy enough. Many issues were purchased for a buck or less at cons. But as time went on, I realized that maybe a dozen or two issues were simply not easy to find in The Netherlands. The higher numbers, which probably had low print runs, are simply impossible to find. And collectors who have those in their collection often guard them like hounds on a leash!
The hunt continues!
_________________ For over a million indexed stories, go to the Grand Comics Database at www.comics.org!
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