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Baseball Comics
In early 1949, Will Eisner started a comic book publishing company. He published only two books: Kewpies and Baseball Comics, and then pulled the rug on the enterprise.
In 1991 Kitchen Sink Press reprinted the very rare original Baseball Comics (over $500 Overstreet) in full color, on a much better paper stock, and with a heavy card stock cover. Eisner, aided by writer Jules Feiffer and artists Tex Blaisdell and Jerry Grandenetti were the creative team on the lead story, "Rube Rooky" and a real-life 1926 wacky story about the Dodgers' Babe Herman. Eisner had N.Y. Daily News sportswtiter Hy Turkin predict the "Top Rookies of 1949" in the original comic.
Added bonus: KSP included (bound into the centerfold) four newly-designed removable baseball cards of the '49 rookies, drawn by Kings in Disguise artist Dan Burr featuring Alvin Dark, Richie Ashburn, Gene Woodling and Eisner's fictional Rube Rooky character. These 4 baseball cards were available nowhere else, so if you are (or know) a card collector, these may actually be more desirable than the comic!
When Eisner halted his fledgling comic book company in 1949, he, Feiffer and Blaisdell had already created another real-life story for the second issue, a fascinating recounting of a final day A.L. Pennant-deciding game in 1907 featuring such Detroit stars as Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford and Connie Mack and Eddie Plank of the Philadelphia A's. The resourceful Eisner finally recycled the story within his "Spirit" newspaper section (Commissioner Dolan's face was pasted over that of the original narrator, Pop Flye, Rube's manager).
In 1992 Kitchen Sink reprinted the story in Baseball Comics #2, as originally intended, and again with a bonus: 4 newly-designed cardstock baseball cards of Cobb, Crawford, Mack and Plank by artist Dan Burr, to be found no where else. Also in this issue: a great Uncle Sam/Opening Day cover by Ray (Cotton Woods) Gotto, and a long, wonderful story about small town baseball, 'The Devil and Wal-Mart' by writers John Wooley and Jim Millaway and underground cartoonist Rand (Harold Hedd) Holmes that we regard as a modern classic.
