Ivan Kocmarek

Ivan Kocmarek

Grew up in Hamilton's North End. Comic collector for over 50 yrs. Recent interest in Canadian WECA era comics.

Resurrection

Christmas is just a week away and the eye-of-the-storm peacefulness and sentiment of the coming Christmas eve and Christmas day, rather than its stressful bustle and rabid commerce, begin to rope me in. This holiday season, I’ve been wistfully thinking…

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Top Flight Comics

One-shots are outliers in this wonderful hobby of ours and there are many reasons for their existence. Some are compendiums that gather together a number of features around a given character or theme. Some are ash-cans that are most often…

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Who is Freelance?

Collectors and comic aficionados are quick to knock Canadian war-time black-and-white comics to the lower rungs of the comic book quality ladder and, of the four main Canadian comic book publishers, Anglo-American comic books are seen to occupy the lowest…

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Last Bells

The early post-war period was one of turmoil for publishers of Canadian comics. Montreal’s Educational Projects didn’t even make it into 1946. The last issue of Canadian Heroes carried the cover date of October 1945. The reasons why Educational Projects…

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The Crusaders

Let me put forward an analogy that, I think, sort of explains the nature of the four main Canadian WECA comic book publishers. If you remember, these four are Anglo-American and Bell Features—both based in Toronto, Maple Leaf Publishing based…

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Summer of the Book

I start with the preemptive apology acknowledging that this column will be mainly a shameless (but red-faced) self-promotion. For me this has been the “Summer of the Book.” Finished printed copies of my Heroes of the Home Front book arrived…

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Get Lucky!!

The big news this week is that the WECA Price Guide is finally finished and available! I have to thank Tony Andrews, Jim Finlay, and Walter Durajlija for being the main forces behind determining the prices listed in the book…

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