Golden Age Comics – FREE Downloads
October 23, 2008
I’ve just discovered a site that has a fantastic collection of public domain Golden Age comics from the 1930s, 40s & 50s that have been carefully scanned and are available for free downloading. It’s called, appropriately enough, Golden Age Comics and you can access their site here. The great majority of these have never been reprinted, anywhere. If you wanted to purchase copies, they would cost you hundreds of dollars, that is if you could even find them for sale.
Of course, reading them on screen does not equal holding a printed copy in your hand, but for most of us this is a close as we’ll ever get. This is a fantastic online resource for the serious researcher or collector as well as the casual fan. And if you’ve never before read a Golden Age book, I think you’re in for a real treat.
Today’s comic marketplace is dominated by a single genre: super-heroes on steroids with skin tight costumes and a bad attitude. If they’re female it seems to be a requirement that each breast is the size of her head, or larger. But during the Golden Age dozens of genres flourished; romance, western, outer space, war, horror, funny animal, crime, parodies, movie and TV star based comics, kid’s comics and more. The variety is amazing compared to what’s on the racks today.
All that’s required is a free registration (password and legitimate email address) and you can browse their archive for such gems as Joe Kubert’s TOR (in 3D), Black Magic, Crime Does Not Pay, Tales of the Mysterious Traveler, The Spirit, This Magazine is Haunted and hundreds more from over 35 different publishers.
For viewing files that are not Zip archives, Windows users can use the WinRAR utility, Mac users can use the open source Jomic, which also allows conversion to PDF format.
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