The celebrated Mr. K is opening his vault from the 1970s and ’80s…
By PAUL KUPPERBERG
I used to have a lot of stuff.
Now, after more than a decade and a half of downsizing — or what I started calling “unburdening” — I still have stuff, just nowhere near as much.
Much of it, largely comics and books, has been sold through eBay over the years. The remaining papers and work-related documents are all packed up to be shipped to Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
And now, the library of my printed comic book work, most in the form of bound volumes, is up for sale at the Heritage Auction site through August.
Frankly, as cool and fun as it is to look at “brag shelves” full of my published work, it’s been a lot to schlep around all these years. And by now, a lot of the work has been reprinted or, at the very least, is available to read online, making the physical media somewhat obsolete, so, after offering the collection to Columbia University (which, as a rule doesn’t take in comics collections) and my son (who would have liked them but would have had to stick them in storage), I contacted Heritage Auctions and arranged for the sale.
There are almost 50 volumes — most of them professionally bound by the company that did the bookbinding for DC’s library and each signed by me on the flyleaf — ranging from my first stories for Charlton Comics in 1975 through the late 1980s, as well as two volumes of Paul Levitz and my Etcetera and The Comics Reader, the 1971 – 1973 fanzines that helped launch both our careers.
If you were a fan of my work on Superman (and Superboy and Supergirl and DC Comics Presents) or Checkmate or Vigilante, or Arion Lord of Atlantis, or even Marvel’s Crazy Magazine, here’s your chance to own a piece of me!
I hope you’ll check it and if you decide to go for one of the lots, I bid you (see what I did there?!) good luck!
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MORE
— PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite Comic Book Stories I’ve Written. Click here.
— PAUL KUPPERBERG: 13 Comics That Might Have Been. Click here.
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PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. Check out his memoir, Panel by Panel: My Comic Book Life.
Website: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/
Shop: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/shop-1
