SUPERMAN ALL-COLOR COMICS

These Australian reprints of American originals were produced in all colour from #1 June 1947 and the series ran monthly through to #149. From the first 40 Australian issues, the first 14 British issues were randomly taken. Then from British edition #15 these comics followed their earlier Austalian counterparts with a numbering difference of 27.  And there is a variation in the title. Before #40 it's Superman All Color Comics, Superman Color Comics and Superman Comics. From issue #40 onwards, the title is simply Superman.

It gets very confusing when you see two issues of Superman with the same number but different cover and different cover prices (6d ones are British and 8d ones are Australian). Just when you thought you had a run of Superman and didn't really notice the differing cover prices, you realise that there are 2 sets to get! Happened to me around 1980.

With Superman All Color Comics, British issue #15 was Australian issue #42, British #16 was Australian #43 and so on. There was a seven month delay between publication in Australia and the UK (many thanks to the UK's foremost collector of these comics Mr. Michael Bentley for help with this information). Honorary mentions too for ausreprints.com and bookpalace.com for their pioneering work in collating covers for this series.

Note: a very interesting pre-publication no-number copy of Superman #1 which was based on Superman All Color Comics #1. It was sold by Comic Book Postal Auctions for £253 in their Spring 2008 catalogue. It is thought that there are only two existing copies. It was a reprint of the Australian edition #1 from June 1947. It was very much a market-tester issue by the publishers in the UK who were no doubt deciding whether or not to publish Australian editions of Superman in the UK. Once again another amazing item of historical importance found and marketed by one of the UK's great comic authorities Mr. Malcolm Phillips. Nice one Malcolm.