Musician, actor, activist, comic book collector Ruben Blades’ remarkable Golden Age collection hits the auction block

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, September 4, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- While he built an entertainment career as a Grammy-winning salsa superstar and actor in such productions as “The Milagro Beanfield War” and “Fear the Walking Dead” – not to mention running for president in his home country of Panama and serving as its minister of tourism – Ruben Blades was building something else:

A spectacular collection of vintage comic books comprising many complete runs of Golden Age titles.

Golden Age comics – dating from 1938 to 1956 ¬¬– are increasingly rare to come by because people who collect them tend to keep them, and, to the chagrin of many a teenager, moms tended to throw them away.

When Blades decided it was time to sell his collection, he selected ComicConnect to reach the right buyers. The collection will be featured in ComicConnect’s Event Auction, which runs until September 27.

Despite Blades’ renown as an entertainer, to ComicConnect President Vincent Zurzolo, he was simply a familiar figure on the comics scene with a passion for preserving rare comics.

“He was so unassuming and focused on books that I didn’t know about the level of fame he had achieved,” Zurzolo said. “I just knew him as Ruben the Collector, until the day a fellow comic dealer explained to me who he was.”

The event will include Blades’ Detective Comics run, featuring Batman’s legendary debut in Detective #27; the classic Detective #31, in which Robin first appeared; and precious pre-Batman issues going back to Detective Comics #1 – published in 1937!

Other “firsts” include Sensation Comics #1, (1942), which introduced the world to Wonder Woman; Flash Comics #1 (1940), the debut of The Flash; and the World War II superheroes featured in All Select #1 (1940).

Rare investment opportunities include a run of Catman Comics, plus a Punch Comics #12, a striking Suspense Comics #3, and an impressively unrestored Green Giant Comics #1 (1940), graded at 6.0. Many of these titles have previously sold for tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Blades, 76, said he started collecting comics at around age 11, when he was growing up in Balboa, Panama, at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal, which was under U.S. jurisdiction at the time. While breaking into the music business, Blades earned degrees in political science and law at the National University of Panama. He moved to the U.S. in 1974. And that’s when he rekindled his childhood passion, while launching an international career.

“I was walking past a comic book store on 8th Avenue in midtown Manhattan and saw a book I had when I was a kid,” he recalled.

The Four Color series (named for the four colors of printing ink, cyan, magenta, yellow and black) from Dell Publishing ran for over 1,300 issues between 1939 and 1962, featuring many Disney icons, newspaper comic strip characters such as Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon, and tryouts for characters like Little Lulu and Tarzan, reflecting what was entertaining Americans at the time.

Although everyone knows Superman and Batman, Blades said he was also into lesser known titles, such as Stars and Stripes, Blue Beetle and Adventures into the Unknown. “Very few people cared to collect those books,” he said.

The collection includes completed runs of Mickey Mouse Magazine, Fighting Detective, Lone Ranger, Alley Oop, Wonderworld, Weird Science and many more.

Zurzolo said interest in the Blades collection is already generating a lot of buzz in the collecting community, with ComicConnect fielding calls about it daily. “We couldn’t be prouder to be part of Ruben Blades’ preservation of this outstanding selection of Golden Age greatness,” he said. “He has literally saved thousands of books from extinction.”

Joanne Levine
Lekas & Levine PR
+1 847-327-9530
email us here