Heading:
Author:
Title: WITCHCRAFT No. 2
Place Published:
Publisher:Avon [Indicia: Avon Periodicals, Inc.]
Date Published: May-June, 1952
Description:

CGC certified: G/CG (3.0). Off-white pages. Cover: Gene Fawcette? Art: Sid Check, Norman Nodel, Edward Goldfarb, Joe Kubert. Overstreet: "Classic skull cover." GPAnalysis: A 3.0 sold for $1085 in July 2021, which is also the last reported sale in any grade.

An eerie black skull against a bright yellow background gives this mag's cover a spellbinding effect. Grand Comics Database tentatively attributes this classic cover to Gene Fawcette, an Iger Shop journeyman who eventually jumped ship and worked for the likes of Avon, Ziff-Davis, Atlas-Marvel and Better Publications, a career arc that took him from Wings to Witchcraft to Dennis the Menace to Supermouse. Not long after the Comics Code clampdown, Fawcette bailed on comics and plied his trade in the commercial arts, returning to comics in the mid-1970s to draw kidstuff like Tweety and Sylvester for Western Publishing. Fawcette's work was competent but generally uninspired, and the cream of his talent seems to have gone into this mag's cover, his one incontrovertible masterpiece (assuming it's actually his work).

"A unique offering from a title with plenty worth recommending. In its short five-issue run, WITCHCRAFT offered the work of such notables as Kubert, Kinstler, Check, Hollingsworth and Kelly Freas." — George Suarez, Tales To Terrible To Tell #7. NEC: 1992-93, p. 42.

Consignments welcome for PBA's Fall 2022 Comic Book sale. Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age and Silver Age comics, original art, vintage comic-related photos and ephemera sought. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.