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Title: FLASH COMICS No. 1 * Rare Ashcan Edition
Place Published:
Publisher:DC [National Periodical Publications / All-American Publications]
Date Published: December, 1939
Description: CGC certified: VF/NM (9.0). Grader notes: "Very small tear bottom of spine." Off-white pages. Provenance: The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION.

GPAnalysis: Only two reported sales in any grade. A 9.4 sold for $20,315 in 5/18, and a 9.6 sold for $45,600 in 6/22.

Overstreet: "Ashcan comic, not distributed to newsstands, only for in-house use. Cover art is from Adventure Comics #41 and interior from All-American Comics #8." CGC Census: Six graded copies (all of them Universal), comprising one 9.0, one 9.2, two 9.4, and two 9.6. Gerber's Photo-Journal Guide Scarcity Index: 10 ("Unique: Less than 5 copies known").

Credits: Cover: Leo O'Mealia. Art: John Blummer, Al Smith, Percy Crosby, Bill Smith, Richard Rick, Edwina Dumm, Fontaine Fox, A.W. Nugent, Robert Ripley, Gene Byrnes, Stan Asch, Walter Galli, Sheldon Mayer, Calvin Fader?

Tapped by Taschen: This copy of the Flash Comics #1 ashcan is pictured in Taschen's "75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking" (page 96): "During the industry's earliest boom, publishers scrambled frantically to lay claim to every imaginable new comic book title by producing 'ashcans'.... All-American narrowly won out with Flash Comics, which Fawcett intended to use to launch Captain Marvel, both red-shirted heroes with lightning bolts on their chests."Q: Holy smokes! What am I looking at?

A: This is the legendary ashcan edition of Flash Comics #1, produced by DC in 1939 in very small numbers. It's one of the holiest grails in DC collectordom, and one of the rarest comic books in existence.

Q: Wow! But what's an "ashcan edition"?

A: Ashcans are the rarest of the rare. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

"In the competition to secure trademarks on titles intended to sound thrilling, publishers including All-American Publications and Fawcett Comics developed the ashcan edition, which was the same size as regular comics and usually had a black and white cover. Typically, cover art was recycled from previous publications with a new title pasted to it. Interior artwork ranged from previously published material in full color to unfinished pencils without word balloons. Some ashcans were only covers with no interior pages. Production quality on these works range from being hand-stapled with untrimmed pages to machine-stapled and machine trimmed. Once the practice was established, DC Comics used ashcans more frequently than any other publisher. Not all the titles secured through ashcan editions were actually used for regular publications.

"The purpose of the ashcan editions was to fool the US Patent & Trademark Office into believing the book had actually been published. Clerks at the office would accept the hastily produced material as legitimate, granting the submitting publisher a trademark to the title. Since the ashcans had no other use, publishers printed as few as two copies; one was sent to the Trademark Office, the other was kept for their files. Occasionally, publishers would send copies to distributors or wholesalers by registered mail to further establish publication dates, but nearly all ashcan comic editions were limited to five copies or fewer.... Because of their rarity, ashcans from this era are desired by collectors and often fetch a high price. In April 2021, an ashcan copy of Action Comics #1 sold for $204,000 USD."

Q: Say, wasn't this the last lot in your big Batman sale? What happened?

A: We offered this mag as the last lot in our big Batman sale as a way to whet appetites for the follow-up sale. But then it dawned on us that without the Flash ashcan, we couldn't call our follow-up sale "The DC Universe Collection Part 2: Pre-Hero, Ashcans and Oddities," a title and concept we fell in love with. See, Flash Comics #1 is the only true ashcan in the entire DC Universe Collection. Think of that — even Scrooge McDuck-level DC obsessive Ian Levine only managed to score a single ashcan in his decades-long quest to own every DC ever published — now that's rare.

Q: Anything else I should know?

A: Just this — the Flash Comics ashcan is perhaps one of the three or four most significant comics ever published. After all, without the Flash ashcan, Fawcett would have secured the "Flash" trademark. DC would've had to call the Flash something else, and without his famous codename, the character might not have become popular. As a result, there might not have been a Flash revival in 1956's Showcase #4 to spur the Silver Age superhero revival, and thus, there may have been no Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Avengers, Daredevil, X-Men, etc. Meanwhile, Whiz Comics would have been Flash Comics instead, and Captain Marvel would have been named Captain Thunder. If not for this fateful ashcan, we'd be living in an alternate comics universe — a far inferior one. As Benjamin Le Clear, Senior Manager of the DC Library Archives, told PBA's Director of Comics recently: "No Flash ashcan, no Captain Marvel."****************************************
The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION comprises over 40,000 comic books, encompassing every single DC comic published for retail sale from 1934 to 2014. The collection was amassed by British music producer Ian Levine over the course of several decades, and it's been hailed as the single greatest collecting accomplishment in comic book history. This collection served as the basis for former DC Comics president Paul Levitz's monumental book 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, published by Taschen in 2017. PBA is proud to present this epic collection in a series of themed sales, including The DC UNIVERSE COLLECTION Part 3: The GOLDEN AGE, coming this summer. To join the DC Universe Collection notifications list, contact pba@pbagalleries.com.

Enjoying PBA's DC Universe Collection: Pre-Hero, Ashcans and Oddities sale? A very small number of softcover and limited edition hardcover auction catalogues are available for purchase. The catalogues are fully illustrated, thoroughly researched, and make excellent reference works for DC diehards. To order a copy, or to inquire about consignment opportunities, contact Ivan Briggs, PBA's Director of Comics: ivan@pbagalleries.com.