An auction house is now taking bids on bound volumes of DC Comics that were once part of the library in the DC offices. There seems to be some mystery as to how these went from being company property to being on the auction block but I am not suggesting wrongdoing; just that some people who worked for the firm are puzzled.
A discussion about this on one of the comic book history forums of Facebook prompted me to tell the following story, which I don't think I ever typed out before. I've expanded it a bit here so it makes more sense to the kind of person who wouldn't be caught dead in a comic book history forum on Facebook…
When my then-partner Steve Sherman and I first visited the DC, Marvel and MAD offices in July of 1970, we spent a couple of days meeting people who'd done comic books we'd loved for years. We also spent a day and a half with Steve Ditko.
Up at DC, we were visiting with longtime editor Julius Schwartz when artist Irv Novick arrived. Julie apologized to us and said he needed fifteen minutes with Irv, then our talk with him could resume. So he took us over to the DC library, which was filled with bound volumes of (allegedly) everything the firm had ever published and he told us to browse and read whatever we liked until he came back for us.
So we were browsing and I don't think we'd even opened a book before a burly gent marched in and told us that whoever we were, we weren't allowed to be in there. Some volumes had been stolen recently and it was now off-limits to anyone but bonafide staff members. He was kinda brusque about it and didn't even ask who were were or who'd told us we could be in there.
He waited until we exited the room and closed the door and then walked off. I remember thinking that if it was so wrong for anyone like us to be in there, why wasn't the door locked?
Later in the day, Nelson Bridwell, who was an assistant editor there, introduced us to the man who'd thrown us out of there and he apologized for being so officious. It was Joe Kubert.
I believe the missing volumes were replaced when the company purchased copies of the issues in question from Mark Hanerfeld, who at one point claimed to have a triple set of everything DC had published, accumulated back when you could buy a Superman #1 for like $50.
Before anyone guesses that the bound volumes now being sold are the ones that were stolen before our visit, they should know that a lot of what's being sold is comics done well after 1970. Also, only two or three bound books had been stolen then and the auction house is offering 99 of 'em. I can imagine someone sneaking three bound volumes out in a briefcase or something but not 99. If I hear a solid answer to this mystery, I'll post it here.
[UPDATE: And now we're hearing the auction has been suspended. Curiouser and curiouser…]