What’s up, Doc? It’s time once more for Undervalued and Overlooked Comics! This time we’ll be looking at the Golden Age, with a focus on undervalued & overlooked comics featuring characters from Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.

Duck Artist Draws Pig

In general, funny animal comics are overlooked by many collectors, a devout few being the exception. Among the favorite artists, and well known for his work on Donald Duck, is Carl Barks. Which makes his works on Four Color Comics #48 from 1944 all the more unique.

Barks was a Disney artist, with the vast majority of his work being done on the pages of various Disney comics. Four Color Comics #48 features Porky Pig, a mainstay of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies short cartoons. Barks supposedly wasn’t thrilled with having to draw a character outside of the duck universe he normally lived in. However, even an unhappy Barks was capable of creating a masterpiece.

Barks later created an incredible painting based on his work on the book. It’s also a very overlooked comic.

There are 35 graded copies of Four Color Comics #48 in the CGC census. There have been a few sales of this comic in 2022, ranging from a 3.5 graded copy selling for a very affordable $125 in March to the lone 9.2 graded copy selling in a Heritage auction just a week prior for a record $10,800.

It’s hard to argue that a book going for five figures is undervalued, at least in the high grades, but a 3.5 graded copy selling for $125 featuring a timeless classic by one of the all-time greats is certainly worth every penny.

Classic Bugs Story

Dell’s Four Color Comics often served as something of a tryout series, with characters being published in the pages of issues to see if they could sell enough to support their own series. Many Warner Bros. and Disney characters started here before graduating to their own solo series. Some of these have become classics among collectors of funny books.

Take Four Color Comics #33 as an example. It’s a classic Bugs Bunny story, featuring him on the cover as Public Nuisance No. 1, an apt description of the wisecracking rabbit. There are 30 graded copies of this issue in the CGC census. It also waxes and wanes in popularity.

In 2018, there were six sales of graded copies of Four Color Comics #33. And then nothing for nearly three years. It appears to be on a bit of an upswing presently, with a 4.0 selling for $409 and a 7.0 selling for $2,280, both in February.

Again, this likely is less an undervalued comic; rather, it's one that many collectors overlook.

First Sylvester and Tweety

You’re likely familiar with Tweety Bird and Sylvester the Cat. They’re among the most popular characters to appear in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. They also appeared in the first-ever cartoon from Warner Bros. to win an Oscar.

With so many well-known classic cartoon characters’ first comic book appearances going for top dollar over the past couple of years, you would think that the first appearance of Sylvester and Tweety should be going for a tidy sum. Wrong.

Tweety and Sylvester made their comics debut in two one-page stories in the pages of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies #128 from 1952. There are only three – that is not a typo – graded copies of this comic in the CGC census. Three. For a comic with a first appearance of classic cartoon characters. To top it all off, there hasn’t been a sale of this book since 2010, when a 9.0 graded copy sold for just $44. So, not only is this the most overlooked comic I’ve covered in this series, it’s also criminally undervalued.

Raw copies can be found for $10 or less. So, why are you still here? Go out and hunt one down and know that you’ve gotten a steal.

Next Week: Bronze Age Undervalued & Overlooked

Well, that’s all we have time for this week. Join us next week as we take a look at some undervalued and overlooked Bronze Age comics.

Are there any Golden Age comics you think are undervalued and deserve more attention?  Let us know below.

*Any perceived investment advice is that of the freelance blogger and does not represent advice on behalf of GoCollect.