It’s been a little while, so here are a bunch more old photographs depicting either the comic books of yesteryear on sale at newsstands and candy stores across the world or else shots of readers of the era posing with and perusing their latest purchases.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
That fifth one down catches my eye.
I can see issues of DETECTIVE and FUNNY STUFF, but the comic that kid is looking at looks like American comics art of the 1970s, with Kirby crackle and a Kirbyesque figure, but there doesn’t seem to have a publisher logo up top and the logo looks like it starts out with GRARN or something like that. A foreign reprint in the stock of a back-issue store?
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That comic is “Grand Slam Three Aces” #44 (July 1945)
https://www.comics.org/issue/229390/cover/4/
Save the image (for maximum resolution), flip it both ways, compare. It’s a clear match. Though the photograph is blurry and a bit distorted, the leaping guy and the falling guy are evident, as well as the bottom right portion of the cover with the circle and the bar extending from the middle of that circle. The small circle above the falling guy’s head matches too, though it’s washed-out in the photo.
What looks like Kirby Krackle is just the blurred leaves of the tree at the top
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Thank you! Yes, that’s definitely it. I wondered in the Kirby crackle might be foliage…
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Well-spotted!
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These are great shots! If I got sent back in time to do something important I’d have a hard time pulling away from a 1940-60’s newsstand. Probably why I haven’t been asked.
Do we know who the guy is holding up Batman #1 with Superman #1 in front of the shelves of big little books? At a glance they looked like VHS tapes.
Also noted: the Tide box stayed relatively unchanged until the early 2000’s. Cheer changed a bit sooner. Even if that’s a small mom and pop grocery it’s weird to have the detergents near the periodicals… but it looks like a tiny space and maybe that’s the ice cream freezer in the foreground? So the back is meeting the front of the store perhaps.
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Given the uniformed PV2 in OG-107 fatigues , I would guess that was taken at a PX or PX annex maybe in CONUS, the FRG or RoK (Probably far south of Seoul if the RoK in the 1960s, as parts of it were hostile fire zones then ). Given that he is not wearing Jungle fatigues, this was probably not taken in the RVN, Okinawa or Panama.
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The penultimate picture caught my eye as it shows a mixture of American and British comics and magazines on display. Vulcan, smack in the middle of the display unit on the left, was a short-lived weekly comic published in 1975-76; on the row above it, next to a few Marvel and DC titles, are what look like a row of digest-sized Fleetway Picture Libraries which were published in huge numbers from the 50s to the 80s. So where was this taken, I wondered, as I was pretty sure that American readers had zero interest in British comics in those pre-2000AD/Warrior days.
So a couple of minutes on Google revealed that the Sun and the Truth were both published in Melbourne, Australia, and presumably the Bolte named in the headline on the Truth front page at the bottom right was Henry Bolte, who was Premier of Victoria state from 1955 to 1972. Also, the cars in the background of the photo appear to be driving on the left of the road.
So I’m calling it for Melbourne. Gosh, comics got everywhere back then, didn’t they?
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