Burnley, Jack [Golden Age Starman and Superman] *

From the day I bought a used copy of The Brave & the Bold No. 61, which included an illustrated text page regarding the Golden Age Starman and Black Canary, Starman has been my favorite Super Hero. It wasn't that the character's powers or storylines were so great, but I immediately loved the look of his costume. The next time I went to Collectors Book Store [Summer 1969], I bought a high grade copy of Adventure Comics No. 61 [April, 1941], which was the first appearance of the character and whuch included the origin story. I was immediately impressed with the art of Jack Burnley. I eventually bought all the Adventure Comics issues which featured Burnley's Starman [Nos. 61 - 72], including the Mile High copy of No. 62], the last issue with Starman [No. 102, with terrible art], and many of the All-Star issues with Starman in the lineup of the JSA, including No. 8 [which was the first use in All-Star of the character [the reason why I bought the comic, not because it was the first appearance of Wonder Woman], No. 22 [oee of two covers, along with No. 33, the Solomon Grundy issue, which was shown in a Justice League 80 page giant], and No. 23 [the issue of All-Star in which Starman last appeared]. For many, many years, one of my biggest grails, along with the JSA pinup from JLA No. 76, was a page of Burnley art with Starman. I remember telling Leonard Brown of Collector's Book Store of this desire and lamenting that there was really no chance of ever finding such an original. Leonard responded that there was Golden Age art out there, which I now know was a reverence to the originals Jerry Robinson had kept, decades before this was public knowledge. But I never found or learned of the existence of any Burnley Starman origininals until... One day in the early 90s, I received an add, probably from an issue of Comic Buyer's Guide, that my friendm Howard Lowery had clipped out and mailed to me. It concerned a number of D.C. Golden Age origials which Joel Thingvall had uncovered and was selling, including two pages of Burnley's Starman from All-Star No. 9. The ad had come out several weeks earlier, and I was depressed that I hadn't known about the pieces earlier, since I was sure that they would have already been sold. But, probably due to the prices being asked [$7,500 and $8,000], they were both still available when I called about them. I liked the cheaper page much more than the other one -- it was less because a piece of text had been moved up when the page was cut down at the bottom, requiring the text to be moved up. But this was easily remedied, and I bought that page. Some time later the other page showed up at a Christie's auction, and I bought it for substantially less than the original asking price. Other than these two pages, I have never heard of the existence of any other example or Burnley's Starman. I eventually sold the page I had bought at Christie's, since it really didn't add much to my collection. But the first page I bought is still one of my prized possessions.