Nostalgia Press

Nostalgia Press is a publishing company created by Woody Gelman in USA in the early 1960’s. Nostalgia Press pioneered the reprinting of vintage comic strips in quality hardcovers and trade paperbacks.

The gold boarder created by Nostalgia Press seen on several of their comic book covers is extremely unique and has become iconic, with the Phantom’s head found printed along the bottom left of the footer margin.

In 1969, an 8 part black and white series of comics titled ‘The Golden Age Of The Comics’ was published, with various comic book characters featuring across the series. These include:

Little Nemo In Slumberland
Flash Gordon
The Phantom
Krazy Kat
Little Nemo In Slumberland
Terry And The Pirates
Mandrake The Magician
Popeye

Below we see the covers for edition numbers 4, 7 and 8.

The Phantom appears in edition number 3, running for 88 pages with 2 versions published. One of the versions bears the comic number in the top header (NO.3) and is bound by 2 staples (this version is considered to be the first print). The second version has the comic number omitted and has the pages glues together at the spine.

Below we see a third version, a ‘printers proof’ edition, not released to the general public. The boarder on this version hasn’t yet been added and looks relatively plain in comparison to the final version. Other slight difference can also be seen around the illustrated skull (yellow lines are missing) and also licensing text is missing at the bottom of the cover along the white boarder.

The story printed in this edition is ‘The Prisoner Of The Himalayas’. Read the comic strip HERE.

Various advertisements made an appearance in multiple fanzine magazines during that era for the Phantom comic version in the series.

A further 5 editions were planned for the series by Nostalgia Press which never came to fruition, which would of seen the series contain 13 comic books and not just 8 as actually released. These other comic book characters to be featured include:

Prince Valliant
Minute Movies
Popeye
The E. C. Horror Comics
Captain America

In 1970, a 6 part black and white series of comics titled ‘Nostalgia Comics’ was published by Nostalgia Press, with various comic characters featuring across the series, including Flash Gordon, Popeye, Brick Bradford and Moon Mullins.

The Phantom appears on the cover of issue 3, with Phantom comic strips printed from editions 2 to 4.

In 1975, a 4 part black and white series of ‘Terry And The Pirates’ was published by Nostalgia Press, with the Phantoms head appearing along the bottom margin on the cover. No Phantom stories appeared in these comic books.

The format and appearance of the Phantom comic book created by Nostalgia Press was replicated in various countries by different publishers as can be seen below.