The smell of comic books

One topic I've never seen discussed is the great smells of comics back in the 50s and 60s. DC Comics smelled different from Marvel. It must have been the different inks or printing companies. But I regularly took whiffs of comics while I read them. Old comics had their own smells. Even today, I sniff books (I don't read current comics; too expensive and manga-ish for my tastes). The Showcase books smell pretty good. What do you other readers think? Be honest, we all sniffed mimeographed tests in school, and loved that aroma! But not the test questions...

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  •  I never noticed.  I do notice now when I buy a comic if it has been in someones musty cellar for a few decades, but other than that... Never noticed.  For those I put them in a balsa wood box with a stick of cedar wood for a few months and the smell goes away.

  • I remember in the late 90's Marvel's new books had some kind of ink that was almost toxic.

  • Actually, I'm one of those baby boomers who has frequently talked about the smell of the ink...and the smell of damp or slightly moldy books that have been stored in the basement or in a place too humid... it is all contributing to the memory of those earliest silver age Marvels that got me hooked.

    Now, I don't know if the books took on the smell after some kid put them in a box in their basement, or their lean-to-shed out back...or if it was that the books were printed that way...but the smell of the damp basement in my mom's house (NO, we didn't store them down there) immediately takes me back.

    I never noticed a difference between companies.

    And, I would think that when newsprint became a thing of the past for comic books, those types of smells vanished.

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