Tijuana Bible History from tijuanabibleorg

I prefer Pioneers MP-300 photo album to protect and display my Tijuana Bible collection.

Collecting Tijuana Bibles is fraught with danger, not from seedy underworld types, but from unknowledgeable and even conveniently ignorant sellers, who proclaim their fourth or fifth generation reprint as "an original", with total confidence. As collectors, we all "pay our dues" to gain experience and knowledge, though that doesn't make getting burned less painful.

Just the other day, I searched Amazon's used and found one "authoritative" dealer in rarities offering books I commonly see in the $10. to $15. range for $78. BTW, that doesn't mean some books aren't valuable ... just not these!

The first thing to understand is 98% to 99% of all Tijuana Bibles offered are reprints. That's right, I'm not kidding ... though that doesn't mean they are all crap. There are good and bad, both early and late, it's a matter of knowing what you are looking for ... that's why experience is #1. The more books you handle, the more you learn. As a collector, I'm looking for what I consider quality books, the image itself being the most important, the materials and condition follow.

Eugene the Jeep in precaution a Tijuana Bible from 1936

This Dick Tracy is difficult to find in any condition.

The second thing to understand about Tijuana Bibles is nothing is written in stone, no matter what your preconceptions, there are always exceptions to the rules.

Materials & Construction

The best of the 8 pagers were printed on cheap paper, the worst .... on whatever trash available, including used shipping tags and the blank pages from books. The classic 8 pager is eight single pages, a wrap around cover and staple through the front. Some covers are split, so they are spineless, some books are saddle stitched with printing on either side of the pages. Beyond that, how good the paper is, the quality of the printing, and the book's possible vintage & actual rarity, are all somewhat subjective judgments that determine it's value to the buyer.

Dating Books - character progression

Some of these books can be dated by character appearance, style & storyline, which dates the entire set it is attributed to.

A good example of this is Eugene the Jeep in "Precaution" ( A particular favorite of mine), in E.C.Segar's popular comic strip, he emerges from his box on 4/1/36 and his abilities are revealed over the next month or so. The Flash Gordon & Jungle Jim in this 8-pager series also sync to their weekly newspaper counterparts. Queen Udina and Flash's Water World sequence end Oct. 11, which leads me to believe this series was drawn within this time frame, and on the streets soon after.

In the papers, the Jeep predicts Popeye's pappy is alive, and we begin the search for Poopdeck Pappy, who we don't actually

Blondie probably drawn 1932 -1934
This looks like a pretty early edition.

see until the end of 1936. I believe, Poopdeck Pappy in "Bolls" and the rest of the "Horizontal Slash" series are released no later than very early 1937.

Many comics, have their early formative years as character design and / or storyline develop into their final, well known forms. Blondie, who has remained the ageless housewife for over 50 years, first appeared as a golddigging flapper on September 17, 1930. She married Dagwood in 1933, has kids in '34 and '41, and at some point, everyone stops aging, even the pups .... they've stayed that way ever since! I've seen 8 pagers reflecting the various stages of Blondie's development.

Misprinted, Censored & Redrawn

While buyers of many types of collectibles highly prize mistakes for their rarity, in the world of Tijuana Bibles any and every type of production errors are the norm. Still, few of us can resist keeping a couple of oddball examples to show off. There are books with all kinds of cutting errors, extra pages, reused pages, and missing pages. If you can imagine it, it probably exists.

After many generations of copying some books looked so crappy printers would crudely redraw the cover and often parts of the inside too.

As 8 pager creators operated outside the law, libel was the least of their concern and would use celebrities real names, as often as humorous takeoffs. However, later when they were openly sold some publishers censored their books fearing lawsuits. If you see Mae West renamed as Anne Moore or W.C.Fields as Bill Bloome you know it is a later reprint.

In an additional effort to remain low key some publishers replaced the original drawn covers with text titles when reprinting. Although very early books only had text covers these reprints shouldn't be confused for books of such rare vintage.

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