Stephen Ritter, Matt Nelson, and Arnie Sawyer have presented a newly designed chapter for an upcoming book on pedigree comics. The new chapter covers the Okajima pedigree, assembled by a young Japanese-American girl from California who was interned by the U.S. government during World War II. She was able to save her comic books through that period and continued collecting until the mid-1950s.
The collection was sold in 1995 and broken into three groups during an estate sale. One of those groups was brought to the market by Alan Barr, who researched the collection’s backstory. Through unique markings on the front and back covers, many copies have been identified since their initial disbursement. The collection is known for having high page quality and containing a large number of jungle and good girl comics.
The pedigree book has been a long-term project for Ritter, Nelson, and Sawyer, which covers all 59 pedigrees recognized by CGC. The full-color book will explore each pedigree’s back story and sale, dissecting the contents, grade, page quality, and markings for each.
“I’m very excited that we have worked out a new scope and focus for the book, which has been long in the coming,” Ritter said. “The new chapter layout is eye-popping, and will hopefully excite those who have been patiently waiting for the book.”
The Okajima chapter can be viewed on comicpedigrees.com, a website devoted to pedigreed comic collections that allows users to upload scans of their own pedigree books. The website’s database contains nearly 28,000 scans from all of the recognized collections in the hobby, including over 4,000 pictures from the Edgar Church/Mile High pedigree, what is often considered the most remarkable collection ever discovered.
CGC recently announced a new label for pedigrees, which bolsters the project and possibly the pedigree market overall.
“Now that these amazing collections will be acknowledged with a CGC pedigree label, the impetus is bigger than ever to get the book done,” Nelson said. “We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but our vision of the book has sharpened, and we are ready to move forward.”
