GARY ARLINGTON'S NICKEL LIBRARY

Here's another few sheets of miscellaneous art from Gary Arlington's Nickel Library including a couple animation model sheets and work by Frazetta.

GARY ARLINGTON'S 'THE NICKEL LIBRARY'

Besides being one of the leading figures in the Bay Area underground comics scene, Gary Arlington (aka Eric Fromm) of the San Francisco Comic Book Company was a big fan of EC Comics. In 1973, one of the ways that he shared the love with his customers was to create this unique collection of one-page, multi-color comics that he called "The Nickel Library", a projected series of 500 single, 8 1/2" x 11" page images from EC Comics, Golden Age comics and newspaper comic strips.

Bill Gaines caught on to his comics being appropriated for this project and threatened Arlington with a $50,000 lawsuit. Arlington obliged and kept the letter, showing it proudly to customers when they asked him about it. As a result, The Nickel Library lasted for 64 "issues".

Gary Arlington used the name "Eric Fromm" when distributing
his catalogs.

Since they were only 5-cents apiece, I grabbed some of these along with my orders from Bud Plan for a while. Today, a single sheet is going for $30-$50 or more.