Thanksgiving weekend hullaballoo

Hello all, I hope everyone had a Thanksgiving weekend that was happy and enjoyable in their own way. One of very few drawbacks to mine was that my CGC submission was attempted to be delivered the day we left to visit family, so all I had was the little orange slip to pick them up later. Sigh.

Over the weekend I did a little shopping, and was surprised to find some Defiant Comics binders in an antique mall. I picked up two Plasm 0 Premiere Editions with card sets, and passed on a Dark Dominion binder with no cards. I think these may be the only two Premiere Edition Plasm 0 binders I've ever actually seen. If I remember correctly there were brutal allocations and although I had pre-ordered I only had an option for the Second Edition. Two decades later, I got them cheap.

We returned home to find several parcels awaiting rescue, including two slabbed books from mycomicshop.com auctions, one eBay win, a few raw books from mycomicshop.com, and my order of CGC frames from Gweedo's Showcase. I haven't opened those up yet, pics to follow.

But, the main event was the CGC shipment which I picked up on the way home from work yesterday afternoon. I had submitted five books for Signature Series at Baltimore (unknowingly intermingled with several journal mainstays). The books I took were as follows:

Justice League #1, to be signed by 3 of the 4 main creators-Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, and Kevin Maguire. I bought this copy just as Max Lord was having a bad day in Wonder Woman #219. I thought the book looked pretty solid, and estimated a 9.6. I was surprised to find it a 9.2, but I can see previously unnoticed creases on the back cover near the spine at the bottom. I don't know if these were there all along and I missed them or if they happened during the signing. No big deal; I'd rather have a book with three sigs that presents so well on the front regardless of condition. Maybe if I can find Terry Austin at a signing I'll send it through CCS with all four main names.

Strangers in Paradise (Abstract) #1

Strangers in Paradise (Abstract) #3 to be signed by creator Terry Moore. I bought both of these new off the rack back in 1994 after hearing good things about the series and the previous 3 issue Antarctic Press miniseries. I liked them okay, but didn't pick up the book to follow and left comics altogether a few years later. It was tough to be a comics fan in the late 90s. Anyway, since I'd had them for nearly 20 years I expected them to be a little rough and estimated 9.4 for each. I got a 9.6 on #1 and a 9.4 on #2: excellent.

Uncle Scrooge #219

Uncle Scrooge #285 to be signed by creator Don Rosa. These two are significant keys for a Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge collection. US #219 is the first major comics work by Don Rosa (other than newspaper strips). I'm impressed by the fact that on his first job for Gladstone he was able to write and draw the whole story and the cover; no try-out run for him! US #285 is Part One of his opus "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck," which is a truly impressive saga that attempted to gather all the previously disparate stories done by The Good Duck Artist, Carl Barks, and tell a cohesive narrative. They had never originally intended these stories to be in-continuity per se, so there were always inconsistencies. Was Scrooge in the Alaska Gold Rush or the Spanish American War in 1898? Both? Don Rosa threaded together the references to Scrooge's family and history to take him from the little shoe-shine boy who earned Number One Dime to the grizzled miser he was in his first appearance in Christmas on Bear Mountain. No mere "funny animal" book, this is solid storytelling. The #219 I bought as a slabbed 9.8 and could only hope that it maintained grade; the #285 I bought off the shelf at the same place as the Strangers in Paradise back in the day. I estimated a 9.8 and 9.4 respectively, and nailed it.

A photo array for your amusement...

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