garthgantu

Easily one of the greatest covers of that era. Yeah...too bad about the distributor overspray throughout the front cover of this copy...I'm surprised CGC didn't ding it for that..? Great thread, guys... TTA is one of my top 3 or 4 Marvel titles of the '60s...

What you can't see in the pic is the mousetype below the "FUN for Boys and Girls 4 to 14" is the disclaimer "deadly dangerous for everyone else" These are not quite as bad as the "floatation shoes" they sold in the late '60s for 'walking on water'... I recall my cousins having a pair of those, and watching people try to walk across the swimming pool...even at the age of 5 or 6 I considered them insanely dangerous...

I think this calls for a new thread in the OA forum... I'd love to see it all, but this thread is gonna be 500 pages long in short order if BZ posts much of his OA here!

Well, to be fair, you've posted a fair number of Four Colors - especially in the Walt Kelly vein - but not a lot of Barks stuff! The first four Barks four colors are the four I'm missing to the complete the run (naturally, the four that cost more than the other 20-odd issues combined!)...I'd love to see any or all of those four! And if you have a nice copy of the Cheerios giveaway with the atom bomb story, that'd be cool too...! But no pressure - whatever you wanna put up next, I'll be there, drool bucket at the ready...

Wow - another lesson learned today! Having strictly avoided all duck artists except Barks (and Walt Kelly), I'm not that well-versed in the "bad artists" as my mother taught me to refer to them I'll take solace in the fact that both Scrooge and Gladstone were Barks creations BangZoom, on this note could you post a few early Barks books? Maybe the first couple of Four Colors he did, if you have 'em? And any March Of Comics? (I loved the FC #4 and the Firestone '48 Giveaway; you mentioned posting a WDC&S #1 but I guessed I somehow missed that?)

Okay, so from what I can gather, we can expect a scan of Bats #20 on your 16th birthday... seems like a tough stunt to pull off, but I'm a patient guy...

thanks, Watcher! I'm off to check out that thread right now...dunno if I've ever looked at it before, and I've got a fair number of promo comics (maybe 50 of which are GA)... cool beans! Out of curiosity, which papers are most of these Spirit sections from? Mine are from The Baltimore Sun, A Philly newspaper, and a Chicago paper...

Who else but Scrooge would come through with that answer? How appropriate is that! I kinda get that story mixed up with "The Land of Tra La La" in which a remote, Shangri-La-esque world is turned upside down by the tops to the bottles of tonic that Scrooge's doctor prescribes (along with R&R, hence the trip to the exotic foreign land)...when the bottle tops become Tra La La's first form of currency, Scrooge has a brainstorm and figures the best way to deflate the current currency conundrum is to have a million more bottle tops airlifted into the valley of Tra La La...except that Donald and the boys mis-hear his instructions and order a billion bottle tops dropped on the valley, killing everyone below and requiring the outlay of the rest of Scrooge's fortune to cover the clean-up costs... betcha haven't read that one either! (Okay, I 'enhanced' a little bit of the ending there for any Hollywood agents who might be lurking...)

Yowza, KC - that's a sweet book!

Man, these are hard to find in decent shape! There are several issues in the 14-issue run that don't think I've ever seen for sale...

Amen, brethren! The Spirit is very high on my list... I'll try to unearth a few of the Spirit newspaper promo comics I've accumulated over the years...those are pretty cool and I don't think I've ever seen any posted on the boards..? In the meantime, here are two recent additions I picked up...

One more thing: You have to have inhabited these boards for awhile to truly appreciate a few things about this thread... 1) the fact that requests for you to scan each book in its entirety (all four corners showing) can be counted on one hand, and that they were requests rather than something stronger, is a testament in itself to the collective wonderment of the forumites with respect to your collection. 2) Very little sidetracking has occurred in this thread...who wants to derail the train to Nirvana?! 3) No politicking... there are factions on these boards, and the differences they usually bring to any thread, regardless of topic/focus, are non-existent in this thread! That alone sets this one apart as "Thread of the Year" thus far! Okay, enough warm-n'-fuzzies...now get the darned scanner warmed up again, pleez!

Okay, now that I've finally made it to the end of this tremendous thread, a couple of questions and one request: - You say you've upgraded over the years, but clearly there must be a fair number of duplicates still in the collection...is there any one GA book of which you have a large number of copies? And if so, is it because it's a particular favorite? - In instances like the glorious run of 'Tecs you posted (issues 80 - 140, roughly), there are some gaps...is that because you don't own those issues or because they're not of the same high standard in terms of grade, or...? And as part of that question, do you actively seek to complete runs in any titles at this point? - Have you read Bill Schelly's "The Golden Age of Comic Fandom" - or maybe you're even mentioned in it somewhere, as an early collecting pioneer? If you've not checked it out, you should... - Among your movie posters are there any lobby cards or one-sheets for early cartoons, such as the Fleischer Bros.' Popeyes or the Betty Boop or Koko the Clown shorts? - Do you have a Batman 20, and if so could you post a scan? And I would also second or third the previous request(s) for other Eisner and Cole Spirit, Police, etc. - more pics, pleez!

Ah, yes, that's the ticket - thanks for the assist!

Rosa may have written the story you describe, but it was (as usual) Barks who first used that angle. In a story that I believe originally appeared in one of the first 25 or so issues of Uncle Scrooge, Scrooge decides to make a random 1916 quarter incredibly valuable by acquiring ALL the 1916 quarters that were made, and dumping them in the ocean... then he loses the single on that he'd set aside, and has to go down to an Atlantis-like world to retrieve another of the quarters...at the end, he takes the one salvaged quarter to a coin shop, and the dealer gasps and says "why, this coin is so rare and valuable, only one person in the world could afford to buy it - Scrooge McDuck!"

Well, I gave it my best shot...but I couldn't get past the imagining you and Rick as a couple...your "love-child pedigree collection" never even made it onstage... Sorry about that Garth. Was it the coupling, or the birth that blew it for you? Cripes! You had to bring coupling into it too? I was still at the wedding vows...!! (searches desperately for vomiting graemlin...)

Well, I gave it my best shot...but I couldn't get past the imagining you and Rick as a couple...your "love-child pedigree collection" never even made it onstage...

Quite a few forumites have posited this philosophy in the first hundred pages of this thread...at the risk of both sounding like a fool (always a first time for everything ) and perhaps repeating something said in the next 100 pages of the thread... isn't it possible that these books would be in even better shape if they'd been stored in mylars/boards/boxes for the past 30+ years? Hard to imagine, I realize...

I truly love this one... I'll admit to never having heard of or seen "Phantasmo" before as best I can recall... who's the artist on this? I'm bemused by the scene depicted: I'm guessing that since it's the character's first appearance, they purposely left it ambiguous as to whether he's saving or attacking people here... I mean, looking at it objectively, it appears that Phantasmo is ripping a building in half, perhaps with the intention of hurling it on the people in the street? Regardless, it's wonderful stuff. Thanks again for sharing, BZ - you've reminded me of why I got into collecting comics in the first place: the sheer wonder of it all... I think to some extent, seeing any obviously old comic for the first time brings back a bit of that sensation that used to strike me regularly in the early days of collecting...I think that's why so many long-time collectors on these boards, most of us jaded to a fair extent by now, are loving this thread. Sure, it's incredible to see the nicest, or one of the nicest, extant examples of a Supes 2 or etc., but seeing books I either never knew existed, or have never seen before, is an uncommon experience for many of us these days. And then to see them in such pristine shape, to boot!

I thought Indiana Jones found that? He did, back in the 1940s. But then Bangzoom bought it from him in 1965 for ten bucks. Which at the time was actually over guide for the Arc, I believe... Truly astounding accumulation, Mr. Bang... I am humbled yet inspired at the same time

So Mutie, after you get 'em signed and slabbed, you wrap 'em in the Shroud of Turin? Seems like and expensive way to protect your funnybooks, but hey, it's held up nicely for either 700 or 2000 years, depending on who ya believe

Spooning Spoonerisms, 'Surfer - that is one sweet book!

Thanks, Surfer - the 49 is actually in slightly nicer shape I think (virtually no spine stresses), but both are pretty sweet...and I forgot to mention the icing on the cake: both have white pages to go along with just about the deepest, richest color inks I've seen on these particular issue #s... the scans really don't do 'em justice And thanks for the 'lead' on TTA 93... sadly, most of the sites that sell comics, beyond eBay, are now off my list in terms of acceptable dealers...I've just learned too much negative stuff about too many of them to trust 'em. I'd rather buy raw at shows or even take my chances on eBay with a seller I've done biz with before... That, and I'm focused on my WDC&S run right now - only three more issues to go (166, 174, 194) and I'll have issues 90 through 225..!

And the second one, issue 49...