Crazy thing is, you change one company acronym in this sentence for another and we may very well be dealing with the same scenario in this situation. I know incompetence is a strong word, but from my perspective we're dealing with one of the most significant, if not THE most significantly important book of the copper age. Getting the printing wrong on a Batman 497 is one thing, its something TOTALLY different when were dealing with TMNT #1.
I don't have a horse in the race with regards to this though. I will say as others have said this thread has been a gem of information and fun to follow in comparison to the 20 or Gerry Ross threads in general.
Oh, I totally agree. personally I went from having very little knowledge about this comic to being able to identify all the printings from each other. Stronguy even discovered a way to tell first print from second print from the cover alone, something that to my knowledge had never been discovered for. I got way more than I was hoping for when I made this thread