Theagenes

Venus, Veneris, f. - as per Liddell & Scott (irreg. nom. sing.).

Great cover! One of these days I'm going to have to start collecting books with "Roman" themes.

Awesome Venus run! (But the correct the correct plural is "Veneres." Its a 3rd declension noun. )

Very cool! I've read about that before, I think it was in the Raymond CBM issue, but I've never seen the Belgian strips. He's no Raymond, but he's pretty good.

Wow tough call for me, as I've always loved the Joker chess cover. But for that kind of money I'd rather have the Fantastic 3. I'd be perfectly happy with a VF Batman 23 at a fraction of the price.

Great looking copy! BC flaws rule! BTW, Happy Birthday!

No argument there!

Yeah, wait until the Poughkeepsie copies hit the market one day and there's 20 9.8's out there. Not a big fan of Robin and I dig Barks, but this one's a no brainer. Tec 38 in a landslide. Very sad story about the history of that Larson Marvel 1. That Batman 1 is just gorgeous and one of the highest graded unrestored copies out there - I'd take it in a heartbeat.

Wow, very impressive! I'm a life-long ERB fan too. How are the actual JC stories themselves? Worth reading? I have to admit I'm a bit underwhelmed by the cover art, except for the cool painted cover. This is very different from the Tarzan series, which for the most part featured great painted covers (except the early issues, which had pretty poor line-drawn covers, and all the photo cover issues, which I don't collect). Thanks! They are pretty good reads, if for no other reason than that they are ERB adaptations so they had a good foundation with which to start. The Funnies series is much better than the three FCs though, IMO. The Funnies issues, I think, do a better job of capturing the look and feel of the novels. The FC issues are a little too G-Rated if you know I mean. The best art, by far are the John Coleman Burroughs issues (Funnies 34-56) and the best cover I think hands down is Funnies 36 (below), also by JCB, though I like FC 488 as well. The art for the three FC issues is by Jesse Marsh whom you should be pretty familiar with from the Dell Tarzan series - he's competent, but not spectacular.

I had enough competition as it was. I just barely won by less than the bid increment. The underbidder actually emailed me right after the auction trying to get me to sell them to him. I was like, damn, dude - give me chance to read them at least.

108 for sure.

I hope they're not B&W! I agree with Adamstrange that Foster's (and Raymond's for that matter) linework shows up better in B&W, but if it's Sundays then I'd still like to read them in color. I guess I'll find out when they get here. I'm not sure what the deal is with vol. 2. I know what you mean though - there was dealer on ebay who seemed to have an endless supply of them for a while. I don't know if it was over printed (like the Fantagraphics PV vol. 2) or if that one dealer just had some overstock. I haven't seen him list one in a while though.

Me too! It's one of the coolest things I've picked up in a while. Most copies that turn up are real beaters. Foster's B&W is amazing - check out those shadows - 5 or 6 years before Caniff started popularizing the chiaroscuro technique. The hardbacks usually go for $40-50 on ebay. A lot book dealers list them for $100 or more though.

Speaking of Terry & the Pirates, maybe Scrooge or someone else can help me out on this. I want to read them all in order, but I know that for the first couple of years the Sundays and the dailies were two separate storylines that later converged. Flying Buttress did two separate reprints series, one for dailies and one for Sundays. Which ones should I start with? And at what point (in the reprints) do the two storylines come together?

Very impressive collection! I'm trying to put together all of the Nostalgia HC Prince Valiants and Flash Gordons right now. Terry & the Pirates is on my agenda too. As for the Flying Buttress Foster Tarzans, the HCs are around (try abebooks.com), but they're never cheap. I've been outbid on vol. 1 several times. I finally picked up the SC versions of vols. 1 and 2 a few days ago for $30 on the bay. Of course if you want to be a true Foster Tarzan completist you'll need one of these to get all his 1929 dailies: Illustrated Tarzan Book House of Greystoke did a soft cover reprint of it in the early 70's and you can find that sometimes for relatively cheap.

Tough call as I love both covers, but I would probably have to go with Subby 1.

Action 3 definately.

I just spewed coffee all over my keyboard!

I hope, but am not sure, that everyone realizes that my "extremely high demand" comment was sarcastic towards the Tough Kid Squad book only, and that my choice of Tough Kid Squad was sarcastic as well.....sometimes you can't tell on The Boards if you are taken correctly Yeah, ditto for me.

Probably one of the lamest Batman covers ever. Who would want that? Tough Kid Squad RULEZ!!!

That's alright, I'm just givin' you a hard time. There's a copy out there some where with my name on it Let's hope no one erased it.

That's alright, I'm just givin' you a hard time. There's a copy out there some where with my name on it - I'll find it sooner or later. Congrats on the pickup!

The Action. I really like that cover.

These two are very close and it is a tough call. I think I like the composition of the cover on the 28 better though, and of course the white pages do help.

That's a bummer about the pen scribble. I guess that explains why it seemed to be priced uncharacteristically low for Metro. I had similar problem just recently when I had to decide which one of my Funnies 36's to sell. The structurally better better copy had very conspicuous color loss where a name was erased on the FC and the lower grade copy had much better overall eye appeal. I finally kept the higher grade copy because of the better PQ, but it was a tough choice. So I guess this means my chances of talking you into selling me your undercopy just went from low to zero.