AJD

Huh, what kind of twisted weirdo would be able to help with that request? Oh, never mind.

You'll like this one then.

I hadn't thought of that possibility, but that could be hilarious. Let me see, do I get more points for grading this apparently 6.0 book at 0.5, or 10.0...

1.5, maybe 1.8 on a good day

Geez, I thought I did OK this round with a bull and 5 points overall, but every second poster here seems to have done better. @Get Marwood & I - can you spare a few quid for 17th?

My comics aren't doing a great job on my knees...

I was pretty sure it was a production defect, only on the grounds that I thought it would be hard to generate a defect like that after the event without some other damage somewhere. Yeah, pretty shaky logic.

That's it. That's the post.

FWIW, those look like Korean War vintage uniforms on the Americans, so likely some time after 1950. Even more FWIW, that might not be a cover layout - there doesn't seem to be a lot of space for a title, price and logo. A story title might fit there though, so this could be a splash page.

Ahem

It almost certainly was. And there's even an index of the comics that covers that period. Not being a collector, I don't have the index volume. @Duffman_Comics - do you have it, or know someone who does? The trouble is you probably have to know the story arc title. Edit: The printed index probably isn't necessary. There's an online Phantom Wiki that lists all the daily and Sunday stories. You can click through the story title and the page (usually mostly blank, unfortunately) has a set of hyperlinks to reprints from various countries. None of the titles suggest the Roman soldier story, but they are all a bit generic anyway. Edit the second: the complete dailies and Sunday strips have all been collected into books, and the Kindle versions are pretty cheap on Amazon, so you could get the 1965-66 volumes and see if you find your story. They pop up rarely, but I think I've seen most of them at some stage - I don't really track them though. To make life more complicated, back in the 90s the publisher started including replica copies with the annuals. The replicas of #1 and #2 were pretty similar to the originals and I've seen a few scam attempts on ebay - "I don't know much about this comic but I know it's very old"... #3 had a small 'R' printed on the cover villain's cufflink and I saw one for sale as an original 'with one small ink stain on the cover'. Guess where the ink stain was? From #4 on they have a barcode, so are easy to spot.

A tough book to grade. I have a similar standard Uncle Scrooge that has a tape pull about that size and it was a CGC 6.0, which I think sits about right. I'll be interested in what others have to say about it.

Sounds about right

Wow, after doing a Hindenburg impersonation in round 1, I think I'll take four bulls and the +2 for my correct grade on that "9.6"

Apropos nothing in particular...

So would you support Shakespeare's great great great... ... great grandchildren still charging people royalties for any use of his words, plots or characters, or even preventing anyone doing a resetting of his works? I think the existing laws already protect creators more than is probably required to continue to provide an incentive to create.