AJD

Good idea. @HeritageComics please note the above post for quality control purposes. I should also say that this is my first real problem in ten years as a customer.

Yellow dress and green menace to yellow "dress" and green "menace"

Battle to the Frontline

This thread needs to go up to 11!

WARNING: post contains graphic images that may stress some comic geeks One of the war bonds covers that has been on my list for a while is Our Gang #17, which has a Walt Kelly cover with a "Buy that extra bond" sign on the fence. I recently bought two copies of Our Gang at Heritage - #17 and #26. The Heritage description said "Our Gang Comics #17 and 26 Davis Crippen ("D" Copies) pedigree (Dell, 1945-46) Condition: Average VG. Includes the Davis Crippen "D" copies of issues #17 and 26. Artists include Carl Barks and Walt Kelly. Approximate Overstreet value for group = $50." Here's the 26: Yeah, OK, that's acceptable enough as a VG. And it has the merit of containing work by Kelly and Barks. Here's an excellent sight gag from the Barks Barney Bear story: Now to the #17. Both books came with the Crippin CoA, which was nice. Here's the one for #17 Well, this book might have been a VG+ when Heritage first sighted over a decade ago, but here's what I found when I unpacked it. And here are the "staples" that I picked out of the wreckage. To be fair, the lower staple damage was visible in the partial picture of #17 in the action listing, so part of this is on me, but there is no way these books average out at VG. For the price ($60 for the pair) it's really not worth shipping them back to the US (and the 26 is ok anyway). I actually wonder if the grader even took the books out of the bag when assigning grades for the auction - maybe they just looked at the grades on the CoAs? The great pity is that a pedigree book has been trashed to this point. My plan now is to use it as part of my learning experience in paper restoration, including rust stain removal (reduction more likely in this extreme case), piece infill and maybe even leaf casting down the track. I had been planning to buy some wrecked Dells for that purpose - just not one I wanted for my war bonds collection! For the record, here's the #17 and another Barks page:

To 1951 and a slightly different genre

Today's offering is a Frazetta cover that caught my eye recently. The interior art is all D-ick Ayres. Gotta say I'm not a big fan. He seems to have stepped up whenever he had to draw the Ghost Rider himself, but a lot of the other figures look phoned in to me.

It's raining comics in my mailbox at the moment, so I'll try to list one a day for a little while. Here's my first new EC for a while. It's funny how you sometimes notice something that you must have looked at 100 times. I have many copies of this ad on the back of ECs, but until today I didn't notice that it's not an ad for stockings, but an an ad for people to go out and sell stockings. You too can buy a new Chevvy in only four months by flogging hosiery! But then why does the application coupon require that you state your "hose size"? Do you have to go model them for prospective customers?

Hymenoptera to lepidoptera

This. And this. Don't do it.

It is certainly nice and bright. What a pity the preservation of the FC and BC weren't reversed! Depends a bit on how solid the book feels, but the structure looks a bit loose. 2.5 wouldn't shock, but neither would 2.0 (boo to the macropod in the mask, boo!)

Riding a red bomb to riding a pink bomb