AJD

Well, there have been some hopeful signs this year. It would help if the vicious little buggers would stop biting each other on the face!

Walt Kelly liked the idea so much he re-used it on a total of four covers for Dell. Here's the other one:

Merry Christmas one and all!

That would be a grand present. Alas, I think they are gone for good, despite occasional 'sightings'. When I lived in Melbourne I had a neighbour that had a large tan dog. One day he decided to paint vegetable dye dark brown stripes on it, and the beast certainly looked the goods from most angles!

I saw that book and thought of you Corey. I hope you got it and aren't just teasing!

Hmmmmmmmmm Anything I should know about (but don't already)? Nice 2017 summary Ed - your collection must be something to behold!

It depends. From a conservation point of view it is right to remove them, and either clean them or replace them with others. When I got this book the staples were in a pretty poor state: The staples had rusted, and the rust had migrated onto the paper and started destroying it. I opened the staples gently, removed them, dunked them in rust remover for a little while, cleaned them with fine steel wool, washed and dried them, put a coat of clear acrylic varnish on them and reinserted them. Here's how the centre of the book looked. Now the paper is still damaged, but the staples are not making it worse. (You can just see the clean top staple on the outside of the scan above.) I have no regrets about taking this conservation step. My wife has worked as a curator at national institutions. When they get rusty staples, they will sometimes remove them and sew the document together with an archival thread, rather than put metal back in against damaged paper. But this hobby has some stupid attitudes to conservation and restoration. From a financial point of view you would probably be better off letting the staples trash the book, as long as you got a blue label.

Great to see you back Hep. I really like the Murphy Anderson books you posted, even though none of them are things I collect. It's always great to see nice examples of things I don't usually pay much attention to. I especially like the Strange Adventures #150 - that has a Weird Science feel to it.

Wow. That's... full on.

Nicely presenting Australian GA comics shouldn't be allowed to sell for under $5 on eBay without coming to me. This one cost me $4.32 The animal drawings in this book are quite good (check out the netted baby elephant above as an example). The artists seem a little confused as to what the fauna of Africa consists of though. As it is described on Comicvine: " Origin? We don't need no stinking origin! Wambi was a boy who lived in a jungle that had both lions and tigers, as well as both Indian and African elephants. He could talk to animals, even ones that didn't make sounds. Where he came from, how he learned to talk to animals, or how he came to be living in his jungle is never explained. "

I just posted some images of a new Crimson Comet reprint in the 'GA in Australia' thread in Gold. But I like this one so much I thought I'd include it here too.

I went to the local newsagent yesterday to get a magazine, and a lifetime of habit made me look at the comics. Usually there are a few copies of the Phantom and maybe a Marvel or two. Imagine my surprise to spot the Crimson Comet on sale for the first time in about 60 years*! This is the third issue of the really nicely produced Giant Size Phantom. Frew publishing have been putting out the Phantom in Australia since 1948, and the latest copy is the 2017 Christmas Special - #1800 in the series! The Crimson Comet wasn't one of the Frew stable, so it's a real surprise. The publisher's intro says it's reproduced courtesy of Dixon's family. (He died last year - the obit is earlier in this thread). Here's the back cover, with a really nice drawing of the CC and Tim Valor, his two best selling 1950s comics. And here's the reprinted cover to CC #1 from 1949 (you know what they say about guys with big holsters...) And here is the CC origin story. Any resemblance to Batman, Hawkman, Red Raven or other GA characters is purely coincidental. *edit before @Duffman_Comics beats me to it: the CC appeared briefly in the Southern Squadron series that ran for a few issues in the 1980s.

Wow - that's a beautiful copy of a comic I haven't seen before. I had seen #2, and according to Ausreprints, that's all there were.

I wish!

Here's the final one from my most recent package. Planets are getting expensive these days, but if you're prepared to live with a little glue on the staples you can do OK. And there's an UTC treat today. Here are two (count 'em) interior pages. The first has some little known (and perhaps a touch surprising) facts about life on Mercury: The second has some very cool GGA/bondage artwork. And this is just too good not to include as well. A smokin' Sheena on the back cover.

They come up from time to time, and aren't especially expensive when they do. There are just a few of us chasing them these days. Here's #23 from the first series (there were two series, with confusingly overlapping numbers ). This one opens at the top, so you have to turn the book sideways to read it. Here's a photo, but I'll scan the splash when I get a chance.

While this thread is still bouncing around on page one, here's a link to the gallery I created to show off my modest but (slowly) growing collection of Australian GA books.

They certainly aren't common. I've found one or two in the wild at antique shops, and one at a flea market, but it doesn't happen very often. There are a few dealers, but almost everything available for public sale is on eBay. I think I've bought 80% of the Fiction House reprints that have come up in the past few years, and I have about 30 of them. So, yeah, it's a pursuit for the patient! And great Superman items there R-man!

Ah, dang, I forgot to bid on that one. At least it went to a good home. According to Heritage that is a pre-release proof copy. Can you show us the COA?

Congrats on that. I looked for years to find one that nice. Here's mine and, yeah, it's hard to scan accurately. It was in a 6.5 slab as well.

Danged if I'm not getting a taste for L. B. Cole. There is nothing a comic needs beyond animal print bikinis, bondage and mayhem generated by an irate pachyderm. Except, of course, for more animal print bikinis, bondage and mayhem generated by an irate pachyderm.

B'oh! Late night reading comprehension fail. Somehow I managed to miss "graded" in that sentence.

Just wondering what you're all making of this line in Metro's description: "High-grade copies of Action Comics #1 don't just turn up every day, and the highest-graded unrestored copies are 9.0 (believe us, we kinda know). " Interestingly, in the email I got yesterday it said "... 9.0 (believe us, we know)". Two questions for the boards: 1. How did "we know" become "we kinda know"? 2. I thought the consensus was that the Church copy was 9.4ish. Is Metro saying that's wrong, or that it's not unrestored?