AJD

Guessing a bit here, because this is a hard book to grade, but maybe 3.5/4.0 is possible? (Those are pieces out of the FC opening edge, right?)

0.5 for me with that much of the back cover missing. I'd keep it raw if I was keeping the book. If you're going to sell it, slabbing it might still be worth it if you are sure it will be a 0.5 blue. The front presents well considering.

Chuck speculated that part of the collection had been thrown away, as the other part of the basement was mostly empty. He points to a few scattered funny animal books in the MH stash, and a few gaps in the runs that were there are being suggestive of a bit of mixing between the two parts. Bottom line is that we'll never know, and there are almost no funny animal MHs.

For better or worse, I've built and painted them. The exotic ones are models of German projects from the late stages of WW2. Some of them were built in prototype form in 1945, others remained paper studies.

I collect these: As raw material, I accumulate these. I say accumulate because they are really just the raw material for the collection - I'm not interested in first boxings etc like 'real' kit collectors are.

That's pretty much what Feldstein said about it too: "I don't know what we were thinking". It's not without some offbeat charm though.

You mean like this? I remember buying this comic in 1971 and loving the story. (Scan from Ausreprints)

Probably a discussion for the duck thread, but I've often wondered why nobody talks about 'Southern Hospitality' much. I found it in an Australian reprint years ago and was surprised when I looked it up to see how early it was. That said, it's a lousy story, and the Scrooge in there is totally out of character (in action as well as dialect) from the Barks Scrooge - which probably answers my own question.

Shock SuspenStories

Onwards now, to Tracker #2. You will have noticed that Tracker is a "detective comic", right? Well, we all know what happens to detective comics. They start out being about detectives, and then the guys in tights turn up 27 issues in. This time we only had to wait until #2, though the detective wasn't altogether happy about it! Tracker is all set up to pull off the biggest bust of his career... until 'Super Salad' turns up and spoils the fun: This issue is hilarious. After many adventures, including being fished out of the ocean by a most amusing Aquaman parody, Tracker finally gets some revenge at the end. I love the Clark Kent look here: And the last page tells us where this series is going next. Having done detective/crime comics, then superheroes, the next in line is... ... funny animals! That should be a lot of fun, right? Well, alas, apparently I am the only person on the planet who bought and loved these books, because you can still buy them from just about any big dealer for under $2, despite small print runs. And #3 and #4 were never printed. I am officially sad about that. Next from the AJD archives: another 1980s B&W favourite animal character parody/drama.

Mine is "blood orange".

Just a heads up that you can now read all of Tracker #1 here.

Well, I did say your mileage might vary! Nice work, as ever.

You know, I actually set out to do it for you, but it's taking a while and I need to do some other things. I've uploaded the first 7 pages here. I'll do the rest as time allows. @Duffman_Comicsmight want to avert his gaze. There are a few more 'spellos' in there. I had assumed that Mr Van Horn was a Europe-based non-native English speaker, but that isn't the case. So, yeah, it's a bit careless. Funny thing is that I worked as an editor for a while, and was pretty good at picking up spelling and grammatical errors, but when I read for pleasure I manage to switch that off - that way lies madness! Now I found myself looking for errors in Tracker #2 when I re-read it last night. (There are a few.) Gee, this plan to share my favourites is going well...

I'm glad you liked it.

FROM THE AJD VAULTS - Part 1 Something new for this thread. I'm going to stop with new listings for a little while, and take you short box diving through some of my favourite comics. There are a few offbeat things in my boxes that I think I'd like to share. Let's start with my one of my favourite comics ever, from 1998. William Van Horn was appearing in Disney comics at the time, and I loved his loose artwork and slapstick sense of story telling. So when I saw this in the LCS, it was a no brainer. Prepare for Carl Barks meets Raymond Chandler. This is the splash - actually it's p2, the first page being the setup for the murder case. This page introduces our hero, and also does some foreshadowing of what's to come later. This is a great read, and Van Horn was obviously enjoying working without the limits set by Disney. Some nice art, good writing (and more foreshadowing) here: You can buy this comic for next to nothing, and you should. Next: Tracker #2, in which there is a marked change of direction and the foreshadowing is explained.

I bought something dumb in a recent MCS auction (coming soon to a thread near you), but the transaction was redeemed by a couple of books I found in their catalogue. The SSS #4 above was one of them. This was the other. This book has content that goes from the sublime... ... to the, err, not so sublime. I haven't seen this sort of thing in a FH book before. I haven't missed it. And have I ever mentioned that I love the tight grading @mycomicshop ? Satisfied customer here.

My lawyers will be in touch. But thanks for the scan. TBH, I don't really recognise Wood's style at all in those panels. I don't hink I'd have picked it if I hadn't been told. Given his extraordinary detail work in ECs, it's almost like he phoned them in.

The last of the Brit books. When I saw 'Planet Stories #4' in the catalogue I thought I'd get one of these. I even asked in my email 'what volume is this from'? The seller seems to have ignored that - probably didn't understand my confusion - and sent... this: Humm. Not what I expected. It turns out that this series is the third or fourth round of UK FH Planet reprints. Still, it wasn't without a little interest. Given my model building hobby, finding a 1961 Airfix ad on the back cover was kind of cool: And according to the GCD, it reprints stories from Planet #3 and #38. The printing quality isn't great though. here's the splash from the Mysta story from Planet #38: Oh well, live and learn. One of the pitfalls of buying from a list with no scans of the books.

I imagine they are the copyright years of the newspaper strips reprinted throughout.

Hardest book in the run, and what a beaut!

Still a couple of books from the UK batch to post. Again, bought sight unseesn, and nothing (then) in the GCD to check it against. Judging by the covers around it, I was pretty sure that Rangers #24 would have an aircraft cover. Indeed it did - from the Fiction House title Jet Aces. While I was looking up Fiction House titles, I came across one I didn't know of, called War Birds. Aha! #2 is where this previously unplaced (by me) cover came from: