AJD

Harry's latest review - the meta-review X-Men #3 January 1964 His Copy - rated 'cool'. Cover review: 1.5/5 ~ Harry lets the side down here, with insufficient regard for the visual effrontery of the fat dude in his undies. (The Incredible Y(front)-MEN?) Art review: 3/5 ~ Not a whole lot of words, but some well chosen ones, and a bonus for the 'Spirited Away' reference. Story: 4/5 ~ Great stuff. Harry only loses a point for the review not turning into x-rated fanfic about Professor X and Marvel Girl. (And dibs on the title '50 shades of Jean Grey' (c) me just now) Quote of the Day ~ 5/5 hard to argue with Harry's choice, mostly because every early X-MEN book has nothing but lines like that one. All in all, Harry keeps delivering.

It's the Chinese Nationalist insignia. The history of China before, during and after WW2 was fascinating and complicated. The Nationalists under Chiang kai-shek did the lion's share of the fighting against the Japanese, before going on to lose the civil war against Mao's communist forces in the period 1945-49. The Chinese Communist Party has largely written the Nationalists out of history. I was in Taiwan when the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2 passed, and the locals were plenty bitter about the way that Beijing was taking the credit.

All good - I was just having a bit of lame fun. I run this thread because I like to document the building of my collection. If anyone else gets any value from it, well, that can't be helped.

While it's difficult to keep up with all of the responses here, I shall push on regardless. </sarcasm> All of you ardent readers of this thread (oh, wait, the sarcasm flag was off) will recall me posting this photo of B-17 gunners, which I thought was probably the reference photo for a Wings issue: Well, I now have a presentable copy of that issue of Wings in my FH box. And if that isn't enough for you, here's a chorus line of Cossack dancing women (and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra)...

Another Australian Fiction House reprint. I was unreasonably pleased to see the back cover. Not because of the ad or the "skid mark" - but because of the date stamp. Almost all of the Australian comics of the era are undated, so the arrival date stamp of "8 JUL 1953" allows us to pin down at least this one. I sent the data off to the GCD folks.

I really hope not!

They can only be scraped off if they haven't bled through - have a look inside and see. But I agree that scraped comics look awful too. Your best shot is to return it to the seller. Too bad, as I know you really want one of these.

".. the... err... upper torso area."

An enigmatic Australian book today. Three weeks ago I had never heard of this book, until @Point Five PM'd me to say that he'd found it in MCS eBay listings and that I needed to own it. He was, of course, absolutely correct that I needed to own it. I have both a geographical and a professional connection to this book. Geographical because it's set in Canberra. Professional because there really was a very significant KGB spy ring in Canberra in the 1950s and I use it as a case study in my Intelligence & Security class at the national university. It's a great book. It's big for a start - larger than the early GA size. And it's in lovely condition, which is always a bonus for these thin newspaper stock comics. On the front cover you can see 'Old Parliament House' out the window. Interestingly, you'd almost get that view from the restaurant diagonally opposite. It used to be called The Lobby, but now it's the Pork Barrel. Here's another piece of Canberra scenery - the Australian War memorial. My wife worked there as a curator for five years. My uncle was at the Battle of Tobruk, so the plaque was a nice find in the book. Now, the funny thing is that I have no idea where this story originated. Steve Roper was an American character who had a five issue run in 1948. There's no story with the 'Canberra spy ring' title, and I can't track it down from the first line or the characters. I thought it might be locally drawn, but it's not in the Bonzer checklist. My next thought was that it was a modified story from elsewhere - so maybe 'Canberra' had been subbed in for something else. Looking at the middle panel in the bottom line, that might be the case - the font looks a little different. Likewise, maybe the 'Tobruk' plaque (see how all the secondary lettering is scuzzed out?) and possibly even the War Memorial are add-ins? Otherwise, I got nothin', except for this cool book.

No single Wertham-like figure, but lots of chatter about comics in state legislatures. And there was the Queensland Literature Review Board, which managed to get a dozen titles banned outright.

Another nice Australian book for the 'Oz box'. This Rangers #5 has a locally drawn cover (pretty sure) and great colours - well, on the front. My choice of interior page this time is ghost story. I thought this might have been from an issue of Ghost, but the GCD says it's from the US edition of Rangers #43.

I have a Pogo Possum #5 with heavy tanning inside the covers. According to the notes, one grader gave it 9.2 without noting tanning (it looks 9.2 from outside IMHO). The other graders gave it 7.5. But the tanning is much worse than on yours - I've cracked it out since. I'm inclined to agree that it won't matter a lot for your book.

Yes, it is the cut version of the story. The Australian paper stock in the Disneys was nice, much better than in other local comics. It ages well in terms of whiteness, but also seems to be susceptible to foxing, which isn't uncommon on them.

OK, a trip back to my first love in comics for today's post - Australian Disney comics, especially ones with Barks stories. Of course I had no idea who Carl Barks was when I bought my first comics in 1968-69, but I could spot a "that guy" story a mile away. This one predates my childhood Disneys by 15 years, and it's the earliest "G series" book I own. That was our equivalent of the Four Color series, and had a range of titles within it. But the first 20 was very Barks heavy - check them out here. Must have been a good time to be reading the local reprints! G stands for giant, and I recall puzzling over that as a kid, because they were the same size and page count as the other Disney books. But the first half dozen were 64 pages at a time when most Australian books were 24. Those six are very hard to find: a copy of G1 with a tear down 75% of the FC sold for over $2k a few years ago and I haven't seen one since. I don't think I've ever seen a #3 or #4 except in a complete collection of the 2,000+ Australian Disneys I had the pleasure of seeing once. Perhaps explaining their scarcity, these books were 1/- (a shilling) when most others were 6d (sixpence - half the price). This one has 32 pages, all Barks. They were also in color at a time when most Australian books were B&W. And what color! Much stronger than the Dell four colours:

4.5 or 5.0 maybe, since it looks pretty solid Did I mention ?

I thought boardies would be beating each other off to get this one. Thank you. I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip the waitress.

BTW, as originally published in DD #26, the story had several pages cut by Disney's editors because they were too spooky. The restored version was reprinted in Donald Duck Adventures #47 in 2005 - it's probably worth spending a couple of bucks to read it as Barks intended. The page I linked shows the restored first page, and its great splash panel.

Yes, both Psychoanalysis and M.D. are missing from the 'New Direction' titles. For that matter, Incredible Science Fiction wasn't a ND title - just a renamed follow-on to Weird Science Fantasy since Gaines thought (incorrectly) that the word 'weird' was on the taboo list with 'crime' and several others. If you read back a little in this thread ( ) you'll see that Feldstein explained that he and Gaines were in therapy and thought they'd spread the gospel about it.

I got this one raw on eBay. Look around and I'm sure you'll find a nice one.

One final book from my more recent care parcel from the Heritage. (Though there's one on its way from MCS too - really looking forward to that one.) And here's a demanding quiz from the good folk at Fiction House: Where did they find the model sheet for that kangaroo?

This might be the single greatest panel of all time.