AJD

Thanks for the kind words. Everything is brush painted. I haven't ever owned an airbrush. Another Airfix kit! What else? Do you hang out on any model sites? I can sometimes be found on Hyperscale.

Duffman - making observations about comics that mere mortals miss since 2006. Thanks Peter!

A new purchase for me here (thanks Ed). I hadn't ever read an issue of MD before, so I was curious to see what it was like. Most of the EC New Direction titles were solid, but I feared that this one might be more like the dull Extra! than the excellent Valor or Piracy titles. Actually, it's not a bad read, and I suspect it captures the state of the art of medicine in the 1950s pretty well. I'm old enough to remember being being taken to the local Town Hall for polio vaccine in the 1960s, and hearing the parents being happy and grateful that they had the opportunity. There were people in our town not much older than me with leg braces from having had the disease earlier. So the story below struck a chord. It wasn't long after this comic was published in 1954 that the first disastrous trials with polio vaccine happened. The safe and effective vaccine I got was first available in the US in 1961 (I was born in 1963). I'm not sure when it was first available in Australia, but I'm glad it was. Thanks Dr Sabin. Finally, here's a contest for AJD's Journal readers. See if you can guess which one of the following dialogue excerpts is from a single speech balloon in MD #4. A. Ya gotta get past me first! B. She has a compound comminuted bilateral fracture of the mandible. Her nose is deviated. She's also suffered a depression of the malar-process of the zygoma in the infra-orbital region. There's a fragment of bone missing from the right mandible which, of course, calls for an autogenous bone graft. It's a shame! A beautiful girl like that turned into a grotesquery because of a moment's recklessness! C. Argh! I'm hit! They don't write comics like that any more!

Nope, just a higher price. There are a few Dells of the period with the 15c cover. There's at least one Uncle Scrooge that exists with 10c and 15c covers - apparently it was an experiment to test the elasticity of the price. When Dell released some Pogo Possum books at 15c Walt Kelly was furious at what he saw as taking advantage of the character's popularity in the newspapers.

The Vosper dates from 1978, so I'm not surprised. Sorry to hear that you got a bad one. The paint on my models is either Humbrol enamel or Model Master acrylic, depending on the colours. The P-40 is Humbrol OD over MM neutral grey, for example.

Ah, I'm guessing you haven't built an Airfix kit for a while? The latest incarnation of Airfix has produced some really nice newly moulded products over the past five years or so. Here are a few of mine:

We used to get it in Australia, with re-runs going late at night until at least the late 80s. There were some seriously good episodes. I think my favourite was this one (warning - contains the EC-like ending of this classic): Here's the Four Color 1288: And the 'under the covers' shot from this episode is this bizarre page: The Twilight Zone ending:

I'll bet you can't spell it backwards. Other than #1, I don't think I've read any FF before the Galactus trilogy. Thank you for reading them for me Harry!

Another Four Color sub-set completed.

Hang on, a missing centrefold should be either a 0.5 blue INCOMPLETE or a GLOD. I assumed you just mixed up the terms, but then you say "similar restored books". Is it in a green or purple label?

Hi James. Welcome to the boards. You should post this in the Hey Buddy Can You Spare a Grade forum. But I think you're looking at 2.0 at best with a whole of book tear like that.

I probably had comics before this one since it came out when I was 8, but it's the first one I definitely remember buying, from a sidewalk newsstand on a visit to Melbourne with my mother.

Shipping rates are a pain, but the exchange rate is swings and roundabouts. It was great buying books when the Aussie $ was US$1.10. But now at 75c it means that the books I bought back then (and I bought quite a few!) have appreciated by 40% just on exchange rate alone. If the Australian dollar gets back to 50c like it did in 2000, it'll be hard to resist selling!

Well, it seems that these journals aren't going anywhere fast, so I might add some new stuff after all. I don't have any new comics scanned, but while walkign the dog I noticed that we're only a day from a full moon, which made me think of this: Next time I get a chance, I'll put some genuine comical books up.

What he says. I don't look twice at sellers with unrealistic listing prices - 'make an offer' or not.

Welcome back Harry - I'm looking forward to more silver age goodness. I'm sorry your absence was for such a sad reason.

Wow, lucky you came along right when you did. </sarcasm>

Welcome aboard! You might like this thread. PM me if you want to talk about them!

Some great stuff in this thread. Here are two more EC New Direction short runs:

Fantastic. I love giveaway comics. They're not GA, but one of my favourite sets in my collection is these half-size Mobil giveaways from 1964:

I can add a few to this thread. The EC New Direction titles aren't scarce, but it took a little while to find the right copies all the same. This one isn't New Direction, but is a great little run

You can see the comics for 2017 here. I have no idea what 'gold' and 'silver' means though. No Disney this time, it seems. Alas, it'll be hit and miss what I find in the LCS.

Here's another Australian odd-sized comic. It's about an inch shorter than a normal GA comic, but in letterbox format it's much narrower. Popular Yank was an intermittent series of reprints of American newspaper strips. Sometimes they had numbers, but this one has no number or date. The size makes me think WW2 paper shortages, but I don't know for sure.

Yep, I saw that in the catalogue that arrived yesterday. I don't have one now, and I certainly won't ever have that one!

The print quality is quite good, and the line work has survived the shrinking process. here's the back cover: The colouring's a bit hit and miss in places - Donald's pink beak lower left is a bit odd. But unlike most early Australian comics the interior is in colour throughout, and it looks pretty nice.