AJD

Yes, Janet Fielding is Australian. But she naturally speaks like . You'd think that would be Australian enough for anyone, but no... I imagine the dialogue on the set went like this: Director: Cut! Janet, love, can you be more Australian? JF: I am Australian, so I doubt it. Dir: no, I mean sound more Australian JF (sarcastically): Strewth! Stone the flamin' crows mate, get off ya high horse. Dir: perfect! We now return from this antipodean interlude to your regularly scheduled meander through the comic book world.

Great pickups Andrew. I was kind of shocked at the prices so I stayed away. I got such good deals last month that I was shocked to see bids at three times my pre-Christmas duck fest. The two you picked up are on my list and #42 was the first early WDCS book I ever owned but it was a horrible flea market brittle copy and I finally got rid of it because I couldn't stand looking at it anymore. I had e-mailed Rich and said that someone spilled the beans on the Heritage duck fest. I should have known I couldn't pick these up at $40-60. for long!! Hang in there Frank. None of these are rare books, and they turn up frequently enough that you get variations in both directions. The two I got the other day were both 72% of guide for the stated grade. My average over the 1-100 run is just under 50%. That's not surprising - when I had more gaps to fill I'd just lowball a number of lots and pick up the one or two that just happened to have ended lower.

Nice review harry. Those early DD books really aren't very good. There's a reason he was a B-list character in Marvel books until Frank Miller came along. While I understand the Spoon Van Dyck accent thing, after the Australian accent of Tegan in Dr Who, no Brit is ever allowed to complain about the way English accents are presented.

Ducks always sell. But even the best performers in yesterday's Heritage auction went for 75% of guide. When you do get tired of your beautiful #95, you now know who to PM... great book!

Be vewwy vewwy quiet. I'm hunting ducks... Cheers Corey. I'm hoping Frank picked some up too.

There were lots of ducks in the Heritage weekly that finished last night. here's a couple I got for pretty good (for me) prices. There were other ducks I didn't have, but the added postage and import duty cost thresholds kept me away from those. Still, the tortoise continues to edge forwards...

I know this is the CG crowd, but how about Walt Kelly and Carl Barks? And I have to +1 some of the nominations here. Adams was brilliant, the EC stable contained some wonder artists (Jack Davis and Al Williamson near the top) and Don Martin should be eveyone's favourite 'goofball' artist.

I heard a dealer in antiques say that collectors have to sell periodically to maintain the integrity of their collections and if you don't, then you're actually a hoarder. I think there's a lot of truth in that.

I think nobody collects it but everyone wanted it.

I think the T-shirt my daughter bought me belongs in this thread:

Could be worse, like a McFarlane Spidey with a head like an anvil on a 165 body that has size 18 feet. I can't imagine anyone who grew up collecting during the Rob Liefeld era could get too worked up over this kind of thing. So true. Or anyone who thinks the cover of Batman #251 is a classic. Where is that left leg attached?

I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

Is his fly open? And does that kid have a piece of straw up his nose?

Judging by her expression, she just has.

I'm puzzled too (sorry Greg). How do you get 100% of the price it would hammer for by working with a dealer? Dealers have to get their cut too... ?

Nice one. Gotta love that Gottfredson mouse. The other Air Pirates was also a BLB swipe:

Some good ones lately! How about this WW2 poster swipe:

My last purchase of 2016 turned up in the mail yesterday - and what a ripper it is. It's a big book in all measures - the classic 'big' GA size, and is 68 pages to boot.The stories are good too. The first one has the Nazis building a dam in the Atlantic Ocean to reroute the gulf stream current to freeze England. ("A bit chilly, what?" opines a stoic Brit...) Of course, Billy Batson discovers the plot and the Nazis naturally (!?) take him to the dam to stop him intefering. A Shazam! later and things aren't going well for our nazi anti-heroes. They decide to bomb Captain Marvel, who is in the process of taking the dam apart, thus helping him with lots of extra explosives. When the dam is almost gone, CM decides the extra bombs can be 'returned to sender' in this big splash: The 'paste the axis' competition involves providing captions for a drawing. But the three captions have to be selected, then cut and pasted from six printed along the bottom of the page. OO Rachael Rutter (name written in pencil on last page) cut out all six captions and very neatly pasted three of them into the drawing. But we get to see the rest. Instead of throwing them away, she thoughtfully (and still neatly) pasted them in the top margin: I don't mind at all that the book was cut up - in fact I really like the 'prior history' here. Thanks Rachael!

Sure, I'll help make up the numbers (again).

I like that photo. There are lots of books I own on that rack - and a few others I'd like to own!

Winged Viking helmet, eh?

Only one robot, but a rather large one

More robots

Some stragglers from last year's purchases turned up yesterday. The 'class of 2016' group in the post above included the ebay pics for these, so here are some scans. Australian Jumbo #25 And the back cover house ad, which shows what a jumble of FH stories were in the Australian copies - a mix of stuff from the FH line in the Rangers. This Kaanga #23 was incorrectly listed on eBay as a UK comic, but it's the Australian edition. (Did the FH artists never bother to count the toes on a cat? Incorrectly pentadactyl felines abound on their covers...) Here are a couple of splash pages from the Kaanga: And I really like this one (from the Ghost title): And a Jumbo #30 to round out the group:

Hi again OE. I get what you mean by "Uncle Scrooge feature". I'm at home now, and I dug out my Gladstones. The stories I mentioned are in Uncle Scrooge #216 (Sands of time) and Horsing Around with History is in Uncle Scrooge Adventures #33. Both should be easy enough to find.