AJD

I have almost all of the EC New Direction books now - just missing Psychoanalysis #1. Here's a recent pickup of probably my least favourite of those titles - Extra! It's interesting to see that the letters column has an unusual number of unfavourable comments in later issues. That said, they aren't entirely without merit. In making the best of some fairly pedestrian story lines the artists had a crack at introducing some interest. And #3 has an early attempt at the 'picto-fiction' (generously illustrated text stories) format tried out in full book length later. A nice Johnny Craig one here:

I think we've all been there!

Legion of time to the passing of time

One more MM, and Goofy as well There's also Pinocchio on Four Colour #71 (or thereabouts).

There are quite a few by Walt Kelly among the first years of WDC&S. Mickey appears on quite a few, as do the dwarves and gremlins - but none by Barks that I can think of.

As I understand it, CGC never pinged archival tape as restoration, as long as it wasn't accompanied by other forms of work. At least that's what they said when they changed the rules on tape a few years ago. These days I think it would get a conserved label.

That is a thing of beauty!

Eye in the sky to many eyes in an imagined sky

Before this your description was just an interesting approach to business. But this takes ebay selling to the level of performance art.

Though most of my Commonwealth-originated books come from further south I have a couple that fit here.

Very nice. I really like that cover too. Here's the Australian version:

With you on that Bob. I can count on one hand the number of books I sent back to eBay sellers from 2008 - 2017 but I've sent back about 25% of my purchases in the past year, and should have sent back a couple of others. I'm not quite sure what's going on - I used to have a pretty good eye for it.

Jann to Starr

Yes the Stuka was easy prey in any dogfight. I had noticed the moustache on the gunner. I guess it was meant to be a growth on a British stiff upper lip but now you mention it there is a Hitleresque thing happening there! As for the Sheena page, she observes that there's an injured black person on the elephant and Bob notes that the elephant has also been hurt by a spear lodged in its trunk. Both are shown in the drawing (if you squint a bit) so I'm not sure what you mean?

Artwork to artwork

What an act to follow...! OK, back to the shallow end folks. It's hard to pick just 10, but here's my list today. Ask me tomorrow and I might have changed my mind. I've selected on the basis of cover appeal to me, not best/biggest books. In no particular order... Honourable mentions (I couldn't leave out Barks and Kelly, though neither cracked the top 10):

Great splash page there Marty! Here's my only coverless book. And the reproduction cover I have for it.

AS you might have noticed, I do like my jungle girls! I love loads of later Fiction House Jungle and Jumbo comics, but I've only just gone after a few earlier issues. For a while I thought the earlier covers were a bit less stylish, but I've decided that they are in fact more "golden agey" - which is a good thing. Here's my first Zolnerowich cover: For the under the covers discussion this issue be warned - aviation geekiness ahead... but we'll kick off with a Sheena splash. OK, this is from the "Tom and Harry" story. Our heroes are flying some kind of bomber that inexplicably has British roundel markings on the wings and fuselage and American red and white bars on the tail.But wait, it gets worse... the Japanese fighters that appear on the page below are clearly meant to be 'Zeroes'. (And don't you love "Excuse please! Machine gun bullets not agree with humble soldier's digestion!") A Zero: Which then transmogrifies between the second and fourth panel of the next page into a quite well rendered German Junkers 87 Stuka! (And more sparkling dialogue "No, no! I cannot die before I kill them! Ohh!") Ju 87: I assume that the artist was working from reference photos - but quite why he made the change is anyone's guess? Maybe he didn't have a zero photo with the aircraft pointing to the right! Now, aren't you glad that someone cares enough to bring these things to your attention?

Nice colours on that one Jon. I have lots of later Jungle/Jumbo books, but I've only lately added some Zolnerowich to the collection. It's never too late...

Blue Beetle to beetles running for cover

"Excelsior true believers"