Ken Aldred

‘I am not a professional grader’ I know very well that I’m incompetent and should price cautiously, but I hope that this pretence of vulnerability makes you feel sympathetic towards me while I make your nose bleed as profusely as possible instead.

I have a lot of comic book memories from my teenage years in the 70s that I associate with songs played regularly on commercial radio. Now, the vast majority of them would be considered embarrassing yacht rock. So, that’s all I’m saying.

The usual justification on Ebay is "I am not a professional grader". More like 'I am trying to learn, and I am currently being mentored in this process by an alpha male chimpanzee at our local zoo. However, I have yet to come anywhere close to his primate level of grading accuracy, so please cut me some slack." Would be more truthful.

Should've saved that one up for a copy of Amazing Spider-Man 96.

Maybe send it for a pressing.

Looks like it’s from the ship’s ballast copy or Prince Namor pedigree Collection.

I look forward to having many a laugh if this turns out to be an ongoing thread.

To be fair, he has used a minus declaration to draw attention to some minor flaws which keep it out of the VF stratosphere. He’s technically correct and not misleading. It is below VF. A little. Only a bit.

I was going to make a Marvel Chipping comment myself, but it’s already looking quite popular.

Couldn’t agree more. Instead of carrying a short box of raws around with me on my shoulder, just in case, I’ve found the digital tablet format to be far more convenient, and I’ve never looked back.

Just a guess.

My guess would be Eduardo Barreto Looks quite 80s.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle 1 to 8 Definitely worth a read if you want some surreal, inventive, random humour. How can you not like the hard-hitting, no compromise buddy cop duo, Snake ‘n Bacon? Literally a snake and a rasher of bacon. 2023 total = 292

Good suggestion. For an experience that provides the best of both worlds, a friendly companion that’s also a mammalian apex predator, I personally like cats.

It’s possible. I’m terrible at compartmentalisation and reading people, so as a safety mechanism it’s not something I let myself get too bothered about nowadays.

I agree. That’s the healthy, pure side of the nostalgia spectrum.

I recently started a declutter, looked through a large part of my collection, and realised that I’m in a very different place now. I wish I’d been diagnosed with OCD, Aspergers and ADD much, much earlier in life and could’ve been less impulsive and more focused. I suspect my neurodivergent social behaviour and being a tubby kid would still have led to persistent marginalisation and abuse, and I would’ve still sought refuge away from that in becoming a science fiction film, comics and music nerd, but with at least with some Ritalin added to the dynamic there would have been greater control over my comics buying. So, I can’t really wallow in remorse about my physical comics collection, as it was going to happen to some degree anyway. I have moved on, though. A greater understanding of the wounds hidden under the nostalgia, caution about continuing to plaster over those, and the safer, much less cluttered, if more sterile environment of the digital world. Certainly, if you have autism, then that detachment feels very comfortable and natural, and I’m extremely content with it.

I always think of this Twilight Zone episode, about the malleability and fallibility of human memory, and the pitfalls… Horace Ford is a 38-year-old toy designer whose life is dominated by blissfully happy memories of his childhood. His colleagues, wife, and mother have all become increasingly frustrated with his obsession. One day, he decides to revisit his childhood neighborhood. Ford discovers, to his amazement, that it has not changed. He recognizes the boys he played with in his childhood—who have not aged. Frightened, he returns to his apartment, but he visits his old neighborhood again on each of the next several nights. Each night the same scene plays out and he stays slightly longer, before returning to his apartment. On his last visit, he hears his old friends complaining that he did not invite them to his birthday party. He tries to talk to them, and suddenly turns into a boy again. His friends bully and assault him, as Horace realizes that his childhood was not as pleasant as he would nostalgically recall. After his wife finds him, he "grows up"—returning to his own time period and age group with a new-found appreciation for life as an adult.

Nostalgia refers to aching and pain, so it isn’t always going to stimulate warm, cosy and shining bright memories.

I didn’t want to go too dark and unload too much about my experiences, but when something devastating happens and it disrupts your sense of direction and progression, it’s only natural to grab hold of whatever helped you keep afloat most consistently, through other traumas on previous occasions. Comics and music in particular were always there for me as distractions. The problem is, of course, that holding onto the flotsam too tightly and for too long can impede recovery and development. For some of us, that issue, via nostalgia, might arrest the process for decades. Definitely agree.

I concur. As stated in my post earlier, outside of reading comics and listening to music, I have very little to look back on with genuine, realistic fondness. Aching, warm nostalgia, for me, anyway, gets in the way of confronting the cold and painful reality of that time. In my case, the detachment induced by nostalgic reminiscence is actually quite toxic and counterproductive. The older generation, like myself, can move on, and I prefer living in the present with a greater level of technological facilitation rather than desperate regression to a more primitive, less tolerant time. As you said, there are a lot of good modern comics just as, in contrast, there was a lot of carp published in the ever so wonderfully rose-tinted past. Hardly surprising that there’s a move towards video gaming, a far cheaper, more immersive and cathartic pastime.

It also means rubbish or carp in British English.

Beat me to it. Put together a full run of those. And a completed PG Tips 'Race Into Space' tea card book.

It's quite difficult now to reminisce about my teenage years without recalling the appalling time I had at school, and I'm at a point where I really don't want the warm comfort blanket effect of nostalgia to obscure that reality. It seems too delusional. One reason I moved on from buying physical copies of comics from the Bronze and Copper Age. Of course, I have fond memories of those exciting times, rushing to the newsstand each month for my 100 pagers, the ever-upwards evolution of discovering book exchanges, then dedicated comics stores, then going further afield to conventions, but realising now that because of health issues I can't commit myself to such an intense, energetic and time-consuming hunt any longer. Thankfully, when I reached a breaking point at which all of this became quite unsustainable, I started getting comics digitally and found that I liked this alternative approach even more; devoid of the stress of travel, no OCD overkill in my case about condition, and far cheaper. So, I still have my old school physical copy raws and slabs, my Archives, Masterworks, trade paperbacks and Omnibus Editions, but I've also now moved on into a more modern day comics world as well, still reading these wonderful stories, but in a way that feels safely detached from the obsessiveness of the past, and acknowledging what was really going on back then, darkly, under all the subsequent, fallacious nostalgia. Still a comfort blanket, I suppose, but one more in touch with my actual experiences over the long term, and something I find myself more at peace with.

You lived in a very different Bronze and Copper Age Britain to me.