Doohickamabob

I find Baker's art to be sooooooooooooooo charming. It makes me sad that today's generation has lost that mystique. It's as if his Matt Baker's art best defines 'Comic Book Romance', it even epitomizes it, since the majority of his work absolutely oozes with, and honestly conveys, loving courtship to the point where a viewer can feel it and believe it from and between his figures and characters.

This is a great summation of how many of us feel about Baker's work.

Can't wait to see scans of your Phantom Lady comics, as well as the spanking panels. (Sure, it's kinky, but it's also dang funny.)

These are great thanks for sharing. Do you have any of the giants?

 

Not anymore - just a handful of the ones I really like!!

 

 

Hey, is that woman in the background (above right) Canteen Kate?

And your point is??? Mad #1 is the first MAD comic. Mad #24 is the first MAD magazine (which is exactly what I stated).

No point, just like showin' the pretty pictures!

1st MAD magazine

Nice. Can't wait to read it. As a passing comment, panels like this always crack me up:

How can the guy talk with a hand in his face? It reminds me of this --

"Can't breathe.... c-c-can't....breathe...." Because people always talk while they're choking.

How about this? An unauthorized game made by Transogram in 1960.

EC sued Transogram and won. They changed the box to cover up the toothless mouth of the Alfred looking guy. Still a cool game.

I would say that EC had a pretty convincing legal case there. (I wonder if Mad ever sued the 1970s band Man, which used an Alfred image on their album covers?)

My regular issue run goes from #44 to present and I'm only missing 3 books in the middle. The run is otherwise complete in that I have every alternate or variant copy of every issue.

My Super Specials are complete from 1 through 57 and I'm only missing a handful through present.

I also have a lot of foreign issues including the first British issue and first Quebec issue. I also have a very large run of the Australian issues.

Additionally I have almost full runs of all the offshot titles, including More Trash, Follies, Wost From, Collector Classics, Gross Outs, XL, etc, etc, etc. Also a lot of the big books.

Cool collection photo! So a few questions -- did you consciously decide not to collect Mads #1 through #43? Too expensive? Just curious. I had a similar plan early on, but then I found a great Craigslist lot deal on the early issues and couldn't pass it up.

That's great you have the first Britain and Quebec issue. I hadn't seen the Quebec one before. By the way, anybody here can look up the foreign issues at a site called http://collectmad.com/. I just found out about it the other day and love it! Some of the foreign Mad covers are really cool, with alternative-reality Alfred E. Neuman paintings.

Hmmm...Are you making a fun guy joke

 

More like a fast girl joke

Careful before the posting of Matt Baker scans mushrooms out of control.

P.S. Nice window sill o' sighing. (That's my lame attempt to make something sound like "psilocybin")

I do have some duplicate MAD Super Specials so if anyone needs any let me know and I'll see what I've got. Maybe we can do some trading for specials I need. (thumbs u

I love Mad #24 even in 2.5 shape, which still looks nice. As a kid, to own a Mad #24 would have been a real dream come true. As for Mad #44, I love that cover but especially the BACK cover, which completes the joke and makes the front cover more stalkerish/creepy.

My avatar should be a dead giveaway, but I'm a full-fledged member. I have a full run from 1-500, plus all Trash, Worst and Follies (inserts intact), and the Specials from the first thru somewhere in the early 90's. To keep the run complete, I've been a subscriber for the last 8 years or so, but decided to stop at #500. I sold off all of my paperbacks a few years ago.

Holy guacamole, we have a winner! Somebody with ALL the Trash, Worst, and Follies! That is a deceptively TOUGH collecting accomplishment. Finding the issues is one thing, but finding them WITH the inserts is a whole other level of hunting.

I still love to open the older ones up and enjoy the exceptional work from the truly-masterful "Usual Gang of I-diots." I've only slabbed 1-5, but was so happy when CGC started grading mags, so that my bright, beautiful, perfectly registered #24 had the opportunity to be under-graded at 9.2 by the powers that be. I'm not on my own PC right now, but I'll post some scans later if this thread stays afloat.

Between the specials collection and your CGC 9.2 copy of #24, you've got some great stuff. I only have raw copies of most issues, but I do have a CGC 5.0 copy of Mad #1. Talk about variations in value on a comic -- a high-grade copy is worth as much as $20,000 (and once over $30,000), but a lower-grade copy is barely worth $400.

Thanks for chiming in. Oh yeah, about the last 20 years of Mad kinda sucking, that seems to be the general consensus. However, I do open newer issues and sometimes find myself pleasantly surprised and even occasionally laughing out loud. It's pretty much a downhill slide after losing publishers and editors like Gaines/Feldstein.

I subscribed to Mad as a 13-18 year old kid. Still have my original run, but all the back covers are folded:

Nice photos and selection! It's always heartening to see a copy of Mad #18 that doesn't have the dots connected. Your #22 looks great even though the grade is not visible in the scan. Gotta love "The Godfather" parody -- that's a movie that I am actually planning to see in a couple days on DVD, so I might have to dig up the Mad parody afterward. Those movie parodies age very well. The other day I watched "Grease" on TV and read the Mad parody during it, and the jokes were spot-on. Regarding folded back covers, that is one element of condition that doesn't bother me too much, though it's nice to find unfolded ones. It is hard to complain if the previous owner actually enjoyed the mags the way they were meant to be enjoyed.

Just a cursory glance at the subjects makes it seem there aren't many Mad Magazine collectors in here. Either that or I'm looking in the wrong forum. Do the Mad fanatics have a different site or section where they congregate?

I'm a longtime Mad collector going back to my humble 7-year-old self. A few years ago I fetched all my mags out of my dad's garage and decided to "complete the run before I sell it all, because then it will be worth more!" Since then I've learned that a Mad collection is hardly a ticket to mega-wealth, although trying to finish it can be a ticket to the poorhouse. (I've run into other sellers online who had the same delusion I did.)

Still, collecting Mads offers quite an array of challenges and areas to choose from:

-- The first 23 comics

-- Magazine issues #24 through about #100

-- The early More Trash, Worst From, and Follies special issues (complete with bonus inserts)

-- The paperback books (especially first-printing Signets)

-- The early merchandise: Cufflinks, Alfred Bust, Straitjacket, other

-- The myriad foreign issues, esp. the ones from the 1960s

-- The hundreds of specials from the 1990s

-- The yearly calendars

-- The vinyl records

-- "The Ridiculously Expensive Mad" book with inserts, etc.

-- Branching out to satire copycat comics/mags, like Cracked, Nuts, Crazy, Eh!, Get Lost

-- Following Harvey Kurtzman's post-Mad career with Trump, Humbug, Help!, Annie Fanny

-- Original artwork

-- Printed materials from before Mad existed that show an Alfred E. Neuman likeness

-- Board games, card game, Spy vs. Spy game

-- Ecch-cetera...

If other Mad freaks are out there, maybe this would be a good place to share collecting stories, post some photos, and other fershlugginer potrzebie idiocy.

...anything for you Joanna!

 

I think Linda might have eaten some of the funny mushrooms they found on their field trip.

Awesome pics. Love the interior shots!

Psycho had some sweet, sweet covers.

Why am I so fascinated by your little video...

The Vic Flint is the Baker cover, not the other way round, right?

Yeah, I was just being a sarcastic doofus, but I'll break the joke to avoid further confusion: The Baker cover is the original, the other cover is the copycat. And I should also point this out -- now that I look at it, I think the copycat is Australian.

Sorry to have to break this to all of you, but it appears Matt Baker stole most of his designs from anonymous British (edited correction: Australian) artists. Case in point:

As you can see, Baker added his own flourishes, such as the fire escape and the chip out of the building's corner. Otherwise, sadly, his cover for Authentic Police Cases #10 appears to be a complete rip-off. Like I said, sorry to have to tell you this. Don't blame the messenger, eh!

Picked these two lovelies up at an auction today I also had a bunch of lower grade stuff too but these were the gems of the bunch.

I am jealous of you finding whatever auction that was. If those are any indication, I wanna know what else was there... Anyway, great scores. The CSS #22 is always a coup d'collection. As for Frazetta, where other artists would have half-assed the craters on the planet, or other little details, he makes them detailed and beautiful.

One of my few GA books - wish I had more GA!

Was included in an SA lot I purchased. Thinking of getting it slabbed.

That's a cool comic, fun cover, and yes, you definitely need more GA. Regarding the slabbing, in my lowly opinion this would be just as well served by putting it in a high-quality mylar sleeve with an acid-free backing.

What this forum needs is more interior scans. Here's the centerfold double splash for the Princess Pantha story in Thrilling # 61 -

Very cool. Every time I open a comic like that, I worry about it falling apart, or a staple popping through the cover. (Note: Has happened too many times...)

Really cool group shot! Curious where you picked up your TR41 from? This one is hard to come by.

Gracias! If I remember correctly, that was a Buy-It-Now purchase on eBay. Reasonably priced.

For the heck of it, and also in response to Joanna, here are most of the Baker covers in my collection. Pretty paltry compared to many here, but they make me happy... (There are a few not included, such as Lorna Doone.)

I think there are 3 really good Authentic Police Cases covers by Baker and that is one of them. I only have two of the three but still looking for the railroad cover.

I like the other APC Baker covers but not as much.

Cool summation of the best Baker covers. I agree, and like you, I have 2 out of 3 of them. I just got #10 today from a local seller, at the exorbitant cost of $20. Baker's best stuff often involves a diagonal, mid-air female, doesn't it? Another APC cover I like is #4, but that's not Baker, it's somebody named "Bee."

I wanted that book so badly from antiquekeeper on ebay but I missed the auction end due to the extremes of working during that whole week due to the G20 summit in Toronto Nice book. I would have paid twice what it went for. BTW, you need to give that ebay seller some feedback, she deserves it for those books she put up in the last month

You were her first sale.

Agreed, I need to give feedback. Just got this today though. Nova Scotia mail is slow. (Regarding the trimming, that's something I could have detected from the photos, so I don't hold it against the seller.) And you're right, she had some amazing other stuff, including those awesome Venus comics.

This isn't Baker, but I figured you all would appreciate a look at this comic:

I love the blue color on the cover. This is a Canadian reprint and I thought it looked pretty cool when I bought it. What I didn't realize is that it appears to be trimmed on the right edge -- either that, or the Canadian reprint was badly produced. (I would consider returning it to the seller, but she's in Nova Scotia, and the sale price wasn't much anyway.)

Anyway, the inside stories are full of romance grooviness: