Doohickamabob

By the way, is this a Baker cover? A local comics seller has a copy, and I am tempted to buy it even though it's probably only a GD+ or GD/VG copy. How rare is it, and what do you think it's worth?

Nice! Love it. I'll show you my Baker collection if you promise not to laugh.

"Whatever the organisation of the social system, working hours will be reduced to the vanishing point: The machine will have set man free from the curse of Adam." It came true! Now more people than ever are unemployed! Woo hoo!

It was a funny response. Also, I never knew about the different versions of Playboy #1. As a collector, how easy/difficult is it to obtain a copy of this without paying through the teeth?

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean the entire St. John library? This would be too large for one group shot. No, I mean the Wartime Romances collection. Your photo shows them fanned out, which only partially displays the covers. Like I said, I realize I'm lookin' a gift-horse in the mouth here. But if you ever have them all out again, and find an easy way to arrange them so the full covers show, that would make a neat photo. Naturally, if you had any of the other titles out, I wouldn't turn away from looking at a cool group shot of those either. In fact, if you ever have free time and feel over-caffeinated, you really should photograph your complete collection of St. John comics -- you know, for insurance purposes! (And for us to drool over.) I wouldn't expect that you'd lay them all out for one big group shot, but rather take separate photos, grouped by name or genre. Then again, you could just ignore my suggestions. Always a safe bet!

I love your group shot. Many of those covers I've never seen, and then there are the handful that seem to turn up on a regular basis. (Why is that?) I do have one request for you, which is to sometime post a pic that shows all the covers. I do not mean to look a gifthorse in the mouth, I'd just like to see 'em in full glory sometime.

You are greedy, heartless and calculating. You knew what you wanted, and were willing to sacrifice anything to get it. (Why oh why wasn't this me?! I want this book!)

Like this? In no special order but I don't have either of the Giants which may make the list and the later Teen-age Romance are also not in my collection of scans. Here is a bunch more to pick from That's awesome. I forgot I even posted that message. It was worth waiting for your answer. I see you included Teen-Age Romances #9, which is essential!

I'm not interested in getting into a political argument so I'll just limit myself to asking, what dealers do you know who are selling Action Comics #1 and Detective #27 for $1000 each? Oops, I really messed up the math there, getting more brain-addled the more I tried to correct myself.... (P.S. I'm not sure this is so much a political argument as a socio-cultural-linguistic-something-or-other argument.)

Really? Casualties Yes, I am familiar with this "World War II" of which you speak. The point I was trying to make is that I don't see any benefit to granting equal importance between an arbitrary graphic symbol and the historical events with which it is associated. The symbol itself only has as much psychological power as we collectively choose to invest in it. Imagine if the symbol of the Nazi Party had been a square. Then imagine that Western society deemed all squares to be ugly reminders of a 20th-century nationalist war and a campaign of genocide. It would be rather inconvenient for anybody who wanted to use squares for other graphical purposes, or to reinvest the square with its previous innocuous meanings. The swastika isn't that much more complex than a square. It's a simple set of lines that have 90-degree angles. That linear pattern shows up naturally in a variety of places, such as the tail of certain comets visible to the naked eye (which is a theory for why it shows up in very early cultures), sewing patterns, Escher-like configurations of arrow shapes, etc. It was also in wide use for thousands of years in numerous Eastern cultures, including Hinduism and Buddhism. The evil Nazis didn't invent it, and they don't own it in perpetuity. They co-opted it. The example I linked to shows one possible negative outcome of exaggerating the power of a symbol. Here we have a multi-million-dollar building that was designed in a swastika shape because it was a convenient way to arrange building wings to provide for more windows and shaded external areas. The architects in the 1960s had no idea that there would be something called "Google Maps" and people all over the world would be able to see that the shape was a swastika. (It's still a little dumb that they went ahead with the design.) The result is that, because the symbol is all-important instead of blown off as a historical remnant of a pathetic dictator's B.S. aspirations, the Navy has to budget $600,000 to retrofit the building in ways that conceal its shape.

A couple of things worth mentioning: (1) Rather than being surprising, it makes sense that the publisher would have used the swastika up until 1933. That was the year that Hitler gained power. Prior to that, the Nazi Party was one among many competing German political parties, and the Nazi swastika had little meaning or concern to people in the United States. (2) Technically, the symbols on these books are not Nazi swastikas (or "hakenkreuz"). The Nazi symbol is always depicted with the points going clockwise; these are counter-clockwise. I find it unfortunate that the swastika continues to hold such negative/scary power as a symbol. It leads to situations like this one, where the U.S. military ends up budgeting $600,000 to change the satellite-view appearance of a barracks building (See Google Maps image) as of 2008.

Fixed that for you.

Your Dizzy Dames collection rocks! Now you need to get a Farmer's Daughter collection to go with it!

I'm selling a bunch of EC comics stuff on eBay, with auction ending Sunday night, June 13. The comics include both Early EC's, "New Trend," and "New Direction" comics. Some rarities in the mix, like a Crypt of Terror, some Moon Girls, and the first two Reddy Kilowatts. Also selling almost the entire run of the Picto-Fiction magazines. Here is the link: Doohickamabob auctions on eBay And here is a photo of a fraction of the items for auction: Thanks for looking.

Gracias. It's difficult to say which one was hardest to get, because all three don't show up often. But let me tell you, I learned a lot from buying these. Such as: -- #1: If something is listed as "Buy-It-Now or Best Offer," and you really, really want it, don't mess around with a Best Offer that's only 10% less than the BIN price. Just buy the dang thing, before some other guy comes along and wins it with Best Offer of 5% under BIN. -- #2: If you're searching for a comic for a whole year, and it finally turns up, that's great, you should buy it. But don't be surprised if a week later, another copy turns up -- a better copy that you feel the need to buy, just out of spite at the situation. -- #3: Inexplicably, sometimes you will end up paying more for a lower-grade copy with chips off the corners than somebody else pays, the following week, for a mid-grade copy that looks fantastic. #*%^)#^() -- #4: In your haste to go after a comic that you really want, and that you need to fill out a run, sometimes you will miss something really obvious -- like a freakin' torn spot in the middle of the cover. Then when you go back to look at the listing, you'll realize it was clear as day in the photo, even though you don't remember seeing it at all.

This run took me a very long time to complete: Okay, maybe it didn't take that long, but it wasn't easy. #2 and #3 are Matt Baker covers, which is great, but I actually dig #1 the most -- for how odd it is. What's with that dress? It almost looks like the green section was added at the last minute. And her body position is contorted, with the leg tucked in like a chicken wing. Each comic is full of violence, drug use, and other fun stuff. It's kind of like Brenda Starr mixed with Crimes by Women.

The first year and last couple years of FH have nice colors. Everything published in between was printed as cheaply as possible and it's real crapshoot as to whether there was enough pigment in the ink. Your comment is spot on. I read somewhere that Fiction House kept on printing several of their comic covers even when some of the inks had run out, which is why certain covers look severely faded compared to other copies of the same issue.

You're hoarding all the best ones!

Day-um! Beautiful! What grade is issue #1? What an awesome run to have.

What a great collection of off-the-beaten-path golden-age comics! Love the Lucy, Bouncer, Crown, and Dynamic titles.... The other ones are cool too.

Soooooo.....awesome

I don't collect them [Torchy comics] only because they're so hard to find for a decent price. But they're very cool. Looks like you might need one or two really tough issues to fill the run. Best of luck nabbing them.

That's for sure! Yeah, there was quite a bidding war there. Is this a key in terms of its content, or just an especially rare / low-distribution issue?

So, who got into the bidding war on Cinderella Love #27? This is a $10-to-$20 book according to Overstreet. The auction ended March 30, 2010, and two bidders drove up the price from around $50 to a final bid of $275. And not even for that nice a copy! It HAD to be somebody here. LINK

Rich people eat them. You know that movie "The Freshman" where Marlon Brando enlists Matthew Broderick to deliver an endangered Komodo Dragon to a secret restaurant so the richest people in the world can eat the last surviving example of that species? Same thing.