buttock

You guys are way too kind. Any schnook who rips someone off in this community should be blacklisted permanently. Look at all the repeat offenders.

And by the way, this is my newest addition. Recently disentombed.

Jeff, you're making a bad decision. They're really not that great and a terrible investment. You should go Timely or DC or Fiction House or...

So comicseekers has been on the probation list in the past? And people still chose to deal with him?

(worship) (worship) (worship) (worship) (worship) (worship) (worship) (worship) (worship) (worship) (worship) Did you kick Lou out of the bed to make room for these?

I get frustrated because I don't think people consider this enough. They extrapolate one book's results to all books. They press a book from 1968 successfully and think it will be similar for a book from 1942. And the scary part for me is that even with all these unknowns out there, it is not slowing down the amounts of Golden Age books being "processed". SDJ: Your last paragraph sums up my own feelings. You seem to understand paper as well as anyone here and I am glad you and FFB have taken the initiative to this thread. I simply don't understand how hundreds of boarders can post tens of thousands of messages about pressing, but when it comes to actually taking the initiative, doing the work, and paying the money required to answer the question scientifically there is dead silence. Honestly, that's why I am reluctant to put any of my own time, which is sparse enough as it is, into this. I do know several professors at UC Berkeley but none associated with the Forest Lab that FFB mentions. Also, knowing what it is like to be on tenure track at a competitive university, I fear it would be difficult to get anyone to help with this project for free. I think the best bet would be to contact authors of some of the papers that FFB mentions. If they won't do the experiments, they should at least be able to comment on how we could conduct such experiments ourselves. FFB: I like your suggestion of cutting the books in halves. The other types of experiments that you mention sound valuable but I am not familiar with the literature and don't know how to conduct them in practice. The one experiment that I suggested seems like something that wouldn't be too hard to do, unless, of course, everyone is too busy talking about pressing over in the General forum. tb, I have the equipment and know-how to do the pressing if you've got some particular cheap books you want to use as samples. The thing I don't have is the MIT folds testing equipment. If we could track down someone who does and who would be willing to run the tests, we could do it. FFB (who is sick and tired of all of the endless debates re the goods or evils of pressing and would love to get some real data to talk about) Count me in as willing to help. Got any GA books with reasonably decent page quality that you wouldn't mind being cut in half for the good of the collective? Sure. I can come up with some stuff. Shoot me a PM to remind me and I'll do some digging.

Interesting BOOT. I think mine is another from Ohio, but I don't recall it being from Columbus. I'll check.

I get frustrated because I don't think people consider this enough. They extrapolate one book's results to all books. They press a book from 1968 successfully and think it will be similar for a book from 1942. And the scary part for me is that even with all these unknowns out there, it is not slowing down the amounts of Golden Age books being "processed". SDJ: Your last paragraph sums up my own feelings. You seem to understand paper as well as anyone here and I am glad you and FFB have taken the initiative to this thread. I simply don't understand how hundreds of boarders can post tens of thousands of messages about pressing, but when it comes to actually taking the initiative, doing the work, and paying the money required to answer the question scientifically there is dead silence. Honestly, that's why I am reluctant to put any of my own time, which is sparse enough as it is, into this. I do know several professors at UC Berkeley but none associated with the Forest Lab that FFB mentions. Also, knowing what it is like to be on tenure track at a competitive university, I fear it would be difficult to get anyone to help with this project for free. I think the best bet would be to contact authors of some of the papers that FFB mentions. If they won't do the experiments, they should at least be able to comment on how we could conduct such experiments ourselves. FFB: I like your suggestion of cutting the books in halves. The other types of experiments that you mention sound valuable but I am not familiar with the literature and don't know how to conduct them in practice. The one experiment that I suggested seems like something that wouldn't be too hard to do, unless, of course, everyone is too busy talking about pressing over in the General forum. tb, I have the equipment and know-how to do the pressing if you've got some particular cheap books you want to use as samples. The thing I don't have is the MIT folds testing equipment. If we could track down someone who does and who would be willing to run the tests, we could do it. FFB (who is sick and tired of all of the endless debates re the goods or evils of pressing and would love to get some real data to talk about) Count me in as willing to help.

Anybody care to suggest a microchamber paper? I'm looking at the 0.0025 in or the 0.004 in here.

I owned a copy years ago. Sold it like an insufficiently_thoughtful_person, but to my knowledge the buyer still has it.

I have to admit this one puzzles me. All our comics are on fire(to use a popular term) all we can do is slow the process. So if not stored in a mylar(or any kind of bag that encloses the comic) how else would you store your books? Because to me the paper will eat away at itself regardless, and exposure to the open elements would only accelerate this process compared to what is happening inside a mylar. Not to mention the physical damage that might happen. So you don't want to encapsulate, or mylar your books. What do you suggest as an alternate method? And I am not trying to be snarky, but honestly am curious. That said I think the books we have tucked away in long boxes will outlast all of us, and our kids be they raw, slabbed or bagged as long as the storage environment is stable. While the evidence you posted points to accelerated breakdowns in an enclosed environment, what are the opposite numbers from a page, or comic exposed to the environment without protection. And to close my ramblings, I have long wondered what will happen 20 years from now when a slabbed white paged book is no longer white because of storage related conditions. You're right, Kenny. There's not a good solution. The experiment even showed that having a mylar enclosed on only two sides was bad, so traditional mylars aren't exempt. I don't have a good answer, but it makes me consider something like de-acidification or using a lot of microchamber paper. But part of my issue is that CGC encapsulation is a long-term thing in most cases, and thus the experiments shown are more applicable. I'm not convinced any of that data helps with pressing, but it seems to raise red flags about putting a book in a long-term holder. Granted, this is in the setting of exposure to heat/moisture, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. But let's just say it's made me do some shopping for microchamber paper.

You're right about the Permalife. Microchamber's site was claiming something like 170X the protection. Scott, do you know whether or not putting only 2 sheets in between the covers is effective at all? Dan

Boy, they were really reaching for notes on that one.

What do I take from this? 1) I'm not sure how well any of this reproduces what a book goes through with pressing. If you look at the graphs the exposures are all on the order of days, rather than minutes. I can't see how a few seconds to minutes at these conditions would be that harmful. But if you don't know what you're doing, you can probably screw a book up pretty easily. 2) I have HUGE reservations about putting any book in a slab now. That being said, I'm concerned about my books in mylars as well. 3) I need to invest in some microchamber paper, and place it between every leaf. 4) relative humidity as low as possible.

Interesting point number two. Sealing a book within mylar is terrible for it. Below is a graph showing the rate of decay (for paper kept at these conditions for this time) with varying amounts of "encapsulation" within mylar. Notice that there's little difference for mylar sealed on all 4 sides (sealed) vs only on two sides (half sealed). By putting a comic book in a relatively sealed environment, you're effectively doubling its rate of decay. In this graph, Permalife represents paper sealed with an alkalinized paper (Permalife brand) which can be considered similar to microchamber paper. HOWEVER, this was a 1:1 match (one sheet of paper to one sheet of microchamber paper), NOT the 2:32 or 2:64 ratio used in CGC encapsulation.

I've been doing a little digging on this myself. Here's what I've been able to find. Let me first preface by saying: 1) I can't find any empirical testing of the effect of what a short pressing does to a comic book. The likely reason for that is that the time exposure is so brief that it's essentially inconsequential and therefore immeasurable. 2) The testing of the effects of heat, light, and moisture on paper is very controversial. This is because the field is geared toward simulating aging, and there isn't a consensus about what the best way to simulate this is. For the situation we're interested in, simulating aging isn't what we're interested in, rather we are interested in what the direct effects of pressure with or without heat and/or humidity are. Therefore, the experiments aren't designed to test what we're after, but many conclusions can be drawn from the experiments - with the caveats of: (1) the experiments weren't designed to test these effects and (2) the conditions may or may not be similar to what a comic book experiences when pressed. 3) each comic book is going to be different. Different publishers and eras will have different paper treated in different ways. Generally speaking, newsprint is very low-quality paper and will probably be more sensitive to any exposures than what is generally tested. With that in mind, I would direct you to this website from the LOC. To sum up some of the information from that site, here are some graphs & tables. This table shows the effects of several factors on the aging of paper. Focus on the top 4 rows, I'll talk about the bottom 4 rows with the next graph. I converted the temperatures to Fahrenheit to make them more recognizable. Pressing a comic book doesn't require temperatures this high, so take that into mind. Also, the time exposure here was not noted, although based on other experiments I'd guess you're looking at a minimum of 24 hours. Notably: Temperature and humidity are both detrimental in a proportional fashion. There aren't enough data points to get an idea if this is a linear or exponential relationship, but it looks more linear. Temperature PLUS humidity is worse than either alone. This looks to be multiplicative rather than additive, but again, the data points are too few. None of this should be surprising. The interesting finding from this table is that paper in stacks degrades far worse than single sheets of paper. All of our comic books are in "stacks" of paper. The pages being in contact with each other allows them to "swap" degradation products and accelerates the decay. (sorry, I tried doing this as an image and it didn't work. Should still be easily readable) Temperature (°F) Relative Humdity (%) Lifetime T* Single sheets 176 65 12.00 Single sheets 194 25 10.00 Single sheets 194 50 4.80 Stacks of 100 sheets 194 50 2.50

I'd have to see the interiors on each, but I'm leaning toward the Zip. Is Dicky in that one?

A few things that will probably convince you otherwise, Billy: (a) Find another Lou Fine drawn book with the same shading beneath the Flame's arm. I'll bet you can't. (b) Now look at Wonderworld 21 - it's exactly the same. That's probably an Edd Ashe cover. © Look at the flames coming out of the gun. See how they're very liquid or gassy appearing? That's not Fine either (cf. Wonderworld 7 - that's the way Fine tended to draw the flames from the gun) (d) Fine had a great feel for muscular anatomy, but never drew his heroes bulky. They were "ropy" if anything. The Flame looks bulky on this cover. The Flame figure is very clearly based on/swiped from WW7, where Fine did draw a bulky arm. The inking on the back of the arm is clearly a change but other aspects line up closely/exactly. My understanding of WW7 is that it was Fine over Eisner, thus the bulk.

I'm fairly certain this isn't Lou Fine. Probably Edd Ashe or Alex Kotzky, or whoever took over after the Eisner shop & Fox parted ways. Still a great book though! Thanks, I love it. GCD credits Lou Fine for the cover and 5 of the stories. Ill crack it open tonight and see what the book says itself. It contians reprints of a number of Wonderworld 1939 stories. the cut-off date for the 'good' artists is 7/40--BUT there are two limbo books, flame 1 and green mask 1 which are simply noted as 'summer.' here're my flame 1 and gm 1, both of which cgc labels as fine covers. i think the green mask depiction is fine's probably scavenged from another book, tho' the background characters look to be drawn possibly by the same guy that did the same work on the flame. it's clear to me the flame himself on the flame 1 is fine's work. Actually CGC just labels the Flame issue as "Lou Fine art", not the cover. Is there any question as to whether there is Fine art at all within the book? And Green Mask 1 isn't a Fine cover either. I wouldn't trust CGC on anything listed on the label like that. It's probably some trained chimp copying out of Overstreet.

A few things that will probably convince you otherwise, Billy: (a) Find another Lou Fine drawn book with the same shading beneath the Flame's arm. I'll bet you can't. (b) Now look at Wonderworld 21 - it's exactly the same. That's probably an Edd Ashe cover. © Look at the flames coming out of the gun. See how they're very liquid or gassy appearing? That's not Fine either (cf. Wonderworld 7 - that's the way Fine tended to draw the flames from the gun) (d) Fine had a great feel for muscular anatomy, but never drew his heroes bulky. They were "ropy" if anything. The Flame looks bulky on this cover. Very convincing tidbits. You know your Fox artists. It would be very interesting if Fine did not actually draw the Flame 1 cover since many consider it a classic Fine cover. They had so many great artists - it's unfortunate that many of them had to follow Fine & Eisner as they sort of pale in comparison, but they're nothing to kick out of bed for eating crackers!

A few things that will probably convince you otherwise, Billy: (a) Find another Lou Fine drawn book with the same shading beneath the Flame's arm. I'll bet you can't. (b) Now look at Wonderworld 21 - it's exactly the same. That's probably an Edd Ashe cover. © Look at the flames coming out of the gun. See how they're very liquid or gassy appearing? That's not Fine either (cf. Wonderworld 7 - that's the way Fine tended to draw the flames from the gun) (d) Fine had a great feel for muscular anatomy, but never drew his heroes bulky. They were "ropy" if anything. The Flame looks bulky on this cover.

I'm fairly certain this isn't Lou Fine. Probably Edd Ashe or Alex Kotzky, or whoever took over after the Eisner shop & Fox parted ways. Still a great book though!

No, but clearly you need to send it to me so I can do "research" on its origins...

I've seen a couple of RK 22s pass through the boards within the last year or so. I sold one to bcc - it may be worth a PM. It was lower grade. Kid Colt 100 & 107 are the only ones I've seen any great demand for. And just because I can...

A sadly large number of my classmates are not yet employed, including a buddy of mine who will get deported if he can't find a job in the next two months. My bro-in-law gave up a great job and went to B-school right before the dot-com market crashed. Almost everyone in his class struggled to get jobs after graduation. Given the way things are now, you've got to feel very fortunate.