Black Cactus

Also happy birthday to those who recently celebrated!

If you'd like, message me your address and I'll mail you a mystery book.

While we're talking about places to buy books, I think this is worth mentioning. 

Abebooks is owned by Amazon.

Amazon sucks. Think about how many small businesses and bookstores have gone out of business because of them. I don't like giving them or Bezos any of my money if I can avoid it. Having said that, I will buy books from Abe if the seller doesn't list them anywhere else 

https://www.biblio.com/ is independent, and a wonderful business. It's not as vast as Abe, but a significant amount of Abe's listings are mirrored on Biblio. If you join their membership program Bibliophiles Club for $30/year, you get 10% off on every order up to $20 in savings. That adds up!

Anyways, do what you will. I just wanted to share my 2 cents on that subject

I've got to weigh in on Graham as I've also bought a number of books from him. He carries some of those extra sleazy titles I'm fond of 

Great experiences! I've always wondered about his pricing though. It seems like tons of books are priced the same, and to be damned with what the rest of the market is selling them for. Sometimes that means a great deal, and other times not so much.

It's probably a good thing he doesn't list photos because that would make it too easy to spend more...

https://www.bolerium.com/ is fantastic for vintage counterculture and LGBT+ focused literature!

On 9/17/2024 at 10:45 PM, Darwination said:

What a line-up of covers.  I bid recently on the first edition of Sex Life of a Cop (having a crazy spot in U.S. obscenity law) and came up short

Is that the one of the guy (in his PJs?) pointing at the officers? Always liked that cover! I think I recall seeing the auction you mentioned. 

Wow. Seeing what the Connor Brothers did to Maguire's legacy is beyond rage inducing. Take it from someone who works in the arts. Maddox is an absolute garbage gallery with no real respect or influence in the art world. It's just some super rich individual_without_enough_empathy who flips expensive art.

On 5/11/2024 at 5:02 PM, CGC Mike said:

 

I'll chime in on this.  Yes, we did change the minimum age from 16 to 18 years old.  Here is what is written in the terms of use regarding nudity.  Before posting this, I will share my view.  Full frontal nudity may be going too far.  If it is done in a tasteful manner, or is at a distance and really doesn't reveal all, it will probably pass.  

Nude images: Given that this is a comic book collecting forum, some leeway for actual comic imagery is provided, more so than non-comic related imagery. Some nudity is allowed when it is comic related and done in a tasteful manner. However, there are many comics that are quite explicit and aren't allowed to be posted here.

I'm new to these forums, so I realize my opinion doesn't cary much weight.

I guess I just want to pose the question, is nudity so much more offensive than even violence?

I've seen comic and book covers on these forums depicting every possible kind of violence. Domestic violence. Decapitation. Torture. Killing of innocents.

No one bats an eye.

But the human body, which we all share, is what should be feared/limited?

It just has never made any sense to me, as this is the normal societal wide stance and nothing at all unique to these forums.

My day job is in fine art, working with painters. I see a lot of censorship when it comes to nudity. For example, Meta's (facebook/IG) official policy is that nudity in a painting or artistic setting is allowed, yet all too often when an artist shares a tasteful nude painting the algorithm may automatically delete their post, and shadowban their account. Which for an artist, is a big blow to their livelihood.

Anyways, now I have a more clear idea of what sort of imagery is and isn't acceptable here, so that's helpful! I think most of the spade classics would be fine, but maybe near the cutoff. There's a difference between nudity and implicitly sexual material, which the spade classic books are 😇

*edit: this isn't necessarily a direct question posed to Mod Mike, but more of just a rhetorical question and me thinking out loud

On 5/10/2024 at 4:18 PM, Surfing Alien said:

This is a pretty small group, you're probably much more likely to find people with enough Bilbrew and other hard sleaze artist knowledge on the Facebook "Vintage Paperback and Pulp Forum" group. There's 40k people in that group.

Thanks for the tip. I don't have a facebook account, but I'll look into it.

I’ve been working on collecting the Spade Classic series from Star Distributors. It’s gay sleaze from the early 1970’s, and most of the covers feature black & white illustrations by Gene Bilbrew.

I was attracted to the monochromatic work, but did immediately notice it was not Bilbrew’s better work.

It helped me make the connection that these books were published between 1972-1974, the last two years of Bilbrew’s life (he died in 1974) when he was struggling with substance abuse and the collapse of his industry. I thought that was an interesting dynamic in regard to this series. It may have been some of Bilbrew’s last paperback cover work.

There are other cover artists snuck in, and I suspect the publisher asked them to copy Bilbrew’s style. 

I’d love the forums help in identifying which covers are Bilbrew and which are not, if you all don’t mind looking at a bunch of dick bulges. There’s no explicit nudity. 

Hah, that makes me happy to hear. I hope ya'll found some good deals! I have no idea what's appropriate value for publishers like Avon and Dell but that website seemed like it had some very affordable pricing. The books just weren't quite sleazy enough for me... 

Came across this website while hunting for books. I don't have any affiliation.

Their inventory doesn't cover my collecting interests, but they have a bunch of Dell, Avon, and other publishers for around $5 a book. I figured some of you might be interested!

https://careysemporium.com/collections/fiction?page=1&sort_by=created-descending

I think I remember reading somewhere that Orrie Hitt would crank out a book a week, writing them at his kitchen table while chain smoking cigarettes. 

On 3/30/2024 at 3:51 PM, jimjum12 said:

This one also caught my eye. It's not scarce, just cool. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

On 3/30/2024 at 4:08 PM, jimjum12 said:

And who could possibly resist, the lesbian Rambo? GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Adding both of these to my want list. So good! 

On 3/19/2024 at 8:05 AM, jimjum12 said:

I collect social relevance titles, not all of them, as there are SO many, just representatives, but it's tricky with the alternative lifestyle stuff. They seem to fetch strong prices but it's difficult to determine which ones are deserving of a premium(and why?...) and which ones are jacked up just because of a fad. Any help would be appreciated. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

This title might be considered offensive to a lesbian today, for example.

Hah, I have a copy of The Abnormal Ones that I recently bought that should ship to me soon. Yours is in great shape! What a beauty!

I’m queer and so that’s a collecting focus of mine. I honestly couldn’t say which deserve a premium and which are hype, or a one-off crazy sale. I’ve only been collecting paperbacks for about a year so I’m still a novice.

I think especially with the sleazier books, pricing becomes rather arbitrary. People make snap decisions, and there’s often not a lot of sales data available for many of the books.

A lot of these books are offensive by today’s standards, but that’s part of what makes it so interesting and fun. It’s also worth noting that lesbian sleaze played a pivotal role in the formation of the feminist movement - and for many queer folks, was their first access to stories about people like themselves. 
 

In regard to queer/lesbian paperbacks, I would think that those written by queer authors would command a special premium. But always, it comes down to the cover!

This was my first year attending, and I thought it was great. It's one of the smaller convention or shows that I've been to, and I really enjoyed that aspect. It was a full house with a lot of energy, but not overly crowded. And so many books to choose from! I easily could have spent a few more hours (and a few more paychecks) finding new books to take home.

I was particularly pleased to discover these Selbee published copies of The Gay Rebels and The Gay Jungle. I wasn't even aware of their existence beforehand, but they published around half a dozen titles at a slightly larger format than standard. The two books measure about 5.25" x 8" instead of the more standard 4.5" x 7", and they have interior illustrations.

Here's my haul. I picked up "Flesh" from the aforementioned Terry. I'd been looking for it, and was happy to find it in person.

On 1/2/2024 at 3:40 PM, Surfing Alien said:

I've always loved the more illustrative covers of the LOTR paperbacks. Some of the other covers you shared seem pretty pedestrian art-wise, but I suppose that's not unique to any one genre.
 

On 1/2/2024 at 2:13 PM, Surfing Alien said:

Some of them are pretty pedestrian art-wise (I can imagine it may have been tough to get top straight artists to paint this stuff) but I like this one. I've seen PEC line books before and they definitely have better art than most adult titles.

In this case the author Carl Corley is also the cover artist! He painted his own covers for most of the ~22 books he wrote and published.

On 1/2/2024 at 1:58 PM, Surfing Alien said:

Those are almost parodic!

Oh man, there's so many gems that I laugh over. I've bought as many books because I found the cover/title hilarious, as any other reason.