Flex Mentallo

So, a few things less familiar, perhaps, let's see.. Perhaps the scarcest collected edition I own is the Flesk Hardcover edition of Xenozoic Tales. [I kept the tpb as a reader] They recently produced a more recent edition though I believe in a slightly smaller format. Of course, if Mark Schultz ever does complete the remainder of the stories, this volume, valuable though it is right now, will become instantly redundant! Them's the breaks! See the set of slim black volumes to the left? That's the complete edition of Don Lawrence's Storm in English -not sure if the original editions were in French or Dutch. Not getting my copies out, but here are some illos of the covers from the site where I purchased them.

Thanks for the kind words. I never collected POTA, and there really are too many collected editions these days! I don't have the Vampirella Archives either - but that's more because of frustration with Gonzalez artwork -great splashes that sharply contrasted with the mannerisms of the more prosaic style he used in the panels. I'm about at the limits in terms of shelf space now - but I think I've just about reached a point of equilibrium. The only material I see myself collecting long term would be new DC Gold and Silver omnibi. Once Marvel publish the Miracleman omnibus, I should be done with them. (Famous last words!) But there will always be the odd thing -like the forthcoming Aztec Ace Collected Edition that is due after years of waiting.

Some of my better books here - I'll delve into these a bit tomorrow!

Atomic Age collected editions - I have most of the PSArt horror and sci fi titles on four shelves, but hard to get the camera at them. The Craig Yoe anthologies are fun - and the repo is superior to the PSArt books. The Brenda Starr book is quite scarce.

Some EC Archives, Girasol pulp facsimiles, and various books on related topics.

This is what's on the shelves surrounding the Absolutes, starting with the Dark Horse...I suppose the most notable volumes are the Colossal Conans, the biggest of which is an absolute brick. Down below are my sets of Creepy Archives and Eerie Archives [not visible in this shot].

A better look at my Absolutes et al.

Well, there is a new omnibus edition, split into three volumes rather than six, so they'd probably be a better bet. [Although the 'Absolutes' may come down in price now because of the new printing.]

There was a time when only DC seemed to reprint regularly - these days everyone seems to be doing it!

The last two volumes were astronomically expensive long before the tv series. I had to hold out a long time to land affordable copies.

As you can see from this rather awkward pic, I'm not terribly bothered about my bookcases - the big challenges are finding the right size shelves, and somehow getting all the jigsaw pieces in more or less the right place. Despite having a three room apartment, I barely have enough space. [But then about half my hardbacks are not remotely related to comics.] This rather Dickensian shot is of the opposite wall of my bedroom. See what you can spot. I'll finesse some details later!

Magnus prices seem to have gotten a bit silly. Samson maybe less so. But there is always a possibility that someone will offload a set on eBay for a bargain price. It does happen.

Famous last words. I'm old enough to have collected early Marvels when they first came out [don't have any now, sadly]. I was out of collecting for decades - then Marvel Masterworks started appearing circa 1988, and I got roped back in. When omnibi of the same material started being published, I resisted for about a decade before caving - now I have the masterworks and the omnibi. Then Taschen, with their gigantic pages on proper paper, so the colors look the way they first appeared - so I will have the same material three times over! Perhaps I need an intervention!

On a similar note, the next Taschen volume is supposedly due in September, according to Blackwells and Speedyhen here in the UK. It's FF #1-#20. And good news for Spidey fans, ASM volume 2 is coming next year!

Yeah, Fanta are truly great. I have the original mags, and the Palomar and Luba hardcovers, but I still have this on order! I was lucky to put my order in early and got a good deal with Forbidden Planet here in the UK. But I think it should be fine to wait until the price comes down, as it probably will, and supply chain issues are hopefully behind us!

Since Tales from the Island of Serendip got a mention - it occurred to me that anyone who hunts it down in the back pages of the Gold Forum might be disappointed, because most of the photos have photobucket watermarks. So, hopefully there is no harm in saying that I have been reposting [and judiciously editing] the material in two new threads in the Water Cooler. This is the autobiographical thread, by no means close to completed as yet: ..and this is everything else, more or less complete: From page three of the original - Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it. The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages. The first noted use of "serendipity" in the English language was by Horace Walpole (1717–1797). In a letter to Horace Mann (dated 28 January 1754) he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". The name stems from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka (aka Ceylon), from Arabic Sarandib, which was adopted from Tamil "Seren deevu" or originally from Sanskrit Suvarnadweepa or golden island (some trace the etymology to Simhaladvipa which literally translates to "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island"). Christophero Armeno had translated the Persian fairy tale into Italian, adapting Amir Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht of 1302. One aspect of Walpole's original definition of serendipity, often missed in modern discussions of the word, is the need for an individual to be "sagacious" enough to link together apparently innocuous facts in order to come to a valuable conclusion. What follows is, in a manner of speaking, a tale from the islands of Serendip.... I hope one or two of my fellow boardies will find some of it of interest!

I noticed some love here for Love and Rockets, so I just thought I'd give a heads up on what's coming in October. Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Mario Hernandez Love and Rockets: The First Fifty: The Classic 40th Anniversary Collection

Mostly Humanoid Press and other European material

Various small publishers

Mainly Image - three more shelves of those below these three, which is probably all the Image I need!. Those 'Absolute' volumes of The Boys were a hard set to assemble. The publisher of those is Dynamite, not Image.