SOTIcollector

Welcome to the boards. I believe competition in any industry is a good thing. In the comic book grading industry, there are at least two serious grading companies, and that's a good thing for consumers. There's also another company, PGX, for those who don't know any better.

Welcome to the boards. It seems you're having trouble contacting CGC. You can find multiple methods of contact on their website. Here's a link to their contact page. Contact Us | CGC (cgccomics.com) Additionally, if you navigate to Google (www.google.com) and enter the search term "cgc comics phone number", your first search result will be this: "941 360 3991 Contact CGC Customer Service at 1.877. NM. COMIC, 941 360 3991 or submissions@CGCcomics.com."

Take your pick of one or both copies of Chaos Effect Alpha Red, the retailer incentive variant, CGC 9.8 with white pages. As an added bonus, I'll include a photocopy (please note it's a COPY and not an original) of the letter retailers received when they got this book. This letter mentions, among other things, the approximate print run for the book. This is one of the scarcest Valiant premiums, as I'm sure you know. There have been no recorded sales of a CGC 9.8 on GPAnalysis since 2022. In 2022, there were two recorded sales: one for $500 and one for $412. That puts the average since 2022 at $456. My price is $300, which is a tiny bit better than 34% off GPA. Take your pick of the serial number ending in 001 or the serial number ending in 005. Or better yet take them both! "Take it" in thread trumps all negotiations, but I'm also happy to entertain cash and/or trade offers.

Hello, my boardie friends, Up for grabs: not one but two copies of Chaos Effect Alpha Red, each a CGC 9.8 with white pages. Payment via PayPal G&S. Shipping is $15 for double-boxed Priority Mail via USPS to any US address. If you're outside the US, please reach out. I'll be happy to ship to other countries, but I'll only ship via fully tracked and insured methods so shipping will be expensive. I ship within 3 business days of payment. Returns gladly accepted within 14 days. If the return is due to buyer's remorse, you pay return shipping. If the return is due to my significant error or omission in the posting, then the return shipping is of course on me.

Great question. Thanks for your post. If you're concerned that somebody somehow took a book that was not a 9.8 and put it in a 9.8 holder, that's extremely unlikely. If you're concerned that the corners got damaged after encapsulation, that's darned-near impossible. This is a book that CGC graded, and in their opinion at the time this book was graded it warranted a 9.8 grade. So this is truly a CGC 9.8, by definition. Grading is subjective, and not every CGC 9.8 will look identical. If you're looking for a book that CGC said is a 9.8, and that also meets all of your criteria for a 9.8 (and also fits the 9.8 criteria of people on a message board), then you should only bid on books that fit that description. In this case, you saw the pictures and won the auction, so the only fair thing to do is to pay for and keep the book. If you get the book and decide it doesn't fit your personal definition of a 9.8, then you can always put it up on eBay and offer it to somebody else. It will cost you a bit in fees, but then it's a mistake you are less likely to make in the future. If you win an auction, and then back out because you decided you didn't want the book after all (which is what you're contemplating here), there's a good chance you'll get yourself blocked by one or more reasonable sellers who don't want to deal with the hassle of a buyer who is known for backing out of deals.

My opinion, based on a perspective of more than four decades in this hobby, is that no, there will not be any such 1500% progression between 1980's and 1970's books. I didn't bother looking up the pricing for comics post-1974, but I made up some prices that I believe to be realistic ($1-2 for FN Action Comics). Then I created a graph that creates a perspective that goes back from today to 1963. Your question asks whether this graph will turn into this graph in ten years. This presumes that there's something about a comic book that's 50 years old that causes a significant and predictable spike. However, as Shadroch pointed out, the driver of the market is supply and demand. I don't feel supply or demand for 1970's comics will change dramatically in the next 10 years, so that second graph isn't likely to come about. I believe the original graph demonstrates a far greater supply of 1970's books than 1960's books. That there was a significant growth in comic book collecting and investing that took off in the 1970's. The first Overstreet Guide was published in 1970. Investors entered the market and bought hundreds of copies of hyped books like Shazam #1 or Famous First Edition or Howard the Duck Magazine #1, in a way the industry had never seen. By 1980, the direct market was important enough that Marvel started selling non-returnable books directly to the direct (e.g. collectors') market. The percentage of books that went directly into collectors' hands in 1963 was miniscule. The percentage of books that went directly into collectors' hands in the 1970's or 1980's was MUCH larger. So there is, and will always be, a much larger quantity of 1970's books in collectors' hands than 1960's books. There won't be a 1500% difference between 1980's comics and 1970's comics because there isn't a corresponding difference in supply.

Since I was digging around in the archives, I thought I'd pull out one of the precursors to the anti-comic-book efforts. Because prior to comic books rotting kiddies' brains, the comic strips were apparently doing the exact same thing. The anti-comic-book efforts echoed many of the same themes as the anti-comic-strip efforts. Case in point: Ladies' Home Journal, January, 1909.

Thanks for joining me for this trip through comic book history. There's still cool stuff out there, waiting to be discovered. Happy hunting!

And here it is. A brittle but complete copy of the Chicago Daily News from May 8, 1940. The origin of the anti-comic-book hysteria of the 1940's and 50's. Literary critic for the Chicago Daily News, Sterling North, penned a column called "A National Disgrace". He referred to comic books as "a poisonous mushroom growth." "Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed -- a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems -- the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the 'comic' magazine." If you look at the two prior articles I posted (from Parents' Magazine and Magazine Digest), you'll see that this article was reprinted at least a couple times in 1941, and I'm confident there are more. This article was cited repeatedly throughout the anti-comics hysteria, including: - Family Circle, October 25, 1940 - Comics by Sister Mary Clare,1943 - Love & Death by Gershon Legman, 1949 - US Senate juvenile delinquency report, 1950 The list goes on and on. I've searched for this literally for decades. When I started the search, I had no idea how difficult a task it would be. People save newspapers that have historical significance ("War Is Over!" "Kennedy Shot!") but they typically didn't save ANY papers that weren't thought to be historically significant. Papers take up a lot of room, and even the historic ones don't typically sell for a lot of money. Libraries have long since converted their stores of newspapers to film and digital formats. Finding an intact newspaper for a specific non-historic date, or a specific city and decade, can be tough. Finding a specific newspaper for a specific date for a specific city? And in a city with two or more papers, finding that one paper on that one date? I would not have found it surprising if I had gone my entire life without finding one.

Okay. We set our audio-vibratory-physio-molecular transport device for the origins of the anti-comics sentiment. We've made some stops along the way, there have been some hints, and now it's time for the big reveal. The newest addition to my collection. Something I never thought I'd own. In fact, I have no clue if anybody else owns one. It feels like there should be music for this big reveal.

Of course, as I look back to the origins of anti-comic-book sentiment, I'd be remiss to leave out the issue of Parents' Magazine from which the prior article is condensed. The headline reads like so many of the later ones from the Wertham era. "What to Do about the 'Comics'". It presumes from the outset that the reader is already familiar with the "problem" of comics, and therefore of course agrees that something must be "done." This early attack on comic books didn't come entirely from outside the industry, as Wertham's attacks had. This was more of an attack from within. A magazine publisher was attacking the comics then available on the newsstand. Was it because the publisher saw something that presented a clear and present danger to children? Of course not. Publisher George Hecht of Parents' Magazine saw a market. He decided that he could make money by publishing his own comics, and using the power of his magazine to sway parents into believing that OTHER comics were bad for kids, but his (George's) comics were good for kids. He must have believed he had a pretty good case, because for the remainder of the year there were numerous ads in Parents' magazines touting George's wholesome wares while implying that other comics were... unsavory.

To go back to the origins of the anti-comics hysteria, we have to go back further still. Let's look at 1941. A publication called "Magazine Digest" printed an article they called "Parents vs. Superman". The article is a condensed version of one that as previously published in Parents' Magazine.

Before Walter Ong, we had Sister Mary Clare. No, she's not a Saturday Night Live character. She was a critic of comic books, who published "Comics" in 1943. This seems to be the first-ever standalone anti-comic-book publication. Wertham cites this booklet in SOTI. Sister Mary Clare also authored "What is a Nun?", but does anybody really care about that?

Although Wertham first launched his war against comic books in 1948, there were prior critics and prior battles. Take, for example, Walter J. Ong's "The Comics and the Super State", from Arizona Quarterly in 1945.

Thanks. The new addition is coming up shortly. Just a few more to go...

And while we're on the subject of 1948, let's not forget the Winters case. The United States Supreme Court, in the case Winters vs. New York, struck down a law against publishing and distributing crime publications. In particular, the law had made it illegal to print, utter, publish, sell, lend, give away or show "any book, pamphlet, magazine, newspaper or other printed paper devoted to the publication, and principally made up of criminal news, police reports, or accounts of criminal deeds, or pictures, or stories of deeds of bloodshed, lust or crime." The high court's decision overturned the conviction of a bookseller who had sold the first issue of Headquarters Detective, True Cases from the Police Blotter, from June, 1940. And what do we have here? A copy of the June, 1940 issue that got crime magazines banned and then, in 1948, un-banned. As publishers tried to figure out what genres of comics would succeed in a post-war post-superhero world, the timing of the crime un-ban was ideal. Crime comics flourished in 1948 and beyond. They also provided mountains of fodder for Wertham.

Still earlier in 1948 (March), Wertham gained some anti-comics publicity when he spun his tales to Judith Crist for her article in Collier's, "Horror in the Nursery." Crist quotes extensively from Wertham in an article that's accompanied by staged pictures of youngsters doing the horrible things that they ostensibly learned from comic books. Let's see if I have this straight... it's bad to have kids read about these horrible acts, but it's fine to have kids act these things out for a photo shoot that will accompany a sensational article about how kids shouldn't be exposed to these horrible acts. Do I have that right?

Prior to the publication of the SRL article, Wertham was part of the symposium "The Psychopathology of Comics." His findings from the symposium were printed in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, as well as in this offprint. This was Wertham's personal copy.

I had mentioned that 1948 marked the start of Wertham's assault on the comic book industry. His first nationally-published anti-comics article appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature. "The Comics... Very Funny" laid out the reasons he thought comic books were destroying the brains of kids. The impact of the article is apparent when you look at the response. - The article brought out significant responses from the readers: In numerous following weeks, SRL printed responses in their letters pages. - Not long after this article was published, Marvel responded with a series of rebuttal editorials in its magazines. First was a generic rebuttal, then came a rebuttal that mentioned Saturday Review and Wertham by name, as well as others. - Also in 1948, the ACMP code was created, in what would be a failed attempt at publisher self-censorship.

Also in 1948, we had a good comic book. Exactly one. Well, to Wertham's point of view, anyway. Nightingale was conceived as an "antidote" to the comic books of the day, and Wertham cites it in SOTI as the only "good" comic ever published. SFCityDuck, who has made some amazing historical finds in addition to this one, was kind enough to offer me this copy. Without that, I'd be saying to this day "I own all known SOTI comics except for one."

Now let's set our Wayback machine, or Dr. Doom's time machine if you prefer, to 1948. That was the year that Wertham began his assault on comic books. Before we get to his initial assault on our favorite four-color media, let's look at this specimen from October. In an article titled "What Your Children Think of You", widely distributed in weekend newspapers, Wertham tells parents of the "Hooky Club". This was a group of "delinquents" (as they would have been known in the day) whom Wertham studied, and who would later make a significant appearance in SOTI. While the article isn't about comic books per se, Wertham is of course eager to share his feelings on the matter. "Listening to all kinds of high-powered and highly paid experts, adults learn to cast a lot of glib slurs on children. They say children who are influenced by comic books are neurotic, unbalanced. I say comic books affect good, healthy children." "The experts say that comic books merely represent innate instincts of aggression and sadism. But they never explained to me how these innate instincts grew so much during a generation." ... and so on.

Oh, and let's not forget the New York Legislature. Before the US Senate was investigating comics, the New York Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Publication of Comics was at it. In fact, the legislature passed a measure what would have effectively banned a number of books. Governor Dewey vetoed that bill on April 14, 1952. Had he signed it into law, I think the pre-code landscape would have been permanently altered given that most of the comic book publishers were in NYC. The NY committee issued reports in 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1954. As I recall from when I read them years ago, the 1950 and 52 reports didn't amount to much more than "let's study the topic some more". However, the 1951 and 1954 reports were replete with examples of dangerous comic books, comic strips, and other sleaze. I'm fortunate to have found a copy of the 1954 report, and the 1951 report is at the very top of my wantlist. Know anybody who has one? I know one person who has a copy, but he (understandably) isn't parting with it.

Um... instead? I've sought out plenty of comics because they were "bad", using just about any definition of the word you choose to use.

Next on this roughly backwards-in-time trip down history lane, we'll take a look prior to the publication of SOTI (April, 1954) and the Senate hearings (which started in April, 1954). To hype his upcoming book, Dr. Wertham published an excerpt from SOTI in Ladies' Home Journal, November, 1953. This article contained illustrations that never made it into the printed book. The article was also printed as a standalone pamphlet that could be mailed to curious or furious parents.

Thanks for the story. It was a bit before my time, but I've read a lot about it in the past couple decades. Decades ago, having grown up on code-approved comics, I thought it was absurd that people could claim the material in comic books was inappropriate for children. I've certainly come to better understand some of the objections that were raised.