Bookery

A man who knows his paperbacks! Lots of good stuff... Day Keene, Charles Williams, Robert Bloch, the "Earthman on Venus", "The Dying Earth" of course, "Dunwich Horror"... Particularly impressive... the scarce "Mansion of Evil" (which should be of special interest to comics collectors), and a set of the John Russell Fearn Harlequins!

Offhand, I see... Think Fast Mr. Moto -- John P. Marquand Cave Girl -- Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Dell 1st edition) The Green Girl -- Jack Williamson Night Has a Thousand Eyes -- Cornell Woolrich (1967 Paperback Lib. ed.) Slan -- A. E. Van Vogt (Dell) False Night -- Algis Budrys (Lion) Bring the Jubilee -- Ward Moore (Ballantine) Dead Ringer -- James Hadley Chase Human? -- Judith Merril (Lion) Halo in Brass -- Howard Browne The Far Cry -- Fredric Brown First He Died -- Clifford D. Simak Fallen Sparrow -- Dorothy B. Hughes Cup of Gold -- John Steinbeck (1st paperback ed.) Too Many Women -- Rex Stout

While you are absolutely correct that super-heroes drive the comics market, I'm not sure the lack of super-heroes in pulps or paperbacks is particularly relevant. Sure, super-hero fans aren't going to be attracted to those other formats, but so what? Dashiell Hammett collectors aren't looking to comics either. Science-fiction fans drove the pulps and paperback markets for awhile. The problem is, sf folks kept everything... so the respective pulps and books from that genre are relatively common. Mystery, noir, and exploitation covers now are the key and most valuable collectibles in those formats, with a greater emphasis on title or publisher rarity than is found in comics. I don't think pulp prices are ever likely to explode beyond the pace they are already increasing, often as much due to inflation and frustration with availability as anything else. Paperbacks, which have been stagnant the longest, could have the potential for rapid growth if the public were made more aware of them, since unlike pulps, there are many names in paperback publishing that are familiar to everyday folks... Stephen King, Lawrence Block, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Harlan Ellison, Louis L'Amour, a lot of movie and TV tie-ins, famous and not-so-famous spy series and spoofs. Plus paperbacks have the potential for "signature series" items like comics in a way where pulps do not. Plus, also unlike pulps, existing paperback collectors are generally high-grade aficiandos, often desiring the equivalent of 9.0s or better. Pretty much anyone who wants to shell out 6 figures can own an Action #1, for instance. Several copies come up for sale every year. Paperback's most valuable book... the first edition of the 1st Pocket Book... probably exists in under two dozen copies, and rarely comes up for sale,regardless of one's ability to pay for it. This either makes paperbacks more interesting for the challenge-inspired, or more frustrating for the instant-gratification crowd. Another plus for paperback collectors is that rare and sought-after items can still turn up at garage sales and used bookstores, which happens now very rarely with the more publicized comics, and almost never due to the age and fragility of pulps. But should paperbacks break out as a collectible, it will be much more broad-based than the heroes-focused comics medium... I don't see any one genre completely dominating their collectibility.

With the comic market moving more and more toward cover-art being the dominant force in collectability, it is a bit odd that pulps and paperbacks, both with far superior and more varied art than comics, have comparatively little interest. Pulps even had a head start... with a plethora of fanzines beginning in the 1930s devoted to at least the sf side of it. But with pulps, a lot of the "problem" is that the format ended almost 60 years ago. It's the old out-of-sight out-of-mind thing. There are 2 major pulp conventins today vs. dozens of comic conventions. Newspapers and magazines do articles about comic books... but they don't have a clue what a real pulp is. Couple this with the fact that pulps are just too hard to obtain these days... putting together runs of anything beyond the most common titles is a true challenge. Most comic runs can be had for the asking just by laying out the cash. Paperback collecting has always suffered because there is very little information out there about them. The guides that came out in the past were publisher-fixated, which is no longer the way most people collect (like comics they now tend to look for vivid artwork and author "keys"). Paperbacks are interesting in that they more closely follow the history of comics (what we think of as a paperback format began in 1939), and like comics move into more lurid covers in the late 40s and 50s. Unlike comics, covers continued to be daring into the 60s and beyond, though the adult nature of many paperbacks and their publishers, both within and on the covers, may also hurt their broader-based collectability, as holding "mainstream" conventions of them and having a mainstream company "slab" them might prove problematic. I did what I could years back to shed some light and information on pulps, and am working, albeit slowly, on doing the same thing with paperbacks. Though in the era of eReaders, I suspect it's too little too late to generate any broad-based enthusiasm. (On the other hand, if a company like CGC did offer a grading service, paperback values would likely skyrocket, particularly with high-grade rarities. And there are even more paperbacks out there than comics, so if it took off, it would be a lucrative endeavor indeed for both the grading company and lucky collectors/dealers sitting on inventories of key items).

It is our store policy to not purchase PGX books... no matter how big or tempting the book may be. I turned down a New Mutants 98 just yesterday, in fact.

Just picked this up -- my first in 30 years of business! Burroughs' first book-- 1st edition (scarce 3rd state-- only 2500 copies printed Dec. 1914 or Jan. 1915) Now I just need $30k or $40k to pick me up a dust-jacket

That's the famous Three Stooges cover. Moe and Curly are obvious, but they drew Larry funny.

Very professional. Superb packing. Thanks!

re: SHOW US YOUR DUCKS! We get mallards every day... But this fellow (northern shoveler) was in the small creek behind my backyard last evening! (no joke)... He made several quacks, but unfortunately no Barks.

I order a lot of stuff from Bags Unlimited, but I don't believe I've ordered plastic boxes from them. I assumed they were the same ones everyone is carrying (it seems there is only a single manufacturer of these, though different distributors call them different things). BU boxes have the same (similar?) oval hand-holes the other problem boxes have had. The old ones from Canada had more rectangular hand-holes, had rounded edges (not the sharp rough-cut edges along the top), and were a heavier plastic. But if BU has a new product, I'm willing to try it. Anybody with experience with their long boxes?

Years ago there was a company in Canada that produced excellent plastic boxes. We still have them throughout our shop after 20 years, and they are great, solid, with rounded edges that don't cut into your hands, and were available in multiple colors. I don't recall their name, but they are long gone now, unfortunately. All of the plastic boxes I've come across today are definitely inferior... the long boxes buckle after awhile and are actually dangerous for transporting comics, as they bow in the middle when carrying. I would pay decent money to have those old boxes available again, though.

For the sake of argument, let's just assume the issues sold at roughly the same numbers... that's sales of 800,000+ for each book. Then keep in mind the US population then was less than half of what it is today. In order for a contemporary comic issue to be as popular as "Bringing Up Father" was in the 1920s, a comic issue today would have to sell approx. 2 million copies! Pretty amazing.

It's a neat book, and I agree, historically significant. I have 3 copies at present... a solid 3.0 copy with white pages, and 2 other copies each missing a couple of pages IIRC. Of course, I've had them for years... unfortunately significance and saleability are two differet things! Show people Spider-man or Superman and they ooh and ahh... show them Buster Brown and they look at you like you're crazy!

[font:Times New Roman]What strikes me is this: If I had Mr. Peabody's Wayback machine and 50 cents in vintage coin, say, Mercury dimes to keep the continuum from jumping the rails, I wondered to myself "Which books would I buy?" Here's what I came up with (don't peak 'til you do it yourself): Ask yourself, thinking as either a dealer or as a collector, ...Which comics would YOU buy and bring back?[/font] I'm gonna have to go with that House Beautiful issue... but then I've made some questionable investments in the past, so...

Man, that is some seriously hideous art. Jesse Marsh, who drew the early Tarzan comics, produced similarly hideous art. You know, when you walk into the Annual Super-Heroes Reunion, and standing around the hall are Superman, Batman, The Human Torch, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, The Hulk, etc.... and you stroll up and announce "Hey, how's it going guys!? I'm The Ermine!", you're pretty much just demanding a butt-kicking.

He definitely was. That's why us kids, with our screaming punk music and discordant video games, laugh at the way the writer and Tim gel their blue hair and wear their pants buckled around their chest.

On the other hand, as much as I love Centaur comics... maybe the first book Waugh glanced at was this...

No way!

Now you're just being coy... is this an argument for Famous Funnies, Fantastic Four, Four Favorites, Famous Feature, Family Funnies, Fantastic Fears, Fightin' Five, Fearless Fagan, Foxy Fagan, Fast Fiction, Feature Funnies, Fighting Fronts, Film Funnies, Flippity & Flop, Frankie Fuddle, Freedom Fighters, Frisky Fables, Frontier Fighters, Funny Fables, Funny Films, Funny Folks, Funny Frolics, Funny Funnies or Fury of Firestorm? Slightly different arguments can be made depending upon the answer.... Someone has opened an Overstreet lately OR... I may be bizarrely obsessed with collecting only alliterative titles! (Though I was told by Colton Waugh they were all illiterative).

Now you're just being coy... is this an argument for Famous Funnies, Fantastic Four, Four Favorites, Famous Feature, Family Funnies, Fantastic Fears, Fightin' Five, Fearless Fagan, Foxy Fagan, Fast Fiction, Feature Funnies, Fighting Fronts, Film Funnies, Flippity & Flop, Frankie Fuddle, Freedom Fighters, Frisky Fables, Frontier Fighters, Funny Fables, Funny Films, Funny Folks, Funny Frolics, Funny Funnies or Fury of Firestorm? Slightly different arguments can be made depending upon the answer....

Speaking of early comic book cross-promotional items, this (badly faded) doll has been buried in the shop here for awhile... it's Foxy Grandpa from 1905.

Another great point I hadn't really thought about! Without super-heroes, would there be anything beyond a niche (well... even nichier) core of collectors out there, say along the same lines as BLB collectors today. It occurs to me that perhaps the reason BLBs are so minimally collected today, isn't so much because of the format being unpopular among collectors, as it is that there are so few super-hero titles to be found in them. I think if 2 or 3 dozen super-heroes had crossed over into BLBs, they might have a different collecting landscape today...

Is that a zombie tale, as in "Walking Dead" -like? Romero had nothing on these. These are ther scariest zombies of all... zombies with money!

Good point! And there were certainly plenty of toy and coloring book and puzzle tie-ins in the '40s. Fawcett put out tons of Marvel Family products as well... though mostly of the paper variety, whereas Superman had wind-up dolls, linens, and other merchandise. I'm surprised DC never got into BLBs (the books, not the Beerbohms). Superman was popular enough in the '40s that he would rank pretty high up the cross-merchandising ladder, perhaps topped only by Hopalong Cassidy, Tarzan, maybe Popeye, not sure... and of course the all-time champion cross-promoter... Disney. Superman was alone, however, cross-promoting from the comic book outward... for others, the comic book was the cross-promotion.

I had the later 70's treasury version when I was a kid and it was favorite comic. I read it over and over until it was it coverless, tattered wreck. When I got back into collecting as adult it was one of the first things I had to track down. Pure nostalgia. My copy probably never looked that good even on the stands! (wire spinner rack at the drug store). For many on these boards, comics were probably a central part of their childhoods. I loved them as a kid, but we didn't think any more about them than other amusements of youth. I had accumulated maybe 300 of them between 1963-1972. But I DO still remember my amazement when saw this issue. It just came out of the blue... standing there, slowly spinning the rack, trying to choose which 3 or 4 issues I would buy with that week's allowance. Then "King Kong" rolls into view. Suddenly, 35 years after the movie's release... here it is! And the art was spectacular. I don't think there's another comic I recall actually seeing on the rack so vividly. "King Kong" rarely showed on TV when I was a kid... and of course, back then, if you had to be somewhere else when it came on, you missed it. But now,I could revisit the story over and over... the action was even grander than in the movie, and it was even in color!