Define999

Nice! Thanks Vaillant! (thumbs u Crazy how the chronological order of the Marvel universe got so wacked out for Italian readers.... I am sure it turned off some of you guys over there. Its sad Marvels licensing dept. didnt have a more "quality control" mindset as far as the timeline goes.... According to articles I have read about licensing at Marvel all they really cared about was that the checks cashed....

Nope, GCD is as good as it gets for english speaking collectors. The trick is finding foreign database's... databases for foreign books that we know about are Brazilian, Mexican, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian I believe.... and some others... The real trick would be combining them somehow. That would be a massive undertaking..even one title would be a hell of a challenge, even two or thee countries for one title..let alone a whole Foreign database.... Yea, would be crazy immense! The thing is GCD with some re-working could do somthing like this maybe? I dont know if it would take some tweaking of the database, or a complete overhaul? A programmer would have to chime in.... and it would take manually imputing the variants for each issue... maybe not every issue but only keys? Or some way the community at large could input this info and make the connections... currently I think you can make updates to the database as a member like indecia/scans/story notes and stuff?

Forgot to tell ya Erik! I agree that cover is bad-!

Beautiful early Spideys! (thumbs u

Nope, GCD is as good as it gets for english speaking collectors. The trick is finding foreign database's... databases for foreign books that we know about are Brazilian, Mexican, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian I believe.... and some others... The real trick would be combining them somehow. Liaton and I have talked about a need for a site that gives you all the known foreign variant editions for a specific issue. When you get into the site you specify which country you are from and your countries publishing history lies before you and any issue you pick will then show the subseqent issues variants. Comiccollectorlive does somthing similar I think, where it shows all known variants for a issue but its database is determined by its collectors I think? So there are not many foreigns it it...... All very interesting... (thumbs u Also GCD sometimes will not show search strings if you do not know the exact name in the foreign langauge... for example say you search for Batman, it shows you all the Batman that is in its search string... some from different countries... but it wont show all of them... for instance Swedish Batman is called Laderlappen! Those issues might not show up in GCD search strings unless you specificaly search for Laderlappen! So there are also ways to find runs in GCD that you didnt know were there by using the exact language.... (thumbs u

You the man Hector! I like the gradient background ones like the Polish, Hungarian etc... How long did this collection take to gather? Is it finished? Is there a Yugoslav one possibly?

Sir, I like your style! (thumbs u Man those are freakin cool! Just like with American Golden age stuff, population numbers are small compared to bronze or later..... foreign golden age has had soo much time to fall into obscurity, destruction, or unavailability..... well to find multiple copies for a key based issue collection has got to be amazingly tough! (thumbs u

Freakin love these! I need to look for that Spanish 1st Cable soon.... (thumbs u Cool idea! (thumbs u I had an idea of created a foreign variant panel…. I had even went so far as come up with a outline of subjects to talk about…. Like rarity, bias, values, cultural issues, weird quirks, cool slideshow showing scans of important or rare books and the like. I think it would be cool to have intelligent, well informed foreign panel guests like D Salupa and others to talk about the niche. Guess what? I floated the idea and sent an email to the ABQ Expo guys about it and they didn’t even respond…. Guess they didn’t think there would be to many people joining it! How funny, you have a foreign variant panel and there are more panelists than people checking it out… Great books guys! Keep them coming…..

Nice books guys! Lovin the rare books...... Keep them comin! (thumbs u

So, thats interesting? Instead of destroying returned books they were bound and resold uh? How forward thinking of a small publisher.....

The Japanese books are pretty cool.... there are different dust covers which might denote seperate printings. I havent quite figured it out though.... for instance this Japanese book has a different dust cover than mine? Its kinda cool with the Spawn logo in the middle.

Thanks man! Still hunting.... (thumbs u

I posted this in the foreign thread but I figured it had relevance here too.... 2 years of focused hunting….. Spawn 1 American, Italian, South African, French, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Mexican, Greek, German, Dutch, Bulgarian

I just completed the 3rd row when I got my Dutch copy in and I figured its time to show off some of the trophies of my 2 year hunt so far…… Of all my key based type foreign collecting issues… the Spawn 1 has the most individual foreigns in the collection. Some were easy to get others like the Greek, Polish or Bulgarian were more difficult, others still elude me…. But be warned I will have the largest foreign Spawn 1 collection minus maybe Lobstrosity the owner of Spawnworld.com in North America when I am done! Spawn 1 American, Italian, South African, French, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Mexican, Greek, German, Dutch, Bulgarian

You sure as hell did kind sir! So this guys collection isn’t a legend… it exists! Damn I would love to see a CGC recognized foreign pedigree…… but alas he probably doesn’t care about such petty things. Would love to see some high grade heritage books whenever you wish to post some graded, raw doesn’t matter. Wow 1200 is pretty low, the early 70’s seems better but still at its peak 22 000 copies still is pretty small for the bronze age I think. Interesting…. I thought it might be something like that, cool thanks… Thanks man, we eat info like this up in this thread…. Really appreciate it! PM sent sir!

Interesting... I wonder why they only kept the Archie licensing rights? I wonder if it was a issue of licensing costs or something internal with Marvel's licensing dept.?

Hey thanks for checking out the thread! (thumbs u I have always wondered if you were a member here? Your book Le Guide des Comics Héritage is supposed to be the bible of French Edition Heritage variants! I cant read French so for years I have been clamoring for a English translated edition. Nice to see you have a website that mirrors the book! Google translate will be busy translating this site for me...... Ya know…. rumor has it that you might own the only French edition heritage pedigree in existence? High grade and some issues 3 copies deep? If you do that would be amazing! Love to see CGC give a pedigree designation to a Original Owner foreign run! Also.. not a lot is known around here about these books…. But the basics… Stuff we would love to know off the top of my head….. print run info? Its been said the later years into the 80’s had even smaller print runs than the bronze age stuff... Is that true? Are there known variants within the French heritage runs? Like price variants or different printings? A master list also of all the keys that were printed in the Heritage runs would be cool. Whats the story about the publisher? Many of the foreign publishers had very interesting stories themselves….. Did Heritage stop producing books because of a lack of interest by French Canadian youth? The draw of owning the original American book kept demand in check? Or was it some other factor that led Heritage to stop producing these books? Also from what you have said I am guessing that as a collector you prefer the American version over the French Canadian correct? Just wondering if you agreed with that part of my article that addresses the bias issue concerning foreign collectors preferences when they had a choice…. Cool story about the last Avengers book ending up int he trash! I love factoids like this!

I agree as well, the Dark Knight Batman “type” that was the impetus for all the movies, the early ones included, started around this time I think. The earlier into the 60’s you go the more sci fi, campy things seem to get for me. Even the flippers have to realize though that many of these Adams keys will be desirable long into the future. I actually hope prices do dip post movie hype so more of us can afford some of these bad-boys in better grades. In the meantime I will be hunting and researching the foreign 227 variants far into the future. I have begun work on my 227 specific article and I hope to include side by side compare and contrast elements using Bats 227 and all its foreign brethren. Below are the known true 227 Adams bats variants…… Starting with the American, The Mexican Novaro, The French Sage edition, and the beautiful Brazilian EBAL! Only three believe it or not…. The Brazilian being the prettiest…. Many of the Brazilian Ebals had a almost pastel look to the covers. There are still some rumored to exist 227 variants that will remain close to my chest…. Weird that the French version changed Batman's face. I think the entire cover was redrawn from scratch. Not quite but close I think.... Yea pretty interesting uh…. This is the type of compare and contrast stuff I hope to be exploring for my article. From my research so far I think the Batman in the background and the foreground elements might have been multiple separate pieces of art that were sent during licensing. In my research of “greytone” Washtone” type covers which at least part of 227 is….. there were multiple washes that were used in making the shootable artwork that was then burned to plates. Please see below… My theory is that publisher Novaro received all the art needed to repro the cover but Sage (French) and EBAL (brazil) did not…. I think they received the foreground art but for whatever reason the base “greytone” art was lost…. Facilitating their artists to recreate Batman himself. I personally like the Brazilian effort best! If one examines closely Batman, moon, and bats you can see that the French and Brazilian backgrounds look different from the American. You can actually count and pay attention to the position of the bats near the moon. The only one that is directly similar to the American is the Novarro. Which leads me to believe that the background art behind the foreground art (mansion, etc) on both the Brazilian and French was recreated. The Mexicans for whatever reason recieved all of the art...... The foreground is still the same art just colored differently on each version. The huge differnce in coloring style makes sense at least as far as the EBALs because the Brazilian’s interior was all black and white. No need to ship the color separations for them…. This probably explains why EBAL colored the cover as they saw fit as well…. Thier clouds look the most striking.... All very interesting…..

I agree as well, the Dark Knight Batman “type” that was the impetus for all the movies, the early ones included, started around this time I think. The earlier into the 60’s you go the more sci fi, campy things seem to get for me. Even the flippers have to realize though that many of these Adams keys will be desirable long into the future. I actually hope prices do dip post movie hype so more of us can afford some of these bad-boys in better grades. In the meantime I will be hunting and researching the foreign 227 variants far into the future. I have begun work on my 227 specific article and I hope to include side by side compare and contrast elements using Bats 227 and all its foreign brethren. Below are the known true 227 Adams bats variants…… Starting with the American, The Mexican Novaro, The French Sage edition, and the beautiful Brazilian EBAL! Only three believe it or not…. The Brazilian being the prettiest…. Many of the Brazilian Ebals had a almost pastel look to the covers. There are still some rumored to exist 227 variants that will remain close to my chest….

There is also a 222 Mexican Novaro variant on ebay for 89.00 starting bid...... http://www.ebay.com/itm/BATMAN-552-BEATLES-NOVARO-1970-SPANISH-MEXICAN-NEAL-ADAMS-BATMAN-222-/110927022664?_trksid=p2045573.m2042&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D27%26meid%3D997590249088544960%26pid%3D100033%26prg%3D1011%26rk%3D1%26#ht_500wt_1156

Ok the gerber boards would probably work.... but for older "silver" based stuff you really want "silver safe" stuff! http://www.conservationresources.com/Main/section_15/section15_14.htm http://www.conservationresources.com/Main/section_15/section15_08.htm http://www.conservationresources.com/Main/section_16/section16_04.htm Conservation resources has you covered sir! Why repurpose comic supply stuff to fit your needs? Just get photogrpahic supplies from the source..... CSR! (thumbs u

Congrats dude! This has been an endevor that has taken how many years? Very happy for ya Hector! (thumbs u

Its cool, I wasnt as clear as I could have been.... 100 degrees and no central air? Dude..... thats rough! Hope to see your new foreigns soon! (thumbs u

I wish RJ, Dont own the Greek one yet... its on the horizon though! Just showing whats in my opinion one of the cooler variant 55's out there!