The Black Hand ®

Some of the best reading around, those Top Notch. I love 'em!

I love reading these stories! Thanks!

Who indeed. He's a self promoter extaordinaire....I guess.

A lot of this depends on the amount and type of restoration and the most important factor....Page Quality. I can't abide a vf with anything below light cream pages. There's nothing worse then a high grade looking book with tan pages.

I'd buy the book with the tiny dot of color touch or glue all day long....If it was one I wanted and if......it was deeply discounted.

It's such a difficult subject, especially if you have a lot in your collection. I suppose if one had a lot of restored books they would want it to be more accepted.

I had forgotten those. Spectacular.

Oh yeah, Batman 1.

I'm wondering who would be more apt to buy that third level of blue label, slightly restored book for full price. Most likely the less experienced collector. I would hardly call myself pro cgc , although I understand the need for them now with high grade large dollar amount books. ( although a Susan Ciccone or any other good restorer could issue a certificate) Anyhoo, the whole crack, enhance and resubmit scams that have flourished along with the dumbing down of mid to high grade grading standards turned me even further away from third party grading legitimacy. ( that and the monopoly factor) I understand that the genie is out of the bottle and that money talks, but with so few controlling the direction of the hobby it's difficult not to feel helpless

Those are some coolass covers!

Simply Amazing, man!

I'll pencil in Top Notch for sometime next week. I've got lots of them. You are a prince among collectors, my friend.

Shouldn't he be scanning all his Top Notch Comics or all his GGA books?

Since we've been traveling back in time, I must mention that 40 years ago this month, Jimi Hendrix released his first album. There's never been anyone like him since. I saw him last at the Berkeley Community Theatre on Saturday, May 30th, 1970.It was amazing.

Some of my favortite stories in early GA were the sci-fi ones! So much fun. That and charaters that are Nurses turn me on. So sci-fi stories that include nurses are a real plus. My wife was a nurse and when she was in her prime, that was a good incentive to end up in her care.

What can you say about somebody who will open up a high grade comic and show us the insides? Bravo! Unslabbed goodness! Are most of John Berk's books unslabbed. does anyone know? Excellent pages!

Books like this make you realize how "pretty" these comics must have seemed to a 1939-era ten year old! Think of a whole newsstand covered with these things! Each only 10 cents! Again Centaurman... Books like these though, were pretty much the exception to the rule. For every fine cover like this one, there were five run of the mill covers and four poorly drawn covers. That's one of the reasons why we prize cover like this.

Actually I think the two are linked rather closely. Aren't collections just extensions of our................. See, I thought that was cars and guns. I assumed comics and pulps were a more cerebral pursuit.

Somehow....massive collections and being "hung", don't really seem to inhabit the same area of thought.

You could buy some of those books, Shawn.

Top Notch 1 which I've posted has a full page panel. I thought that was an ad. Is that from a story? Yes, it's the first page of Top Notch 1. I can see how it might look like an ad, but it's not.

Top Notch 1 which I've posted has a full page panel. This is the first page of the first story in TN1.

Here's one last full page splash from TN1.

Right, Top Notch 2 from January '40 had some nice one page splashes as I recall. Some pretty amazing stuff. I've found a lot of things that go against the prevailing wisdom of early comic lore . A lot of these things, like the 1 page splashes, are just because a lot these books, while they've been collected, haven't actually been read by some collectors. The prevailing wisdon for a long time was that Marvel Mystery # 4 was the first Nazi war cover but that was absolutely false, it was Top Notch #2 which was the first Nazi war cover with a swatzika on the cover battle scene. It took a long time for Overstreet to half heartedly correct this.... wouldn't want to devalue Marvel Mystery 4 now would they. Let's not forget this page from Blue Ribbon Comics #3, January 1940: A hidden gem!

I've checked the first few Peps and nothing, same with Blue Ribbon 1 and 2. I'm not sure about 3. Same with Shield Wizard. I'm thinking that for the first half of 1940 it was exclusive to Top Notch 2. Why that is and why there were 3 of them in one book, I'm not sure. But that... along with the first Nazi war cover makes TN2 even more special to me. Pound for pound, Top Notch had some of the best reading, on a consistant basis for it's run, than any other MLJ. IMO. I'd be curious to see if any other brands were experimenting with full page splashes in the first few months of 1940.