OtherEric

One of the prides of my Weird Tales collection:

Understandable, I don't think I've ever seen a Black Cat issue in person...

My inability to resist Ace D-Series books strikes again! Finds at the Half-Price Books today:

Not sure in general. Laughing Dragon of Oz is one of them, because a) Oz collectors want it, and b) a lawsuit meant there was only one printing, so it's relatively scarce. It's nowhere near as rare as people used to think, though.

I find this an interesting case study, comparing your and my reactions. You weren't familiar with it, I have multiple copies of the story in my library, the earliest being from 1945. And that's despite it being one of my least favorite Lovecraft stories. So I was completely able to follow it, and glossed over storytelling gaps you stumbled on. With that said, Lovecraft rarely explains things in detail, and frequently has gaps where the reader has to fill in their own guess for what exactly happened or caused something. So a good chunk of the ambiguity was definitely deliberate, but I'm not sure where the line between deliberate ambiguity and poor adaptation is.

Actually, I may have misspoke... it looks like lots of the recent sales are for copies under 9.8 or from other companies, so it probably is at a new peak. I was thinking they had hit around $1000 then dropped back to the $700 range, but I haven't looked all that often recently. My copy has a small color breaking corner tic on the back, so I haven't bothered getting it graded.

It does look like it's inching up again, but it's still down from its peak a few years ago.

Not sure if it crashed or not, I couldn't get on to check.

One project I've been working on for a couple years now but haven't mentioned often is trying to get all the Little Annie Fanny issues of Playboy. About 3/4 of the way there so far. Got this one in today, It's one of the very few issues that actually does command a premium:

Won't need this for the reading group for a while, but it doesn't hurt to work ahead:

In general, yes, that's fine. If you're going more heavily comics than pulps you might want to start a second thread in Comics General, but a few mixed in are fine.

Good enough that I'm swapping Brain in instead of Pyramids on my second list...

To follow up: I went with these: Tom- City of Death. It's not quite either my favorite or my choice for all time best. It's very high on both lists, and I really do think it's as close to flawless as any serial in the classic series ever got. Davidson- Caves of Androzani. Which seems to be the consensus choice. Colin- Vengeance on Varos. I think it's actually some excellent television. I'm far less certain it's actually good Doctor Who specifically, but what can you do? And the cliffhanger is actually excellent, without a zoom on Colin. McCoy- Remembrance of the Daleks. I actually think Curse of Fenric and Ghost Light are probably slightly better, but I think they also both require you to know the character of Ace more going in. Thank you all for your help. My friends actually enjoyed City of Death so much they watched it in one night and are talking about maybe having time for a second batch. My tentative list is Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Five Doctors, The Two Doctors, Ghost Light, Curse of Fenric. I'll only include Five & Two if they say they want to stick with one per doctor, and then I'll drop Mars and Ghost Light.

Today's book. The Avon digests are really irresistible, aren't they? No sooner do I finish the Fantasy Reader and Science Fiction Reader runs than I start trying to grab the Murder Mystery Monthlies when I find them affordable...

Creepy 21 thoughts: @Axe Elf, the index correctly reproduces the name both times. I think Monterio is correct, but not certain... I'm going by what GCD says. Cover: I don't understand why the indexer feels this is the worst Warren cover, it's not a masterpiece by any means but in my opinion it's not bad, with some interesting use of color. Loathsome Lore: Nothing terribly thrilling, but at least it's new and meets basic competence standards. There's really only so much you can do with one page unless inspiration strikes, and it won't always on a recurring feature like this. The Rats in the Walls: One of only two actual Lovecraft adaptations we ever get in the Warren mags, since we're not counting "Wentworth's Day". It's a decent adaptation that side-steps the infamous problems of the original, but suffers by comparison to the adaptation of the story that appeared about four years later in the underground Skull Comix #5. That version was drawn by later Warren mainstay Richard Corben. Room With a View: I'm never going to be a fan of the mixed in reprints (I have more tolerance for the all-reprint issues), but I'm also not going to complain about Ditko's work, either. The Immortals: A dystopian SF story. It gains more points for being something atypical for what we've really seen in the Warren magazines so far than it loses for being a fairly cliched dystopia, so we'll mark it in the win column for this issue. A Reasonable Doubt: Plays far more true to the facts than a lot of stories like this in setting up the twist. Which isn't a terribly high bar to clear. Not spectacular, but solid. Swamped: Similar to Ditko, I'm not going to gripe too much about a Torres as a reprint choice. Timepiece to Terror: Decent twist, competent writing and art, but nothing terribly impressive beyond that. Hits the good filler story level but not any higher. A much better issue overall than #20, which was never going to be a high bar to clear. I would call it a pretty average issue, honestly; but it gets there by nothing being particularly great or particularly bad, rather than a mix of both balancing out. Which, to me, is about the least interesting way to be an average issue. I don't feel like I would have been wasting my 40 cents but I doubt I'll ever remember a thing about the issue five minutes after reading it.

At this point I would probably be willing to pay $20-30 for a decent fake, but the only ones I’ve seen aren’t even good fakes.

I'll be going, since I live about 20 minutes south of Seattle, like I have for the last 14 ECCC's.

Found at a local store today. I saw the little "Lev Gleason Library" and knew they were getting my $10:

In today, courtesy of @Dr. Balls. This completes my Haunt of Horror run:

Today's MADness:

Today's book. Last of the Toth Zorro Four Colors I needed:

Today's book. The Murder Mystery Monthly seems to be the more common than the regular paperback, but still not one you see often, I think:

I’m almost willing to bet that not only you don’t even know, THEY don’t even know.

I will readily admit Colin works better on the audios where you don’t need to look at his coat. We shall simply need to agree to disagree about McCoy, though. He’s one of my top three doctors, after Troughton and Smith.