OtherEric

Today's mail call:

The answer to the question "is this sun fade?" is always yes, it's sun fade.

I think the corner is more likely production than actual bug chew... I've seen it on lots of books of the era... but not sure how it would get graded because of it.

After Hours 4 is my guess, Help 12b wouldn’t be quite big enough for the hype, and I suspect if Eerie 1 or Heidi Saha sold it would have been discussed on the forums even if we didn’t know who grabbed it. It could be House of Horror by that logic as well, but I’ll stick with After Hours as my guess.

I don’t think it’s a true variant, but either fading or ink level fluctuations. But who knows at this late date?

I didn't, I haven't seen the movie... or if I did, it was decades ago when I was a kid. Thanks for pointing out the source!

Yes. My copy is definitely more green than brown.

John G. Fantucchio copy good enough? Sadly, it has a loose centerfold, which is how I was able to afford it. But I'm happy with it.

Creepy #20 thoughts: Cover: They resort to reprinting a particularly weird Famous Monsters cover. And not really good weird, just weird weird. But if it gets us new material, I suppose it's a trade-off we need to accept for a bit. I can see where a picture of a frog might of been the starting point for the illustration since the index mentions it, but it looks to me like a cyclopean creature to me in the finished picture as well. Thumbs Down: An excellent choice of reprint... but leading with a reprint when you have new material is probably not a good sign. Inheritors of Earth: Castellon's last story for Warren. His art starts out stronger than his previous stories but seems to become poorer and rushed as it goes on. I'm still not clear at all on the point of the story... it's supposed to be human-like cockroaches, but the formula would kill them too, as established on page 1? Just a mess. Beauty or the Beast: Much better than the other new story, but still nothing spectacular. Len Brown didn't write that many comics, what he did was mostly for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and Wally Wood borrowed his name for Dynamo's alter ego there. This is his only Warren work. The legendary D. Giordano makes his Warren debut here, helping his brother-in-law Trapani as a ghost on this story. He'll be back doing credited work for Warren eventually, but not for quite a while, I believe. The rest of the book is reprints, decent enough choices but nothing spectacular. Well, that was certainly a magazine that went out as an issue of Creepy. I've been able to find nice things to say about the first few dark ages books, but this one has me close to stumped. I suppose I'm happy enough with the Beauty or the Beast story... Giordano is one of those creators who only ever did "less good" stories, not bad ones, that I've seen .

From the Flash Gordon comic strip, I believe.

This was the more interesting find, though: Carter Brown digests from Australia. Which I had no idea existed before I saw them today, I couldn't resist at $3 each:

Hit the Half Priced Books today. A handful of paperbacks, particularly love the Wally Wood cover on the Clement. The MacDonald is a 2nd print:

Got this classic flip cover issue of MAD in today. First Spy vs. Spy:

Agreed, I don't think Orlando would drive sellers to jump their prices. Some of the other NatLamp artists do, though... Frazetta, Adams, Wrightson, Windsor-Smith, and the list goes on. There were a crazy number of great comic artists working on NatLamp in the 70's

And a couple more Bode covers in today, plus one I've had for a while (the Galaxy) which I don't think I've posted before. I think this gives me all the Bode pulp digest covers.

Vacation 58 by John Hughes. I’m not saying they SHOULD ask stupid money for it, just that they will.

Space: 1999 is an easier run to put together than Emergency or Six Million Dollar Man.

One of these days people are going to figure out what's in that NatLamp and start asking stupid money for it...

In today. I grabbed it for the Bode cover, but it has a story I didn't realize existed but am super excited to read... the only story the ISFDB shows by Jerry Juhl. He may not have done many stories for print but his work with the Muppets is legendary.

Not an easy run to put together in my experience:

Earliest combo I'm aware of that was clearly a deliberate homage, not swipe. The Superman cover was snagged online because I don't want to go dig for my copy:

May have been shown before, but I just this week got the second book to complete the pair:

It is. Sadly, it’s clearly one of those “cover first, then write a story to explain it” covers, and they really fail to justify the cover and title.