OtherEric

Phantom Fighter is on my want list, I've been toying with trying to put together a set of all the M&M books (other than 3 Problems) since I've got half of them already.

My Christmas gift to myself, I'll probably wait until next December to read it given how long it took to get to me. Seabury Quinn is not generally a well regarded writer these days, but from everything I've heard this is his one genuine classic.

My guess... and it's purely a guess... is that the interiors were printed with the US editions, then the cover was added at another stage. Maybe they shipped the interiors over and printed the covers in the UK? It's not remaindered, given that the cover matches the interior correctly.

The name comes from Lovecraft; the Asylum took the name from the same source but wasn't used by DC until 1974. In the Lovecraft (and Derleth) stories it's a town, not a person. Back in the day it wasn't unusual to park cars in barns, apparently. Most people probably didn't have garages then. The phrasing is slightly archaic and amusing, though. But I've encountered it enough in older stories I didn't notice it until you pointed it out. There probably wasn't a letter column because there was barely an editor to put the book together in time at all...

I am not aware of ANY convention regarding the HELP! 12 variants. I personally believe that it's the last of the three variants, assuming they were printed sequentially, so 12c makes as much sense as anything. It's always possible that multiple covers were printed simultaneously on one press and have slight variations between them.

Was the 2.0 still yours, or did you sell and someone flip it? I thought I had a chance but my bid fell quite short, this one is going ballistic.

A couple more of the McGinnis covers for Hard Case Comics:

Today’s books are:

Today's books. The Eerie 33 is cover dated the month I was born:

Those are minor, however, compared to this one. Looney Tunes & Merry Melodies 14, my first pickup for the main title in far too long. 13 to go, my goal for the year is to get down to single digits needed. For whatever reason, the issues in the late 20's are my biggest gap right now; I'm missing 26-29.

And continuing the march of the LT FC's:

Today's book. Now I just need to find a copy of #13 for a complete run of Freak Brothers, even if many of my copies are reprints. At least I've got the four color issues in color, rather than the later B&W reprints:

Today's pickup:

One thing I'm also wondering is if they were somehow printed differently, or by a different printer. The Creepy #19, in particular, seems incredibly vulnerable to ink transfer and cover loss on the cover. When we see my copy next week, I obviously have a worst case scenario, but it seems like nearly every copy out there has the problem to a greater or lesser extent. It may not be low distribution so much as poor production quality. I just checked the ad in Eerie #139, the #13 was still available, and wasn't broken out as a more expensive issue compared to those around it.

How many copies do you have, anyway? You posted a 9.8 as the very first book in the thread.

Huzzah! I firmly believe that there is a place for slabbing, but low grade EC's are not that place. A book like that is absolutely where it's worth getting slabbed to facilitate the sale but once it's changed hands crack that sucker out! Seeing it set free makes me happy, thank you for that.

Filling in more Warrens to keep ahead of the Reading Club, and hopefully make some progress on the last few Marvel mags I'm still working on.

You seriously expect me to have something ready to post rather than ringing in the New Year? A perfectly reasonable expectation, honestly. Just playing games online with friends, and it's only 10PM here. Eerie #13 thoughts: A general note: I'm convinced this issue and Creepy #19 were somewhat lower distribution than the surrounding issues. I got the two issues very last minute relative to the rest of the issues I needed up to April for the reading club. Cover: An excellent cover by Prezio. For some reason, I actually find the text on the cover quite appealing in this case, which is unusual. It gives the piece a retro poster feel that works here, and whoever laid it out took great care to make sure it works with the image, not against it. The ad on the inside cover, rather than the monster gallery, feels very weird. But it is what it is, I suppose. Wentworth's Day: Based on the story by August Derleth. Despite what Derleth claimed, there's really no Lovecraft in this story. For more details, see here: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/derleth.aspx The story itself is pretty good, although the adaptation of the layout from the paperback completely fails on the last page. I think we would have been better served by a blank spot at the bottom than the pointless rotation. This is, I believe, the first appearance of Frank Bolle in the Warren mags, he's another incredibly prolific artist with a decades long career that you don't hear much about, and his work here is well suited to the story. The rest of the book is all reprints from early issues of Creepy, generally first-rate choices if you hadn't seen them before, at least. Cousin Eerie is statted in replacing Uncle Creepy, except for one place where they just left a hole, but they miss correcting the text at least twice that I spotted. Overall, I think this does a pretty good job given it's starting from a place of desperation... as a reprint annual it would be fine. But for a regular reader it doesn't have much to offer, although the cover and the one story from the Chirstopher Lee book are both good.

Agreed... but as I've happily learned, time and time again, you can wind up owning books you had filed as "I'll never own this". In many ways, the first book that ever taught me that lesson was Mad #1, in fact.

Well said. Rebound books with variable contents tend to be a very specialist niche item. I'll even grant that the EC annuals are the most generally in demand within that category, other than some of the Matt Baker covers. But it's still on too few people's radar to really get flagged as the most desirable EC over, say, CSS 22. None of the above should be taken as me saying the TOT annual is anything other than an awesome book!

In today:

A beautiful cover, but that's Jim Aparo, not Neal Adams

One of my favorite covers, as well.

Well, if I had to choose between my many copies of the story, I would keep this one... but I wouldn't be happy giving up the treasury:

Such a great issue of Barry Windsor-Smith goodness.