OtherEric

Fixed that for you. Stunning copies, even before you see they're pence variants.

Today's book. Would like to find a copy with the comic back cover, not the ad back cover, but the ad version seems to be MUCH more common. Glad to have a copy at all.

Welcome to the forums! It certainly looks like an original to me... but it's so low-grade that $100 would be overpaying, it looks like about a 3.0 to me. A quick search online shows several CGC 9.4's available for $208.

It’s not super rare compared to most “rare” books, but comparing notes among Mad collectors there’s little doubt it’s the hardest to find of the comic book issues.

Correct, as far as I know. Dell had the TV show tie-in specifically. I just find it interesting that the otherwise unconnected Marvel and Charlton titles had significant creator crossover.

I don't have any of the Atlas issues, but somewhere I've got a few of the Charlton issues of Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal. Which, after the Atlas implosion, featured artists like Severin, and Maneely , and Williamson... all of whom worked on the Atlas/Marvel version of the book as well. To be clear, this isn't a case of one publisher taking over the title from another... this is two publishers putting out separate, competing books based on the same historical figure at the same time, with creators jumping from one publisher to the other and back.

So, I've made very little progress on my "First comic appearances of the Looney Tunes Characters" list. But I did have one detail I wanted to note: Speedy Gonzales appears in Bugs Bunny's Christmas Funnies #7, several years before his Four Color issue.

Don't worry, it takes lots of practice to become adept at spotting stamps on covers. Keep working at it and you'll develop the knack in time.

Found at a half price books yesterday on my way to my family's Christmas Eve dinner. It's the last of the Koontz doubles I need. I think it's probably actually the most common of the five, but I spent years thinking I had all five, counting Dark of the Woods/ Soft Come the Dragons as two. I then spent years never remembering which one of the five I needed when I stumbled across them. Happy with this one, it was cheap and looks beautiful other than a single light crease on the spine.

Here’s one. It may only be that last month that does it.

Most… but not all, I believe… of the DC Whitman books don’t have issue numbers. I presume because Whitman wasn’t distributing every issue and didn’t want people looking for “missing “ issues

I’m sure I don’t have the slightest clue what you’re referring to.

Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate) to everybody in the Magazine forums. Thank you all for being such a friendly and cheerful group!

I gave you a full five minutes to post your comments on the book before mine went up! I had to find something new to say about the reprint, didn't I?

Creepy 18 thoughts: Cover: The first cover for the comic magazines by Vic Prezio, coming over from Famous Monsters. The Warren index credits him as both Prezo and Prezio, apparently Prezio is correct. Several of his covers are good, and there's at least one outright classic he did (Creepy #29). This one is decent, although it would be better if it wasn't such a blatant swipe of the third issue of Amazing Stories. To be fair, it's probably far easier today to see the swipe than it was in the pre-internet era of 1968. (Not my copy, I've got all of three of the Bedsheet size issues of Amazing and this isn't one of them.) Loathsome Lore: Krenkel art remains great, but it seems odd that they used a relatively recent lore page (from #9) so quickly. Mountain of the Monster Gods: The story feels unfinished, at least in terms of art and lettering. I think the bones of a decent story are here... but I can also clearly see why people opening the book felt this was such a drop from the previous issue. The Rescue of the Morning Maid: Why didn't they lead with this story, instead? A good ----script (by a writer who only did two pieces for Warren), good art by Boyette and Mastroserio, and an effectively played twist at the end. Boyette will go on to do quite a few stories for Warren, and even some covers. He's one of those creators who does a ton of work all over the place but never really gets mentioned as one of the greats. Maybe not a masterpiece, but a very solid story overall that's the highlight of the issue. Act, Three: Another good story by Craig, but I'm wondering if production fell through in some way, and some shading or other elements that were intended weren't added. There's some shading on the splash panel that just isn't there in the rest of the story, and I think there are quite a few places where something like that was intended. I can't believe Craig meant for, say, the bottom panel on page 28 to be printed without SOMETHING filling in the vast white space on the left of the page. Footsteps of Frankenstein: Somebody was awake enough to change Cousin Eerie to Uncle Creepy to intro and outro the story, but missed the reference to the first issue (in this case, Eerie #2) in the opening caption. Out of Her Head: Jack Sparling joins the Warren crew here, he does about 20 stories for Warren over the years. Which is probably less than 1% of his total comic work. He was an insanely prolific artist, although I believe much of his stuff was actually done by a studio he ran. The stuff he and his studio produced was always very well done technically, although to my mind frequently a bit stiff. This actually paid off with the large number of features he did that used the likenesses of real people- he did a lot of TV or Movie adaptations, where the ability to keep stars on model without looking it's continual tracing of the same single photo is a desperately needed skill. The story is good but not great It looks better than either Mountain of the Monster Gods or what we actually got from Craig this issue, but it also feels somewhat too slick for a horror book. So, overall, I thought this issue was much better than its reputation had me expecting. I have the feeling the reason this fell so flat was down to production matters... I feel that at least two of the stories were genuinely not ready for publication in the form they got printed, and one of them I feel is very much not the creator's fault. Let's see how it goes once they run out of inventory material for the books...

Closer to $24 with tax and shipping for the Eerie, patience did pay off somewhat even if it did get to the crunch time. Yeah, that Creepy is pretty dire, but like I said it was hitting crunch time. But the next better one was almost double and would ship from Canada, so no idea if it would arrive on time. And past that you've got people asking $40 and up for copies that just aren't that great a shape either. I really do think there was some brief distribution glitch on these two issues, they're just not as common as the books around them.

Three in today. I discovered my Vampi 99 was missing pages when I went to read it, my bad for not checking carefully when I first got it. The other two are so I don't fall behind on the reading club... I'm good through mid-April now, but those two issues are the first two for next year and they're scarcer than the surrounding issues for some reason. The Creepy #19 is actually in better shape than I expected... that's just color rub on the cover, not mold or a stain. It was a desperation grab to not get behind on the reading club, but it's not in the "I'm throwing it away once I do my club entry" pile I expected it to be in from the picture. Still going to keep my eyes open for an upgrade, though!

Today's book. Slow Death ties with Skull, I think, as the long-running underground most blatantly influenced by EC. And the covers in the middle of the run are the most obvious. Throwing in the scan of an EC of mine for comparison.

‘Age Cannot Wither Her, Nor Custom Stale Her Infinite Variety’ It's a quote from Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra; although the non-existent editor managed to botch the punctuation.

A very nice copy of the hardest comic book issue of MAD to find. Probably the hardest overall, actually. Welcome to the Fan-Addict club!

Get a feeling for the rarity/ scarcity of what you're looking for. Some books, you'll discover you can wait and another copy will be along in five minutes. Some books, you may not see another copy for months (or, if you get into golden age, YEARS). I've got quite a few books where I jumped too soon and some where I waited and never got another chance. The down side is you WILL make mistakes as you figure out what you're interested in. My mistake was taking too long to figure out which category was which.

That comment makes me want to use the haha, the sad, and the confused emojis all at the same time...

Not sure if I’ve shown this in this thread before, only 4 copies in the census. Easily the scarcest of the issues with a Frazetta Shining Knight story.

Here’s a Red Circle Magazine for comparison:

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you as well. (Sorry that it's a non-stamped scan, but it's what I've got handy:)