OtherEric

Came across this today looking through boxes, it's not the era we normally showcase here but it seemed to fit nonetheless:

I've pretty much given up on ever getting issues 1 and 2; I'm still looking for a copy of #3 for the Walt Kelly story. Overall I'm at 15 issues to go and they're NOT getting any easier or cheaper.

I must respectfully disagree with you on the contents, I find Jack Mendelsohn and Howie Post's Jimminy and the Magic Book a delightful feature in the Walt Kelly vein, and Genius Jones is another very fun feature. I am prepared to agree that all the other features are unimpressive, with Dover & Clover being the worst thing Henry Boltinoff ever did by a fair margin. Nice pick-up, in any case. I have about half of the last 20 issues but haven't been able to track down this one yet, so my comments are about the series in general, not the specific examples in this issue.

make no mistake, I've got my eyes open for a copy someday...

I don't have a copy of Campus Town... But, if I have to choose between the two, I'm happy with the choice I made...

I’ve been keeping my eyes open for those; they don’t seem to turn up often.

Thanks for the report. I've only got the two I've quoted above, the Leydenfrost Planets are definitely in demand but $306 seems like a very solid price for a copy in that grade. Very happy with my copy, given that I got it essentially for free. (I bought a small batch of pulps and flipped one of them for roughly what I had paid for the lot.) The Super Science Stories is beat up but may seem like a steal not too far in the future, it's Ray Bradbury's first profession publication.

This one, I can answer. The book was dated Feb 1988 but came out months earlier, so the actual copyright date you're seeing in the corner box was 1987. They actually were released the same month. Mike's Amazing World shows them both releasing on October 20, 1987.

Today's book. The spine roll actually looks worse on the scan than in person. Such a great Jones/ Bode cover:

In this morning, mail actually showed up before I go to work for once:

Was reading the Girl Genius webcomic today, and noticed a visual shout-out to a famous pulp cover in the art. I then figured we could use a general thread for this sort of thing, I always find it interesting when people reference the pulps in more recent works. The relevant panel:

I wonder if there's a direct connection with that and Marvel doing the adaptation of the movie:

I really do need to find my sets... I have two of these... and see how they look. Return of the King is far trickier than the other two to find in my experience. Nice pickup!

It's not totally nonsensical, since the book reprints "At the Stroke of Midnight". And I would love to have a Steranko sig in my collection. But I can think of at least 50 books I would rather have the sig on than that one. (Admittedly, 27 of those are the Shadow paperbacks he did the covers for, so not just comics...) Still, a nice pick-up. That book is getting tricky in any grade these days.

Powell's only cover for the Shadow pulp- and the only Powell Shadow cover I have:

Big Sleep is the only one from that era I have. I swear, I'm going to sit down and start reading these some day very soon now...

Pre CGC days. I've got a copy in storage somewhere, it was a dollar book. Same with Starslayer 4 & 5 and Groo the Wanderer #1... Nice copies of all 4, all dollar bin books. But I've also seen them on walls more than once over the years. (Well, not the Starslayer 4 as a wall book... but the other three.)

So why is Destroyer Duck hot? Just a Groo upswing? The book has jumped from Dollar Bin to Wall Book and back again more times than I can count over the years...

I find it interesting just how different the original and the reprint look, trying to decide which one I like better...

Finally found some of these in the wild, more than one store told me someone had bought them all when they first came in. Bad news: out of 6 bags, only 3 different figs. Good news: got the Loki with Throg, which is miles and away the one I wanted most.

Two books today. The Creepy #16, while still not high grade, is a significant upgrade from my previous beat up reader. Very happy to have it. More interesting is the Monster World #1, the Mummy story predates Creepy #1 as the first Warren horror comic story, with great Wally Wood art to boot. I think this is an underrated book, even if it is fairly common. Warren retroactively declaring Monster World 1-10 to be Famous Monsters 70-79 means people don't always realize this came out between Famous Monsters 30 and 31.

Yet another reason I love mapbacks. I need to find a copy of this one, I think

Here's a couple more. As to which made the grade, I think of the ones we've seen so far the Vampirella #1 has a clear lead, but there are a couple other solid choices in there. Here's a related question: What was the first comic that was a self-proclaimed Collector's Item?

Mickey did have a Gottfredson, who did for the Mickey in the comic strip something similar. But that never really made it to the comic books other than reprints. But it gives us at least some idea what could have happened. I don't think we ever really got anything like that for the Looney Tunes, for instance. Although Mary Jane & Sniffles was brilliant in its own way and some of Sheldon Mayer's funny animals for DC have a Warner Brothers vibe to them.

Today's pickups at the local store. To answer a question somebody asked earlier, I've decided I'm NOT going to try for a complete run of Ace D-Series books, if for no reason that I have no interest in trying to track down the 40 or so Nurse novels that comprise half of the last 80 books in the run. (I wouldn't mind one or two as samples, but I don't want or need the overall headache.) I am gunning for a full set of the SF doubles, at the very least, though. Anyway, 3 more D-Series and a Dell with a stunning cover: