OtherEric

Do you have the second part of the story, Prophet of Dune? That overlapped with the end of the magazine format, so 3 parts are at magazine size and two at digest, if I recall correctly. I have all 8 issues, but this is the only one I've got scanned.

Left Over has to include returns. Everything I've heard about the sales at that point suggest sell-through was normally around 50% for comics on the newsstand. I do NOT know if the returns shipped overseas ultimately landed in the returns column or the sales column of the report, I'm inclined to guess they're counted as returns but I suppose they could add them to the sales count last minute.

The Altamont Free Concert was the infamous festival at the Altamont Speedway where they hired Hell's Angels for security and they wound up killing Meredith Hunter, an 18 year old concertgoer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Meredith_Hunter It's been described as the end of the 60's, and is referenced in the song "American Pie". Incidentally, "American Pie" was recorded on May 26, 1971, and Mike's Amazing World has this issue of Creepy going on sale June 29, 1971... so an awareness of the incident was clearly still in the air at this point, the story was being worked on at the same time the song was. And the ugliness of Altamont in contrast to Woodstock four months earlier was clearly informing the idea of getting concertgoers to actually believe in the words of the songs they were listening to. It's actually a very powerful and effective idea, I'm just not sure how well the story manages to convey it. I think that it doesn't really mesh well with the story's other interesting idea, the contrast between the young, idealistic cop and the cynical veteran cop. It's like the story develops and then drops the conflict between them, describing it as a truce half a page after one of them hits the other. Anyway, that's why I think that part of the story was directly inspired by Altamont, hopefully the references clear up why I feel that way.

The GCD is, in my opinion, far too eager to declare books separate titles based on trivial distinctions. And House of Mystery was originally more of a horror book, it was arguably reverting to the norm.

Give that George Kashdan edited #173 and Joe Orlando edited #174, I can think of several reasons starting with annoyance, continuing with not caring, and ending with not even knowing it was going to happen.

There are a lot of quite affordable EC's still; if you look. But yeah, most of their more famous stuff- the Horror and SF books- are definitely getting expensive. Reprints of almost everything are readily available, at least.

His art in this issue is definitely highly influenced by the Fleagle Gang, that's for sure.

The scarce Don Winslow pulps have comic inserts, by Sheldon Mayer. And I have this vague impression Avon tried a romance pulp with a comic section around the same time they did the two Out of this World issues. And this one has a B&W comic section at the back, but it's not an insert like the Out of the World issues. It even qualifies as a detective pulp:

And the latest entry, at the very top of the page, is a Nurse novel. Color me SHOCKED that you would call our attention to this, Randall.

I'll elaborate once you read the story; it's not impossible I'm assuming facts not in evidence saying that. But I really think it has to have been on McGregor's mind when the story was created.

Congrats to us on 100 weeks of the Reading Club! Creepy #41 thoughts: Cover: A very odd piece by Ken Smith, I'm torn if it's supposed to be a portrait of Uncle Creepy or not. I don't think I would like a lot of covers like this but it's a stunning change of pace. Loathsome Lore: My first reaction to this was that it sounded completely absurd. But a little research shows that no, this is actually possibly the most historically correct lore page we've seen yet. Truth really is stranger than fiction. The Thing in Loch Ness: The Warren debut of Bruce Jones, who is better known as a writer but has a lot of art credits as well. He's one of the major Warren writers, with well over 100 credits for Warren and over 1800 total listings at the GCD. This is an OK debut, but it's trying way too hard to be an EC style story. In particular, it's trying to replicate the text-heavy style of the EC's but doesn't really have enough story to make that necessary or desirable. Skipper's Return: Nice art and an interesting idea from Colon, but I don't think they mesh terribly well. But I do like to see a story aim high and miss rather than aim low, so I'll put this narrowly on the win side. The Final Ingredient: I could see this story working as an amusing palate cleanser after a particularly intense couple of stories in some issues. Here it's just annoying, really. Prelude to Armageddon: This one is odd. It almost feels like Wood drew a dozen pages worth of what was supposed to be a longer story, and Cuti was brought in to try and make what they had work. Beautiful artwork, and some interesting underlying ideas, but I'm not sure I can say it really works as a story on its own terms. Still, it's hard to complain too much about 12 pages of gorgeous Wood art. Extra Censory Perception: An excellent little story from Skeates, brought down by amateurish art from Kaufman. I would have loved to have seen this story drawn by an artist who could have done it justice. A Tangible Hatred: A couple nice ideas by McGregor, nice art (if still developing) by Corben. I'm just not sure the two work together terribly well, and while I like the story idea I'm not sure the execution is there in the script. In some ways, I think McGregor is trying to tackle two subjects that don't really fit that comfortably in the same story. Part of it is a response to the Altamont Free Concert and part of it is a more general critique of policing, and they don't really dovetail well. Overall, this is one of those issues where there are a lot of bits to really like, but as a whole the book is far less than the sum of its parts. With maybe a couple of exceptions there's nothing you can say shouldn't be here but they really just don't go together very well.

Found at a local store today, $5 for the pair:

These were new at the local store this week. It makes me very, very happy to know that Ramona Fradon was still being hired right up to the last minute:

If I recall correctly... and I may be thinking of a different book... there were three printings of Superman #1, but only two distinct variants. One has an ad for Action Comics that says "on sale soon", or possibly a specific date. The other variant says "Now on sale". So the 1st print was obviously the first version, and the 3rd print the last, but nobody knows which version was in the 2nd printing. Hopefully somebody else can elaborate, or correct me if I'm wrong.

And a little more Williamson before my daily posts here end for lack of material.

I actually asked @CGC Mike to remove the name from the censor filter a while ago, because of all the appropriate uses available. He did. Within about three days, it was back on the list. I'm not sure if he was the one who switched it back or not, but I assume it's just something that is too open to abuse by people.

This is still my favorite HPL cover, for better or worse. What could be more awesome than mythos monsters who are also librarians?

My Ace D-series folder is up to 362 covers, but there's 123 doubles, so 239 books total. Only 364 to go!

And today I add to the first great love of my paperback collection: Ace SF!

Yes, I was the one you grabbed your avatar from when I first posted that. I was actually planning to sell the book during the fund raiser sale for you, hyping it as being the very copy your avatar came from. But I couldn't find the box it was in, I finally located it last week. I actually have two copies now, I had gone as far as getting a replacement assuming I was going to sell "your" copy.

And we reach the end of the run. It's surprising to me the character hasn't done better in US comics, this is really the only successful run and even then it's not that impressive considering how well known the character is:

Actually, Garcia-Lopez! That's the one piece in my convention sketchbook I've had multiple people offer me cash if I'll remove the page and sell it to them.

Try here: