OtherEric

I wish I could react to a post twice; a "Like" for showing us the inside of the TFTC book and a "Sad" for the detached cover Panic.

In today. In fact, a brand new book released today. But I figure it’s worth occasionally mentioning I love Hard Case Crime’s retro sensibility, and I think it’s fun that Stephen King also likes it, enough that he’s done three paperback originals with them:

In today:

The signature in the corner looks like it could be E McK K. Much nicer than my copy!

It's generally regarded as the worst Hugo Award winner for Best Novel ever, in my experience. I haven't read it, but probably should given its reputation. I've got at least the first two parts in Astounding for sure.

Welcome to the forums! As has been said, you would probably have better luck in the copper forum with that particular book. With that said, if you're certain it's not sun damage my guess is different points in the print run, where one had all fresh ink and the other where one of the colors was starting to run out. Variations like that are common and not normally considered variants, with a few exceptions like the 70's Sandman #1.

@Surfing Alien, You have far better arguments than I have; as I said I was wildly speculating... although I think my first couple of steps weren't totally out there. @Pat Calhoun, The ISFDB has that cover as 1958, not what I would call "early 50's". But now that I know about them I would love to get those Galaxy Novels with the Wood covers. Here's a Wood cover for Galaxy magazine from the same period, I know I've shown it before but no clue what thread I included it in:

I've got this crazy theory that Wally Wood might have had a hand in a couple of the Avon SF covers around then. This mostly stems from the Earth Man on Venus cover; he drew the comic book version that came out around this time for the same publisher. And the "Lost Scientist" on the back cover looks a LOT like Wood's work to me. If he did that, he may have done at least some work on the front cover, and if he was involved on Avon 285 he could have been involved on Avon 281 as well. At this point I'm not just out on a limb, I'm suspended in mid-air with the Bugs Bunny calling my attention to gravity... but I can't shake the impression.

I've thought that I should try to track down a letter of his; at least. He was such a prolific correspondent that I imagine it wouldn't be completely impossible to locate something.

At least I’ve finally figured out why I kept going “am I sure I don’t have #8 somewhere? The cover looks awfully familiar...” when I was looking for it to finish the run:

Over in the Pulps between boards thread, I posted pictures of The Call of Cthulhu's SECOND publication, from 1929. It will do fairly nicely until I find the Feb 28 Weird Tales

Finished the run today:

Finishing the run:

In today. The second ever publication of "The Call of Cthulhu", and the last one I'm aware of during Lovecraft's lifetime. It's also one of the earliest books to collect a Lovecraft story, one of the very few published during his lifetime.

I resemble that remark!

I personally believe the February 1928 is slightly scarcer than the other issues around it in absolute numbers... The cover always looks like somebody doing a parody of "Weird Tales" rather than the actual thing, which I suspect dropped the number of people picking it up on impulse rather than regularly collecting the title back when it was released. But I'm pretty sure it's not that much scarcer, and the major cause of the apparent rarity is that nobody wants to let the book go. I don't have a copy.

Probably the best way to split the difference in this case.

Paging @Get Marwood & I

I can help with a couple... but only a couple.

You said what I was thinking better than I could have!

Your noble sacrifice for the enlightenment of us all is greatly appreciated!

Clearly somebody eventually bought it and read the heck out of it looking at the condition, though! "Fight the Enemy" has always been a bit of an eye-rolling title... what else are you going to do with the Enemy in a war comic?

Captured by Chaos. (My copy is in storage, so had to grab a scan from the GCD)

And a bit of research now that I'm home suggests that it's not; "Not at Night" (1928) is, as well as one or two UK volumes. It remains a very early collection to feature Lovecraft, and the earliest reprinting of "The Call of Cthulhu".

A quick question for the experts here: is Beware After Dark (1929) the first time a Lovecraft story was collected and/or the first time Lovecraft appeared in hardcover?