OtherEric

@bellrules, in addition to the price variants around this time, are any issues known to have been printed without a price at all other than the Buck Rogers #9? And does anybody know if copies of the BR #9 exist with a price?

5 more...

Picked up today with a gift card to a local book store:

One of the reasons I love it is the sense of "Onward to the unknown!" it has, with the main figure pointing out into space; there's another ship in the image but it doesn't look like it's attacking to me. The last EC comic having that sense of pointing toward further wonders, even if EC can't be the one showing them to us any more, has a beautifully elegiac feel to it that renders an already stunning cover even more powerful. It's a desperately underrated cover in my opinion; it's considered a classic but I think its placement among the classic EC covers is low.

Five more for today. I do like that the EC comics, if they had to go out, went out with such a classic cover. And I don't think I've actually shown off my entire MAD run here before, when I finished the set I posted it over in the Mad Magazine thread.

Agreed on Valor; the stories are somewhat "meh" but it looks amazing. It's right in the middle of my ranking of the New Direction books.

Actually got this earlier this month, but today is a good day to post it. And this gives me all 3 of the Funtastic World treasuries:

A few more for today, coincidentally all by Jack Davis. Continuing the early discussion, the Impact 3 is a great example of the problems the New Direction had: It's a strong cover gag in its own way, but for the follow-up title to Shock Supsenstories? Just... nope.

Merry Christmas!

Yes, at a show in Seattle in the early 90's. When I gave him the book to sign he started flipping through it, very slowly. After a minute or so I asked him if there was something wrong and he responded "I just haven't seen this story in decades, my boy." I also got my beat up Amazing Spider-Man #96 signed at the same show; 15+ years later I got Stan to sign that one as well. I've got a few other books signed by him, not a lot.

Agreed with most of your suggestions here. Unknown Worlds of SF doesn't get nearly the love it should. There are actually trade paperback reprints of all of Vampire Tales, but as far as I know they're at regular comic size, not the magazine size. All three volumes are available on Amazon as of right now, although they only had one copy of the third one left when I looked. If you're looking at Conan, in addition to the first 60 issues of Savage Sword there were the first 5 issues of Savage Tales, and two Conan issues of Marvel Super Special. Roy Thomas also returned for the end of the magazine's run, writing most or all of Savage Sword 190-235, with John Buscema back as the semi-regular artist for much of the run. Conan the Savage was the short-lived replacement title; lots of Roy Thomas again and it's quite tricky to find several of the issues.

I actually think Aces High and Piracy live up to the EC legacy quite well despite the code. And I will defend Psychoanalysis as being excellent on its own terms, for that matter... it's just that its own terms were an 80's indy book three decades too early. With all that said, I think Impact was the New Direct book most obviously damaged by the CCA. Once you know it was supposed to be there, you can't unsee the removed gun on the cover of #2 and it just gets worse from there.

I needed the kick in the pants to finish redownloading my covers from earlier in the thread, I had lost those scans in a computer crash and didn't feel like rescanning all of them. Here's a few more Christmas Themed covers, I'll repost the Christmas Giants tomorrow or on the day itself:

Today's 5 covers. I think the Frontline Combats were all of $5 each about 5 years ago; the Haunt of Fear is such a good issue given that I've only got one, and Master Race is one of the best comic stories ever, not just EC. Pity the other 19 stories in Impact put together aren't even half as good as that one is...

If the price is right, definitely. The 184 with the Gil Kane art on Animal Man is a favorite.

I think the hardest of the Marvel Mags is the Pussycat 1-shot, by a mile. Savage Tales #1 and Marvel Preview #7 are definitely up there right now, as well. The market is volatile at the moment, with quite a few of the magazines having first appearances that are commanding new highs these days.

I see what you did there... I prefer Strange Adventures to Tales of the Unexpected, but I've got to admit the early issues were great at creating "What's going on? I need to read this!" covers...

My scanner seems to have died shortly after the move. So just a phone photo of the two from the LCS today:

One of the only pulps I've ever bought primarily for the cover. An absolute classic.

I know of one store where I've pulled crazy stuff out of their dollar bins; because until a couple years ago if it wasn't at least a $20 book they just didn't care. Even now all their floor stuff is $10 or less that I've seen. I once pulled about 30 10cent DC's from their box and regret I didn't have more spare cash because I only got about half of them. Got this one from their dollar bin, for example. This was the weekend they sold the 9.0 Action #1, I like to claim I got the second best book they sold that weekend:

And a few more of my covers in order, celebrating page 200 of the EC thread!