OtherEric

Astounding, at least, started trimming in February 1936. I don't have any other books from them in the relevant window to know when they started being factory trimmed; so I apologize if I was incorrect above... I assumed most of the S&S books went to trimmed edges about the same time. Cover from my copy; interior page scan located online:

A couple today. I had never seen the zombie cover before; and a Williamson story is always neat:

Some pulps were trimmed by the publishers; most bedsheets and digests were trimmed, as were Street & Smith publications starting around 1936. Not sure who trimmed pulps after the fact, other than the people who owned the book. As to why, as far as I know it was because they looked neater and it helped prevent further damage along the edges. I'm sure somebody who is more expert in the subject can elaborate.

Just pulling off such a long, epic, pulp fiction tale. Steranko called it "the War and Peace of the pulps" and that says it well, I think.

It depends a lot on who was writing, I think. Frederick C. Davis wrote the first 20 issues, Emile C. Tepperman wrote 21-39, and Wayne Rogers wrote the last 9. I would put the Davis issues as slightly better than the average hero pulps taken individually, but if you read more than a couple they get repetitive even more quickly than hero pulps usually do. The Tepperman issues are hard to judge for me, taken individually they're not that impressive but taken as a whole the Purple Invasion is just an insane achievement. The Rogers issues are probably the best on their own terms, in part because of just how different they are: the US does NOT instantly reset to normal after the Purple Invasion is repulsed, so you're dealing with a weird, post-war environment where they're trying to rebuild the country. Having an alternate history to work with lets the series go interesting places. Calling the character James Bond-like is a bit of an understatement. The very first scene he's in in the first issue, he introduces himself as "Christopher. James Christopher." Which is almost enough to make you wince, until you realize it was published nineteen years before the first James Bond book. I sometimes wonder if Ian Fleming ever saw the series, there were definitely UK reprints in the 30's.

And my freshly unboxed arrival today. Two classic Stanley G. Weinbaum stories in this one, in addition to The Red Peri it has The Adaptive Ultimate under a pseudonym:

That one's going on my want list...

In the 90's I got a bag of Top Comics from Toys R Us. Was very surprised to find 60's books in a Toys R Us 25 years later. Still have the books somewhere, wish I had bought more and kept them in the packaging!

Venus to Venus

Kirby at Marvel to Kirby at DC

Volume 12. The Yellow Vulture saga, which ended on a cliffhanger and an atomic bomb story...

Volume 11. As far as I can tell The Dawn that Shook the World is a Library of Congress copy; one of these years I'll write and ask them if they need it back.

Volume 10. The Purple Invasion finally wraps up with The Siege that Brought the Black Death. I love the whole arc, although I think it's one of those creative works that manages to be great without necessarily actually being good in a lot of ways. (Pretty sure I stole that description from Roy Thomas talking about the first 30 or so JSA stories; I find it a very useful description sometimes.)

Volume 9.

Volume 8. I think Siege of the Thousand Patriots was the last one I needed to complete the Purple Invasion run.

Volume 7. Here's where the Purple Invasion begins, and the holes in my collection end.

Volumes 5 and 6. It figures, The Invasion of the Crimson Death Cult is actually in really nice shape... and printed off register.

Volumes 3 and 4. I'll defend the Legion of Starvation issue by saying it's one of the first issues of the title I got, and probably one of my first 20 or so pulps.

Volume 2. I do have the first 7 issues; all 10 issues I'm missing are then bunched together over the next 17 issues

And enough people liked my suggestion of posting what I had of Operator #5 that I'll go ahead and do that. Pulling the books out to scan, I can tell I got a lot of them in my early days of looking for pulps. Some of them I wouldn't find acceptable now, even by my low standards. Then again, I probably averaged $25 each for the books, which is not very much for this run. I've got quite a few decent copies mixed in, as well; starting with the #1. It's certainly not high grade, but I think it presents decently well despite the creases, and the page quality is nice.

Just in general, the early Creepy and Eerie are a high point. A lot of people consider them to have gone downhill very, very fast when Archie Goodwin left as the primary writer. They improved again, but for Creepy the first 17 issues are the sweet spot. Not sure where the cut off on Eerie was.

Underwater to on ice.

While my copies aren't always in great shape, I should scan and share my Op5 collection here sometime soon. I'm at 38 of 48 issues, I think...

The Ingels covers, I think, tend to be dark and messy and complicated. They absolutely reward a closer look, and are probably my favorites of the horror covers in general. But they don't have the instant jaw dropping impact the Craig covers do. The layouts on the Craig covers are consistently amazing, even if I think he was in the lower tier of the EC artists in general. Admittedly, lower tier EC regular is still A-list in any larger sense; the sheer quality of the EC crew remains just mind boggling. I think Ingels also took a surprisingly long time to allow for the cameos of the hosts on his covers. I love the Haunt 17 cover, but it gets marked down for having the foreground zombie wearing a monocle with the Vault Keeper's picture on it. Something similar happens on the 18.