OtherEric

Not much to actually debate, at least from my end. Your arguments as to the relative significance of the books aren't anything I disagree with, they are both classic EC covers for very, very different reasons. What I would say is, as books in that top tier of classic EC covers, it is completely fair to compare them, and have personal preferences, and discuss the relative merits. But the position that they're not really comparable is valid. Which leads me to think, which a-list classic EC covers do I have, and which ones would others add? Everybody has their own preferences. I don't think too many people would argue with these; I debated slightly on including the Haunt 14 since Overstreet has it tagged as a classic cover, but I don't think it's quite as iconic as the half dozen I'm posting:

This one always reminds me of the Haunted Mansion...

CSS has a striking design that's clearer when you see a small image of the cover, or from a distance. It also gets a massive historical bonus. But, as great as Johnny Craig is- and make no mistake, he's great- Wood is one of the 4 or 5 best artists ever to work on comics. I sometimes say the greatest comic book artist of all time was Wally Wood on a good day... the catch being, he had a lot of bad days, particularly later in his career. Shock 6 was one of the very good days.

Was looking at sold books on eBay, that Shock Suspenstories 6 1.8 I had been considering sold at the $525 asking price. (After shipping and tax, it would have run me $600, which is why I said that was the price.) And it looks like the .5 actually sold for very close to the $500 asking price as well. That book is going ballistic right now.

Another one today. Has an unreprinted Harlan Ellison story. I think I'm down to only missing one of his uncollected stories from Science Fiction magazines; I wouldn't even know where to start with his non-SF stuff.

Ziff-Davis to Ziff-Davis

In today. Burroughs and Woolrich is a nice 1-2 combo of writers in a pulp, under a nice Belarski cover:

In today:

In today:

For reference, this is the REAL poor person's WSF 29. It's an EC SF cover by Frazetta, what more do you want?

Today's mail call. Some people have this one down as the poor person's Weird SF 29, which I think is unfair... while the cover isn't as good, it's still pretty great; and unlike the WSF 29 this one has a couple of classic stories inside, Saved and The Million Year Picnic. It also has, to my delight, a fan letter from Archie Goodwin. For some reason it makes me very, very happy to know that Goodwin showed up in an EC book, even in that small way.

I love this one for the lineup of creators. As near as I can tell, it's the ONLY issue of Weird Tales to have a Brundage cover, a new Howard story, and a new Lovecraft story. Any other issue with all three of them, the Lovecraft story is a reprint from somewhere. Then on top of that you've got Williamson, Hamilton, Smith, and a second Lovecraft story, written with/for Hazel Heald. (Book is mine, the TOC is from a scan of the issue posted online.)

Space Ace to Space Ace

Will do, and I apologize. For what it's worth, they weren't guaranteeing a rare Vampirella cover, just a rare something they published; and out of the 20 books there was only one other Vampi issue. But given that I was hoping for a Vampirella when I dropped the $10, I should have figured others here might have been interested as well. My bad.

By tagging the two of them like that, they'll be notified they were mentioned in the thread, and should see your post.

I very much doubt it's a key in any normal sense of the word, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's one of those unusually scarce books that pop up (or, more correctly fail to pop up) from time to time. A look at the digital comic museum shows that it was the last issue of the title to be scanned complete, and a coverless copy was the next to last issue of the title that was scanned. So despite the low guide value it seems to be fairly hard to track down.

I may need to track down one of these for myself... it's cover dated the month I was born, and that's a great Todd cover. (I was guessing Bode until I looked it up, honestly.)

I understand why people skip the Spectacular Spider-Man magazine, given that it was a) a magazine, and b) only ran two issues. But if you disallow that and Marvel Team-Up, there's still Spidey Super Stories well before Peter Parker. OK, if you push I get why people ignore Spidey Super Stories as well. But I love the series, it's completely off the rails insane.

I caught it several years ago when it seemed to be largely in remission on a global scale. Got a lot of books that would be much harder to replace now...

I would consider it a minor key, probably? Most first issues of long running titles qualify to some degree or other. But lacking a notable first appearance (other than possibly the Misty Knight cameo), it's not considered a major key that I can tell.

20 to 19

Not one but TWO people wrote on my copy... I think, when I bought this back around '90, it was a personal record for how much I had ever spent on a single comic. $15, if I recall correctly.

The symbol is the famous "We're not at war with Germany yet so we're suggesting but not actually showing a swastika" that you see variants of several places around 1938 to 1942. Timely was actually unusual in NOT using it on Cap #1

Covid specials for the win, I guess? Can't be happy about the circumstances, can be very happy with the pickup on its own terms. I did check, they're sold out on the mystery boxes or I would have grabbed another one.

Already posted this in the Vampirella thread, but I figure it fits here as well: