OtherEric

I'm old enough to remember when this was considered one of the biggest EC keys, since it has Frazetta's only solo story for EC. Great pickup!

I think I have that issue somewhere, it may have gotten dumped somewhere along the way. If I recall, there was a giveaway around Superman's 50th where you could send away for both that issue and a reprint of Action #1 (which wound up just being the Superman story, with a paper cover.) I never saw a display like that that I recall.

Not quite the jackpot the #1 a few weeks ago was... but still a pretty nice dollar bin find today. Now I'm convinced the #2 and #4 are SOMEWHERE in that store...

Which one? Most of the reprint pulps I've seen are pretty self evident, but I don't have that many.

Yeah, the faded Weird Tales spines just look WRONG next to the nice ones. But there are some issues that I just couldn't afford otherwise.

All I've got today are a couple of vintage issues in my traditional low grade reading copy condition. But both have Kubert stories; I think I now have all of his work for EC:

Weird Fantasy 20 to Weird Science 20

So, we've apparently decided this thread is taking a brief break from being "this week in your magazine collection" to be "Marvel Preview #7 club". Works by me!

I think a lot of the reason is that, for most of their history, pulp collectors were buying the books to read. There are literally thousands of stories by major writers that STILL have never been collected and are only available in the original magazines. And page quality on a pulp is, in my experience, more likely to be brittle than a comic, and easier to damage with the square binding. I can safely read all but the brittlest comic at least once. Not so with some of the worst pulps. Spines, it's more of a case that they're often the first thing to get damaged on a pulp, so are the hardest thing to find in nice shape. Also, a lot were shelved like books, so the covers are fine but the spines caught the sun, damaging them more severely.

I've been telling myself that for years. I finally listened!

And today's books from my LCS. I'm well past the half-way point on the box now. This run has parts 2-5 (of 5) or Burroughs' Moon Maid:

I think this makes three threads I've posted this book in... but it's one of those pickups where you want to just share with everybody you've finally got a copy:

Found in a dollar bin today.

OK, this is a comic, not a magazine. But it's fresh in and seems appropriate to share here anyway:

And here's the major one. I think I mentioned that I was closing in on 100 new trend & new direction EC's total recently, and I wanted to get a big book to mark the occasion even if it wasn't going to be my actual 100th EC. (Today's books are 103 and 104 in some order, in fact.) I had a few candidates, Mad #5 was probably the other leading contender. I actually happily stumbled across the Mad #4 while looking, that was also a candidate until I found a copy for well under half of what I expected to pay. This is obviously a fairly low grade copy; but it's a solid reader, the page quality is nice and supple, and the cover image itself presents well despite a few flaws. I actually think it looks better in hand than the scan, but not by that much. A good use of the extra money I got from my mandatory overtime over the labor day weekend, I think!

A couple books in tonight. Here's the relatively minor one, although I don't really consider any of the SF books "minor". One of my favorite Feldstein covers, a quiet but stunning image. Great art inside as well, with a genuinely haunting story drawn by Williamson showing that, even in the late days of EC, they were still turning out masterpieces... even if they weren't quite as frequent as earlier.

PKD double novel book to PKD double size book

Nice! On my annual KAYO trip a few months ago, I got a couple Weird Tales, 7 or 8 assorted undergrounds, and the Ace Double Junkie/ Narcotic Agent. I can't even claim that one was a grail... it was just listed as "I'll never, ever see a copy, much less afford one." Kayo is awesome.

I had my eye on that Haunt, but it was gone once I got my paycheck. Glad it went to somebody here!

Planet Comics #10 to Planet Stories v1 n10

I really do understand the use of censorbots on a board like this, even if I don't like them. They really should whitelist a particular term, if for no other reason than we have PKD, Richard Tracy, and D. Giordano, as the first three that come to mind, to legitimately discuss here.

I think a few years ago pulps were really at a low point. For which I am grateful, I've got some pulps I NEVER expected to get my hands on. Which even back in the 80's were going for more than what I paid for, even adjusted for inflation. They're definitely inching back up again, but lots of bargains still to be had.

Actually, I'm in the Seattle area. I make my annual pilgrimage to KAYO when I visit my sister in SF every year. The store around here that has a selection of pulps is Page Turner Books, in Kent, WA. Be warned, I've gotten stuff from them faster than they restock the past several years. But they're the one store around here I know of that I can pretty much guarantee has at least some pulps at any given time. Is Moe's worth checking out next year when I'm down in the Bay area? Green Apple in SF normally has at least a few pulps when I'm there.

If it makes you feel better, the short box of Argosy I've been working my way through is more pulps than I've seen in any of my LCS in the last 20 years put together. This is very much the exception. There's one bookstore in the area that aggressively looks for and stocks pulps when they can find them; even there they only get in new batches a few times a year.

Fair enough. I would start with Two-Fisted, myself. But I've read a reprint of the Shock, while the Two-Fisted is one of the only four Kurtzman-edited EC's I haven't read in either original or reprint.