OtherEric

That's not poorly restored. That's awesomely restored! Here's my personal favorite from my collection. They sewed the spine back together. Not so much worst as interesting, honestly:

It is not, sadly. If you want to see the story it's here: https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/preview/index.php?did=8102&page=8

Just arrived today; not nearly as nice as @Sqeggs copy so no need to show mine. I've got to say, the Baker story in this issue inspires a very strong reaction from me. Specifically, I want to travel back in time and slap Vince Colletta for the hack job he did inking the story.

University of Washington

I've actually seen more bound pulp volumes than comics, I know I saw a lot in a college library back around 1990. I can't even remember the titles, though. Here's one book I have that was clearly rescued from a bound volume. Happy to have it, this is NOT an easy issue to find even by the standards of Venus:

Certainly the hardest new direction title to find in my experience. Still looking for the first two issues.

1948 to 1951.

It's getting harder for me to track down Kelly books I still need. Not impossible, but harder. Here's one I got earlier this year. The Bell Bakery mini-issues of Peter Wheat are just insanely rare. Not in Gerber but if they were I suspect the would all be 9's if not 10's. Happy to have this one, even with the damaged corner... the art is all intact.

Very nice. And another to add to my list of affordable Baker books I can still look for. (Or, more accurately, an affordable Baker book I looked for and ordered quickly.)

I think, at least with my piece, it was one he did ahead of time and brought to the show to sell. So he possibly had several similar pieces he had done for that, not exactly "commissions" in the sense they were done before a buyer approached.

I will always be incredibly grateful to Fred for giving this to me. I wasn't able to make the show; Fred bought this one but then later went back for a larger piece. He wanted to make sure this one went to somebody who would properly appreciate it. It certainly did!

I think it's deeply cool that you've managed to track down some of the copies of books your Dad owned. My Dad's comics were thrown away by his parents when he went to college.

"Master Race", in Impact 1. Of course, there is not actually any consensus best EC story... but I do think it probably gets mentioned more often than any other single EC story as their best.

Almost a dozen issues of Mad in today. The two comic book issues are over in the EC thread in Gold. Not going to post all the magazine covers, but here's a couple. They're all mid to late 80's, other than those two comics; and they all have some of Harvey Kurtzman's late work on the title. The 256 features his first work on the book since the 50s, and the cover on the 259 is obviously by Kurtzman and Will Elder. The 80's work by Kurtzman on Mad always seems a little odd to me; but still fun. I get the vague impression that Kurtzman and Gaines were very much interested in showing they had ended their feud, but after working together again a bit they both figured out they didn't necessarily actually share much interest in working together anymore. Still, it makes me very happy that there is that small body of work by Kurtzman for Mad in the 80's.

And, to follow up on last week's first appearance of Canteen Kate, the last appearance of Canteen Kate. Since the cover isn't Baker, I'm including the 1-page Baker story as well. There's a longer CK story in the issue too.

Also, a Valor and an Impact. This gives me the full run on Impact. An odd title, 19 mostly forgotten stories and 1 story that might be the closest thing there is to a consensus best story EC ever did:

I'll see your Two-Fisted Tales and Raze you two Mads. Fresh in today:

On the plus side, fish police was a really good series that unfairly gets lumped with the garbage of the b&w glut

Today's book. This one is the last in a lot of categories, as near as I can tell. It's the last St. John cover for Weird Tales. I think it's the last Weird Tales to have a Robert E. Howard cover story. It has the last story Lovecraft finished during his lifetime, although not the last published. It's the last issue of Weird Tales to have new stories by both Lovecraft and Howard. And, on a personal note, it's the last Weird Tales from 1933-up I needed with the first publication of a Lovecraft story. This one just does not seem to turn up that often, even by the standards of 1930's Weird Tales:

Astounding to Astounding

Not modern age, but still a dollar box find today. I consider the dollar well spent:

So, a bit later than would normally go here, but got this one today: It's from the 70's, but it reprints the entirety of the Baker run on Lassie; all 94 pages. I think this actually qualifies as the first Baker collected edition; although it has stories by other creators as well.

Fox to Fox

A couple I've had for several years now. GCD isn't positive on the Baker credit on the All Top cover.

A couple more in today. I'll take what I can get with Baker; it won't be very long before "not much left to find in my price range" becomes "nothing left to find".