OtherEric

Found in the wild today.

What next issue?

While I certainly don't speak for everyone, my (admittedly limited) interest in romance books is all down to the art, not the stories. There were some insanely good artists working on some of the romance books, and they are beautiful to see. The fact that a lot of (If not most) collectors ignored the books for decades means high grade, and in many cases low grade, copies can be very hard to find, sparking interest here.

And today's book: Amazing Stories for April-May 1953. This is the first digest size issue; and it is in the classic Amazing Stories tradition of announcing a new direction and getting some big names for the first issue or so before going back to the cheap. I'm pretty sure this was Heinlein's only contribution to Amazing, for example.

It hasn’t been mentioned as much recently, so maybe others are as fed up with it as I am. But if I never see a reference to Suspense #3 again I won’t complain. Not only is it a pointless book other than the cover, it’s not even the best cover on the series. If somebody offered me any issue I would take the 8 in a heartbeat

Today's arrival: This one has "The God In The Bowl", another of the Conan stories completed by Howard but not published until well after his death. Unfortunately, this one is somewhat infamous for being heavily rewritten by de Camp. Still, a neat addition to the collection; and if nothing else the cover is great. I should think about tracking down the rest of the run of Space Science Fiction... it has at least a few other good stories, and I've already got 3 of the 8 issues.

And, the big find of the day. As I mentioned in the EC thread a few days ago, my favorite Bradbury story, and in fact my favorite EC story of all time, is "There Will Come Soft Rains", from the Martian Chronicles. Here's the original publication of the story in Collier's. I first read the story sometime in the 1980's, and it, more than any other story I can recall, has haunted me for decades. Not scary, really; haunting is the right word. Decidedly a big addition to my collection, at least on my personal scale:

Two very different books in today. First, a pulp digest that's a bit later than I would normally post, but is worthy of note because it has the first publication anywhere of a Conan story that was actually completed by Howard rather than somebody else, even if it was presumably rather heavily edited. It will happily do as a placeholder until I finally get a 30's issue of Weird Tales with a Conan story, though.

Timely heroine in red to Timely heroine in red

From Dell to Dell and down the mountainside...

Spike Wilson. Had a long run relative to a lot of the characters here, but most collectors still seem to have never heard of Sugar & Spike.

Not sure what he charged at SDCC, at ECCC my B&W sketch was $40 earlier this year.

Posted this before, but just so people can compare:

Found in a dollar bin today. I've had a copy since shortly after it came out, but some books you just can't pass by:

Fiction House to Fiction House

Was talking to a friend about Ray Bradbury a few days ago; since it was on my mind I decided to pull this one out. My all-time favorite Bradbury story (the original, as well as the adaptation); my all time favorite EC story, and one of my top 5 or so all time favorite comic stories. I've had this book for around 25 years now; it was one of 3 EC's in my collection to survive a "I need to pay rent" sale. (Life got better, I'm back up to around 60 EC's.)

EC didn't do a lot of full page splashes, leave them to use one as the last page of a story. Weird Fantasy #17

DC Teen Humor to DC Teen Humor

Kurtzman to Kurtzman

Two books in one to four books in one

No clue what was wrong on the Sampler, presumably that copy was sent back and destroyed decades ago. Several of the issues, including the third had the name on the postcard and a date written on the 1st page in light pencil, but not the #1. And at least one of the issues had a name and address from somebody else stamped on the 1st page, so the set as a whole was not all from the same source originally. Several were clearly from the same place, though; the date on the issue #3 was one day after the postcard.

Found at a local store for a dollar today. As near as I can tell, even as a reprint it's the the last Baker Romance story to ever appear in a newsstand comic:

Found at a local store today. Would normally not post it here as too late, but I thought the marking over the logo was interesting, and others here would find it interesting as well. As near as I and the store owner can tell, it's an overprint, not a stamp:

A postcard, tucked inside the cover of the third issue, that I found interesting.