OtherEric

It’s a nice upgrade for me.

Vampi 12 thoughts: Cover: We get the debut of Sanjulian, who is one of the most famous Warren comic cover artists. A decent but not spectacular debut. Table of contents: Only four stories! Feary Tales: A nice little piece by Brunner, but it feels more like a Monster Gallery than a Feary Tales. Although it's been clear for a long time now that we care more about the distinction between the features as readers than Warren ever actually did. Death's Dark Angel: Jose Gonzalez makes his Warren debut here. Almost all of his work for Warren is on the Vampirella feature, other than a few stories in 1984/1994. I'm having trouble tracking down a lot of details on other books, I don't believe he had much other work in the US. But he's the definitive Vampirella artist at Warren, who will draw every Vampi story for over the next twenty issues, and dozens more stories, plus frontispieces, all the way up to the last issue. As to the story itself, it's not his finest work on the character. But that's the future skewing our perceptions, for an artist making their debut (in the US, at least) it's miles better than we would normally get, and the story by Goodwin is one of his best Vampi stories yet. Eye of Ozirios: Gardner Fox tells a pulpy tale that would have fit right into Weird Tales and Graham draws the heck out of it. A story that aims low and then clears the bar it sets for itself by a mile, which is always fun in fairly small doses. I want to call attention to the one silent page in the middle of Fox's purple prose... the sudden shift works extraordinary well. Quest: A very nonstandard format, taking a little bit from Sunday comics like Prince Valiant with the caption only format, mixing in some creative parallel story threads on each page, ending with a solid twist, and extraordinary art from Jones. This one would definitely make the "Best Warren Stories" shortlist for me. (Admittedly, a fairly long shortlist.) To Kill a God: We're nearing the end of Wally Wood's current return to Warren. This isn't his best story in the batch, but it's still a minor masterpiece from one of the greatest comic creators who ever lived. So, we've got the debut of two of the most important Warren creators, and two incredible stories from all-time comic book greats. The Amazonia tale is far and away the low point of the issue and there are plenty of issues where it would easily be the best story, and not just by default. A spectacular issue.

My collection may be small compared to many people on the boards, but it's not THAT tiny!

Mark Evanier has posted a brief memorial: https://www.newsfromme.com/2024/02/24/ramona-fradon-r-i-p/

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/comic-book-creator-ramona-fradon-has-died-aged-97/ One of the greats, who was doing amazing work right up to last year:

An excellent choice. Yet another reason to love Queen: They had the good taste and respect to hire Freas to recreate the artwork for the album cover, rather than getting somebody else to swipe it.

A rather large star stamp on this one:

Fun fact: In the famous book review where Theodore Sturgeon sets out his classic "90% of everything is crud" for the first time, this is the book he reviews- and puts firmly in the non-crud 10%.

I actually like it when we have different opinions, as long as it's not on EVERY story: It's a good reminder that what works for one person doesn't always work for another, and while it's possible to objectively judge something on pure technical standards there's always going to be a big part of a story that comes down to personal reactions. If we disagreed on everything, then it would be an argument. But on something like this it's good, because if we agreed on everything there wouldn't be a point to the club at all. Well said. One of my favorite observations when looking at stuff like this is that a lot of social progress takes the form of finding new ways to screw up. So stuff like this, which was undeniably a step forward when they did it, comes across uncomfortably now.

Always a good day when I set a fellow board member off on the hunt!

I love all of them, although I've only got a little over half the New Trend/ New Direction books:

It's actually by Freas, the credit in the issue is in error. There are at least a few writers who drew and vice versa, Bok and Damon Knight are two.

In today. I've been hoping to find a copy for under $100, when MCS posted this for under $10 I was just hoping desperately somebody wouldn't beat me to it. Just need the first 2 issues now:

I wish I could disagree with you on the war books; I think they're horribly underrated by collectors. At least some of us are reading them, but it's a bit of a niche. Crime Suspenstories, by contrast, has a lot of crazy expensive issues, and at least a few Shock Suspenstories are way up there as well. I'll grant that an "average" issue is probably cheaper than an "average" horror book, but there's a lot of non-average issues. Just the CSS 22 is brutal, and Shock 6 isn't cheap either.

Oh, shoot. I meant to try and answer the question when I got home last night, if nobody beat me to it, but I forgot. Sorry about that, didn't want you to think we were ignoring you in the EC thread. Are you still looking for a source for reprints of Wally Wood's early MAD stories?

In today. This is a fairly tricky one, given that it's the first standalone publication of the story. It first appeared as a serial in Liberty, then in a collection of three Cain stories called Three of a Kind. I could stand to upgrade this quite easily, but it will do until a better copy shows up.

There are at least a few non-hardback Arkham House books:

In today. 6 to go, with a couple on the way:

Two in today, both firsts:

At least we’re at a point where you can plan to pick up one each month. In the 80’s I considered myself lucky to find 2-3 PKD books in a year.

6.0-6.5. But it presents a bit above its grade, those color breaking creases and the corner out don't really detract as much as they could.

Very true... every time I roll my eyes at some problem, I think about what a small percentage of packages I actually have issues with and how impressive what they do is. Doesn't stop the eye rolling when something like this goes down, though.