OtherEric

Oh, I did mention a couple pick-ups, right? Missing the back cover, sadly. But the last issue I needed from the later part of the run, starting from the first Purple Invasion issue. So issues 26-48 complete, and 35 of 48 overall. In addition to one of each major hero title, I want all of one title and Op #5 is the one I'm going for. Still a ways to go, but at least I'm at the point where I know I'll pull it off eventually.

A couple pick-ups today: Been wanting an issue of Phantom Detective for a while, trying to get one example of each of the longer-running hero titles. By longer running, I mean at least 10-15 issues, the ambiguity there being because Green Lama was 14 issues, I believe, and seems to be a pain to find. So if I get one, I'll go with the lower number but until then I'll stick with the higher. I think the titles that count are these: Shadow (325 issues) Doc Savage (181 issues) Phantom Detective (170 issues) The Spider (118 issues, I still need an issue) G-8 and his Battle Aces (110 issues, I still need an issue) The Black Bat (62 issues of Black Book Detective) Operator #5 (48 issues) Secret Agent X (41 issues, I still need an issue) The Whisperer (26 issues, I think. Not positive on the length of the 2nd run) The Avenger (24 issues) Captain Future (20 issues including 3 novel-length stories in Startling) Green Lama (14 issues of Double Detective, I still need an issue) Am I missing any other hero pulps of significant length? I'm not counting Nick Carter as a hero pulp as such, and I'm not talking about characters who had extensive but sporadic pulp appearances like Tarzan and Conan. And I'm not counting appearances in short stories in the pulps after their title died, like the Avenger or Whisperer or the Captain Future shorts as opposed to the novel-length stories.

Wow! Serious gratz on that one, it seems to be the hardest of the four Lovecraft Astoundings to locate. (Goodness knows I've never seen an even remotely affordable copy.)

Apparently the book was based on an earlier series of stories done for the pulps under a pseudonym, but completely redone. I've only got the one:

Might as well throw this one up here for fun: Unlike most BLB's I've seen, this one is also all comics, no text pages.

Looks like it's #27. It does not seem to be a particularly valuable issue, to put it mildly. Certainly I couldn't resist snagging a copy when I saw the cost.

It's great your kid will be growing up with Bugs. He is a great philosopher and role model for young people. Here are a couple early appearances: Bugs Bunny All Pictures Comics - A Tall Comic Book. All B+W comics. Supposedly reprints Bugs first appearance from LT 1. Easy to find cheap, for now! Famous Gang Book of Comics - Not first appearances but pretty tough to find early giveaway with an all star cover Some of those pages are definitely from Looney Tunes #5 and #6: I've scanned as much as I feel like tonight, can pull a comparison page from the #6 tomorrow if anybody wants it.

You've got one too? Well, I've got two, too! So here's my 2nd copy for giggles: And a few more wartime covers for fun:

Let me clarify part of that one for people: A nice issue, with two stories by Walt Kelly.

It very well could be, I don't remember seeing Pepe in the Bugs Giants or the Looney Tunes title itself off the top of my head. But then again, on an awful lot of those books the only story I've read is the Mary Jane & Sniffles, with the rest of the book getting a quick flip-through at best. But comics.org is rather spotty on indexing of the Warner Bros. books still, last I checked.

And here's Four Color #402; Mary Jane actually never appeared in the cartoons but it's her team-up with Sniffles in the comics that Sniffles is probably best remembered for, with his cartoons being a bit of an afterthought. That's the best copy I've found in years of looking, though. I let a VG go when it went over 50 on the bay; and at this point I'm kicking myself since I haven't seen one in any shape in forever. But 4x guide for a low grade copy seemed high back then.

Most of the 1st appearances are in Looney Tunes/ Merry Melodies #1, which is probably not an optimal choice for the wall of a child's room. Bugs Bunny Vacation Funnies 8 has the 1st appearance of the Road Runner in comics, but he's not on the cover.

The Unknown Worlds was a bedsheet as well. They both went bedsheet for 1942 and part of 1943, then went briefly back to pulp size for about half a year before Astounding went to digest size and Unknown went away. Supposedly it was a choice between taking Astounding bi-monthly or getting rid of Unknown due to wartime paper rationing. I think there were 16 bedsheet issues, Jan 42- April 43. But I'm not 100% sure.

Really like that cover - who is the artist? Rogers. I think Hubert Rogers, to be more exact, but the book itself only credits "Rogers".

Got this one today. You really can't like the later issues of Unknown/ Unknown Fantasy Fiction/ Unknown Worlds for their covers. But the contents... that's another story. Not 100% sure why Heinlein and/ or Campbell had this one go out under the otherwise unused "John Riverside" alias. I suspect it's because over in Astounding, Campbell had already reported that both Heinlein and "Anson MacDonald" had turned in their last stories before heading off to aid the war effort. This was, I believe, Heinlein's last story until after the war. What the heck, let's throw this one I got about a month ago up as well: A bit more interesting cover. I love the bedsheet pulps, even if the Unknowns could have used better cover art.

Awesome shot! I've got one, far right side, 5th row down: I wonder how many of the books there we could pull together... Note that some titles repeat, I see 2 different issues of the Shadow (which makes some sense since it was 2x a month.)

The covers make them a bit higher demand, and to be honest there's relatively few writers I'm trying to track down in them. So I don't have any, and they're not really on my radar other than "I wouldn't mind getting one or two just to have a sample of them in the collection." If I were to ever get one, I would post it here, just like I posted the Weird Tales I got a few days ago. Any shame I might feel over the subject matter disappears completely when the book came out decades before I was born; it's a collector's item at this point.

Just for you, since you asked nice:

And, fresh out of the mail today, my second pulp with Lovecraft in it: Front cover is loose, back cover is missing, but the book itself is otherwise nice page quality and structure. And the list of items where I wanted at least a sample in my collection it ticks off is pretty impressive: a) I now have a Brundage cover in my collection. b) I now have a Robert E. Howard story in my collection. c) I now have a H. P. Lovecraft story in Weird Tales in my collection. Then, as just plain bonuses, it's also got a 2nd story by Lovecraft, ghost-written for Hazel Heald, and a Hyperborea story by Clark Ashton Smith, before we even get out of the Mythos. I might wish for the Howard story to have been one of his famous characters rather than a random little story, but otherwise it's hard to imagine a better representative issue of the 30's Weird Tales to have in my collection.

As others have said, this is more "what are my favorites currently in the bucket", but here's some of my favorites: (I know it's a hair on the wrong side of the GA line, but I can't not include it .) (Others have mixed in a few pulps, so I will too)

Of course, now that I have the June issue I need to start looking for a February... Did I mention this is my first pulp with a Lovecraft story at all?

Normally, I wouldn't bother posting this, since sacentaur just showed a copy that's been quoted and reshown several times the past couple weeks. But this isn't just another pulp. This... this is a grail book. And unlike a lot of my pulps, this one is in extremely nice shape: The stress lines along the spine are far less obtrusive on the actual book in hand. A couple of the photos from the seller, to show the condition of the spine and the page quality: Grail acquired. What more need I say?

As far as I'm concerned, there are two main reasons to collect Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies: The early Walt Kelly stories, and Mary Jane & Sniffles. The Kelly material is minor in his body of work, but still interesting and charming. Mary Jane & Sniffles is the one consistently excellent feature in LT&MM, with amazingly fun stories; Roger Armstrong's art was good on the early issues and Al Hubbard was even better when he took over. Only about 50 issues to go including the Dell Giants to complete my set; although I don't know if I'll ever get issues 1-4. (And my Four Color 402 is in desperate need of an upgrade, both of the MJ & S issues of Four Color are extremely hard to find.)

March, April, and May/June/July 1924 Weird Tales ghostwriting for Houdini. Ooh, good catch on the May/June/July 1924 issue. Did Lovecraft do the ghostwriting for Houdini on the March and April issues, though? I don't recall ever seeing that attributed to him... which doesn't mean it wasn't his work. And Redfury's sig line shows why Lovecraft only got the cover once on Weird Tales, despite being one of their superstars... his stories just don't lend themselves to images of scantily clad females.

A quick question for the pulp experts out there: What pulps have covers illustrating Lovecraft stories? Is it just the Feb and June Astoundings, or are there others? As far as I know, for some reason he never got the cover art on Weird Tales.