OtherEric

What the heck, they're pulps but I don't see them earlier in the thread:

And, I just felt like scanning a few more semi-random pulps to share. Each of these 3 books has one of the stories that formed Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles:

Nice one! I really do need to track down at least one Phantom Detective at some point, just to say I've seen one. Given how long the series ran it seems to get lost next to most of the other Hero Pulp characters.

And a couple new ones: Notable for having one of the shortest Shadow "novels" in the entire run; a mere 47 pages compared to 74 for Never Marry Murder by "Peter Reed", a house name which in this case is being used by John D. MacDonald. I have no idea why the pseudonym, since he doesn't have another story in the issue. Obviously this one starts off with part of "Gray Lensman", quite possibly THE classic space opera. It also has Heinlein's second story, "Misfit", and de Camp, del Rey, and Hubbard all have stories or articles in here as well. And that isn't even that unusual a line-up for Astounding in the 1939-1942 run. What an incredible run of issues Astounding was those years.

Yeah, we can dream about 2 for 5c pulps, can't we? Although I did only pay $10 for that issue, I think; and the page quality is amazing. So nearly that good a price once you adjust for inflation, at least in spirit.

OK, if we're doing Thrilling Mysteries... I think I posted this one a while back, but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle:

Nice one! That's easily my personal favorite of the Cole Target covers; a very rare case for me where I did pay extra for a better presenting cover. Still a relatively cheap copy; but I'm the sort of collector who would rather have 10 beat up books I can read & scan rather than one beautiful one I don't dare open.

And this thread has been quiet too long, so let's throw up a couple minor recent finds: Unfortunately, this is one of the Bruce Elliot issues; while I don't dislike them nearly as much as a lot of Shadow fans they're still not that good compared to the Gibson stories. So the highlight here is a very early John D. MacDonald story. (It's only his 10th published story.) Pity about the taped spine here, but the cover is so odd it perhaps barely matters. I've read this issue cover to cover and I can't tell what the heck this is supposed to represent. Once again, the highlight is John D. MacDonald, who here has 3 stories taking up fully half the issue. His "novel" is actually longer than the Doc Savage story by about half a page.

Nice. I'll count myself as being half on the list, since I've scanned & uploaded more than a few books with Cole covers to the Digital Comic Museum. Need to get myself a copy one of these days soon as well...

Gratz on both! Although I've got a few examples of Doc pulps, in general I'm happy having the complete Bantam run. But even so I still envy you having the actual pulp despite not having it on my personal wish list. :-) The Op 5 is a bit simpler; I just envy you having a nicer copy than me.

Public Domain probably did apply. As far as I know, most Amazing Stories from that era were not correctly renewed, or possibly not even correctly submitted in the first place. Comic Book Plus certainly seems to think the issue is PD: http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=36913 and since it's post-1923 it can only be PD now if it was PD then with the way the laws work.

And an oddity from the creator of Doc Savage, writing under his own name this time: Now to see if I can track down the rest of the story...

And while it's nowhere near as clear a starting point as Action 1 is for comics, there's the book that seems to be mostly commonly agreed upon as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. First Van Vogt, first Asimov in Astounding, and the very next month gave us... the first Heinlein story, and what I think is the only Finlay cover on Astounding. (Finlay apparently objected to his art being cropped.)

I think you may have lucked out on this one; even if you didn't get the book the way the seller has been acting would make me feel I dodged a bullet. Although I do hope it gets into the hands of somebody who will share it. The thought of hyper-rare books being hoarded rather than preserved and shared absolutely terrifies me. So even if I think you might be better off having not gotten it, I'm not sure the rest of us are. Here's hoping it pops up somewhere soon.

And a recent pickup, pity about the light pencil scribble: I think this one is quite a bit harder to find than the nn Our Gang issue; it's nice to have a copy.

That's an awfully nice looking 6.0 from what I can see! I know others will disagree, but I think Animal Comics 1 is very underrated. It's one of the few books I've held where I can just feel the weight of history in my hand.

My one and only precode issue of Action: There are far worse covers to have as the lone example in the collection!

Terry, who was back to back with Harley if I recall correctly.

All the Bill Everett issues of Venus are just stunning, but the 17 may be the high point in terms of the interiors. The cover is pretty impressive too, but it's not quite as amazing as the 18 or 19. Even if I want the originals (and have over half of them now) the 2nd Venus Masterworks can not show up soon enough for me. Just crazy good Bill Everett artwork.

Not exactly a beautiful copy with the corner damage, but at least now I can finally say I have an issue of Marvel Mystery; and since this is the issue with Venus I'm doubly happy with it: Torch, Subby, Cap, Venus, and Blonde Phantom. That's one hell of a line-up for a single book.

A couple books I got at ECCC last weekend: Not a great copy, but even if it's not quite as hard to get as the 18 or 19 it's still pretty tricky, and other than the cover it's in pretty good shape, unlike my 18. The problem is I still need to find a 19 (and 11 others, but the 19 will probably be the hardest...) Wasn't sure if this one fits more in Atlas or Timely, it's somewhat on the edge:

And here's a couple more Kelly books I picked up recently (the 244 actually just showed up today): One oddity on the 244: It has Kelly's name, very faintly, right under the logo, as well at at the bottom. It was clearly not quite perfectly removed from its more prominent spot.

OK, so this is clearly a placeholder. But since I got it (and issues 2-5) for just over $50 after shipping, I'm quite happy with it for the moment: The later issues are better, and $10 an issue? Perfectly happy at that price, even in that condition.

One of the handful I have from the double digit era: Always thought this one was a fun cover design.

I'm actually trying to put together a complete run of John D. MacDonald's science-fiction stories. He did a total of 53, a handful of which are under the pseudonyms of John Wade Farrell and Peter Reed; all but one of those are because he did more than one story in the issue so there's only about 45 issues to actually get. (Plus, in theory, the first editions of 2 of his 3 SF novels; one appeared in a pulp originally, one was later reprinted in a pulp, and the 3rd was from the 60's and never had a magazine appearance that I know of.) 4 to go, not counting first edition non-magazine versions of the novels. His SF work has a distinctive voice; the best way I can describe it is hard-boiled. It brings a sensibility I normally associate with detective stories to Science Fiction; much more character driven than the normal Hard Science or Science Fantasy stuff you see. It doesn't really feel like what happened in the 80's when people tried it and called it Cyberpunk, though. Fun stuff.