OtherEric

Grand Comics Database says the script is by Bissette, based on an interview with him in Comic Book Creator #28

You rock the look, Randall, but not a lot of people can pull it off.

In today. This gives me the complete run of Slow Death, 1-11 and Zero. It's really one of my favorite undergrounds titles, very much drawing on the EC tradition:

Be fair. Their intent was to sell to absolutely anybody who could get their money onto the counter... which they probably suspected contained a lot of men in raincoats with their collars raised, but they didn't discriminate.

Nice one! In my experience that's the hardest of the Merritt Murder Mystery Monthly issues to find by a fair margin, and it's a beautiful copy.

The first Burroughs pulp I ever owned (and one of the first 10 or so pulps, period) was an Amazing Stories Quarterly with a John Carter story. I love those rebound giants whenever I see them, which isn't often. This isn't that one, it's a different ASQ I have with a Burroughs story.

See, I don't see that as saying the publisher had any of that intent. But some of the creators did, and even without that the books did have the effect described to some degree. So it's a fair statement, if poorly worded in suggesting that the books somehow had intent on their own.

That issue has been pulling a legitmate premium as a classic cover and story for quite a while now, $10 was a good deal when I grabbed it several years ago. 95% of Astounding/ Analog from about 1945 up is very much of the "grab long runs cheap" category, as you suggest. But some issues can be a pain, because they've inevitably been cherry picked by the first person to see the lot.

This looks like a magic trick I had as a kid, the basic idea is it has what looks like a moving blade that you can pull out the top, you put something in the larger hole, and you push it down. The blade appears in the lower hole but has passed through whatever was in the bigger hole. I say "blade", it was a piece of semi-tough plastic. It might cut a soft french fry in the lower hole on a good day; it couldn't break skin.

See, that one seems semi-sane. Not something I'm going to drop my money on, admittedly, and I bet there are a lot of nicer raw copies out there to be found. But overall that's not the joke the other one was. Then again, I'm happy with the raw I paid $10 for several years back, even with the slight corner creases:

That issue is from the run when analog was magazine sized in the 60's. It actually changed format during the middle of the serial. I'm roughly 100% certain there is no such thing as a non-newsstand variant of the issue for that matter...

I've got the first book publication of the Ellison story: It's the first story in the book.

I think we have about the right level of agreement here, honestly... enough agreement that we don't go "what the heck are these people thinking?", but enough disagreement that we can see different opinions and have something to talk about. It makes for a fun discussion. For what it's worth, while I think it was a great story it's not the best thing they've published... just to name one, "The Curse" was definitely better.

See, I'm fine when we disagree, as long as we can both explain why we like or dislike it. I think key to my liking of it is my viewing it as "pitch-black comedy". And like I said, the last page is just magnificent... ending with a 2/3 page splash of the protagonist and antagonist (and you can decide which is which in context) playing checkers as the princess look on is just glorious, and the last thing I would ever expect as the punch line to a Warren story. Part of why I like it so much is it keeps looking like it's going to become the horror story we expect, and keeps pulling the rug out from under us. It's certainly not something I would want to see often, and I can get why you (and others) dislike it as in some ways it's almost an anti-Warren story, deliberately twisting everything. Does anybody else have thoughts on the piece? @The Lions Den? We could use a tiebreaker here.

MINE! On the other hand, this copy I've had about a week is now available, cheap.

As far as I know the only Frazetta cover for Marvel was Epic Illustrated #1 As far as value, some of the very late issues are commanding a premium these days since they're relatively scarce, but not necessarily huge.

And, as mentioned when I showed the copy from the lot I bought several days ago, this one was a case of upgrade quickly:

A button from the Oni table at ECCC I forgot to post earlier, roughly the size of a quarter:

This one is purely @jimjum12's fault, he showed it about a week ago and I felt it was a necessary pickup. The laminate is so nice that I actually suspect somebody re-laminated it; it seems thicker than usual as well.

My copy is missing the back cover. But it's one of those books where I'm happy to have a copy at all.

I have tried to warn against the danger of completionist tendencies here before, but I present to you more terrifying examples. It's far too late for me to be saved, but let this be a warning to those who would listen:

Stylized CF in the lower left corner?

I think five comics had the early Atlas Logo, no idea what order they came out in. I've only got one of them: