OtherEric

Been a bit too long since I've added an issue. 33 to go:

In today. I've liked this cover ever since I first saw it, it's very atypical for Ingels but it's gorgeous with an amazing color palette.

Not to be confused with:

A couple upgrades to the MMM collection today. Still not a great copy of About the Murder of a Startled Lady, but it's miles better than my previous one:

I thought I had already posted my thoughts on this issue, and I can't find my notes, so let's try and reconstruct my thoughts. I'll start by noting this is one of the first issues I got, before I had even really begun collecting the title. I found this and #8 for $10 each at a half price books a few years ago, I doubt many people in the magazine forums would have passed that up. But it was one of the early finds that started me looking for Warrens beyond the small handful I had. Vamiprella #7 thoughts: Cover: An iconic Frazetta piece of work. Not much to add. Why a Witch Trilogy: I admire the ambition and creativity on this; it's some of Cuti's best work to date and all three artists turn in spectacular work. But it seems to me like the sum was less than the parts of the individual stories. At least a couple of the characters seemed to be very atypical witches, and it feels like they over-stretched to try and turn it into a thematic trilogy. It probably would have worked better for me as three separate stories, minus the hype. Plague of the Wolf: Serviceable filler with a painfully obvious twist Terror Test: Actually a fairly surprising twist, at least to me, but some of the worst "Williamsune" art I've seen yet, to the point I wonder if the credit is wrong. The Survivor: A very good story from Saunders & Colon, although I wonder if it was originally intended for one of the other books... the paste-ins of Vampi as narrator are painfully obvious. The Collection of Creation: I'm still not a fan of Grandenetti, and this one didn't have the creative tricks that sometimes make me appreciate his work even if I'm not enjoying it as such. Really, a very solid issue overall, although I think they overplayed there hand on the Witch Trilogy- it would have landed better as three separate stories. Also, with the benefit of foresight, we know that this issue is really the last of the false start before we get the serious Vampirella series. That's probably coloring my opinion some.

I missed when you first posted this, my reaction on first seeing this book on the forums a while ago was "It's the Nancy Drew/ Shadow crossover I never knew I wanted!" The copy at MCS is gone now.

at 30% off

at 30% off.

I wonder how many Avon paperbacks reused the Murder Mystery Monthly covers, like the Christie you listed. I know of several others, but I'm pretty sure the Cain got a brand new cover for the paperback, for instance.

I have no idea how you would identify the earliest version, either. I know my edition was published by M. A. Donohue in the late 19-teens, I've got a couple others where they did the reprints around this time, The Enchanted Island of Yew and Dot and Tot in Merryland. The only true first edition, first state Baum I've got is Queen Zixi of Ix, although I've got a 1st edition, 2nd state of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz.

Today's book. The inscription dates it to 1918. For all that this is probably the non-Oz book by Baum with the greatest claim to general popularity, given the subject matter and the film versions, it's got my vote as the hardest of the Oz-adjacent Baum books to find in a vintage edition (pre-1960 or so). Queen Zixi of Ix is the only other one that comes close.

I could be wrong, but I think these issues were published with an exterior die cut cover and an interior cover that would have a picture of the character, with just the logo showing through. In this case, the interior cover is missing. While the copy you have is a production error, somebody could create an identical version just by removing the inner cover of another copy, so there wouldn't be any value in the error.

I'm not grabbing either of these because I already have copies... but it pains me that nobody else has yet. Two absolute classics.