OtherEric

The Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland in August 1969 as well.

Wasn’t aware of the Five Faces cover before this, got a copy on order now.

I actually argued in favor of tracking actual release dates when we started; and after a year of the club, I have to say that you were right and I was wrong. This is the first time in over a year of the reading club that the release date has possibly mattered, and it won't happen often enough again to have been worth the effort. With that said, this is one of the rare occasions where the order actually does get interesting, with both the ads in Creepy & Eerie for Vampirella having a sort of continuity, and with the idea the ad in Creepy #29 might be the first appearance of Vampirella. But it does appear the Vampi #1 showed up first, based on the limited info I can find.

Good luck on your draft, @Axe Elf Creepy #29 thoughts: Cover: Prezio knocks this one out of the park. I'm not sure it really counts as famous or classic, yet... it seems like this one only recently started heating up a lot. But it's definitely high demand right now, and with good reason. Loathsome Lore: When we first saw this I regretted that we didn't get more by Jack Davis in the Warren comics, but didn't say much about the page on its own terms. There's really not much to say, though... it's a competent but not standout lore page. The Summer House: Barbara Gelman's only Warren -script (and only comic -script, according to the GCD) is a very nice, moody piece, quite ambiguous and well illustrated by Colon. It's not perfect but it's very impressive for a first story and makes me wish we had seen a few more. Angel of Doom: Still very nice artwork. Why they waited to do the reprint until two issues after the sequel is beyond me, though. Spellbound: A few too many cooks on this story for what is really a pretty run of the mill horror comic story. Most notable for the (uncredited) Warren debut of Mike Royer on art, but we've got enough going on this issue I'll wait until he's credited to say more. Bloody Mary: Buddy Saunders makes his full debut here, after a collaboration with Goodwin way back in Eerie #8. He turns in a solid story, that plays around a bit with the tropes of a typical horror tale. He'll be around a while, it's hard to call him one of the major Warren writers but he deserves more credit than he gets for how much he did for the company. The Devil of the Marsh: Don Glut makes his Warren debut. He does a fairly large number of stories for Warren, even more for other publishers, and is currently working on the Warrant magazines. Not to mention his various book and -script credits. The story is quite solid, and Grandenetti does what I have to concede is a very good job in terms of craft... but I still don't care for Grandenetti's work. The Frankenstein Tradition: Mastroserio was so good, how was I so oblivious to his work before the reading club? The Last Laugh: Goodwin returns with a short but effective story, illustrated by Colon. Although I suspect that Goodwin may have done at least rough pencils on this piece, it reminds me a LOT of the art from his story "Sinner", particularly the face of the Duke. A super strong end to the issue. Vampirella is Here!: I think we got the issues slightly out of order around here, because this ad follows the one in the Eerie #23. Mike's Amazing World and the GCD both show this issue coming out two days after Vampirella #1, according to the copyright records. I would love to see copies of both issues with arrival dates on the covers, though. I stand by my statement that the Creepy #27 is better considered as the beginning of the rebuilding era; mostly because I think the return of Frazetta and the increased page count make the book stand out. But it's impossible to deny this issue is yet another huge step forward, with new creators, the return of old ones, a further increase in page count, making this issue the best one we've seen in ages.

A huge heads up to Bob; he actually sought me out when I posted I was looking for a few early issues of MAD. A first rate transaction; will happily buy from him again.

I'm flabbergasted that 9.6 Green Label went for $6200. I could understand the price with some green labels... an unverified signature, for instance... but for a copy with a clipped coupon?

Just comparing the Hot Chariot cover with the April Evil cover, since I was struck by the similarity:

Congratulations! Also, *****... I've been looking for that for a while and you got it for a steal, even in that grade.

Then again, The Duchess of Skid Row has a pretty impressive cover as well.

There are a lot of covers I like in this batch, but the Maguire cover for The Hot Chariot may be my favorite. It reminds me a lot of Maguire's cover for April Evil.

So, for the VCC last weekend, @GACollectibles listed a lot of paperbacks. I may have gone a little overboard on the D-Series Mystery Doubles.

In today, courtesy of @Robot Man. There were also lower grade copies of #36 and #37 that I will need to upgrade, even by my low standards. But I've now got the Mad 1-106 run complete! A huge thanks to Robot Man for reaching out to me with these; I love these boards.

In today, thanks to @Robot Man This gives me all the Dell issues of Uncle Scrooge.

You're not wrong, to the point where I almost wonder if the date is a typo...

Looking good! I also see duplicates of at least three books where I could use the under copies when you have your next sale…

A couple in today. I saw the Avon in @Surfing Alien's sale thread, and it looked interesting. But didn't want to pay a premium copy price to actually read the thing, so found a cheap copy online and actually got moderately lucky in terms of condition. The G-8 speaks for itself, I need to figure out how many Steranko paperback covers I still need. I'm pretty sure I've got at least around 2/3 of them...

I think you're right about the editorial idea that didn't work. I actually have a weird theory that the reason Shame was the first book Ace reprinted was because it didn't sell well as a single. My guess, and it's purely a guess, is that they had to release the translation of Therese Raquin they had commissioned, but were afraid it would also do poorly. So they added the Shame reprint to drive the price of the book up a dime, hoping it would at least recoup the cost of having the translations done.

Today's book. I've long found the run from 26-29 to be unusually difficult to find, this one is beat but compete and brings me down to 11 issues to go:

To make a VERY general statement, I think on average you'll pay about double for a D-Series Mystery double what you would pay for a SF or Western, with tons of qualifiers based on demand for the specific book and so on, of course. You'll pay about the same for an average Western or SF book, but you'll see about 100 SF doubles for every Western double you run into. If you want REALLY scarce, look for the handful that aren't in any of the three main categories.

Not my copy, although I do have one somewhere…

Accurate for the reading club, at least. It showed up in Teen Love Stories #1 & 2 under a different title, and I have no idea if it was ever used in Famous Monsters.