OtherEric

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:

https://www.newsfromme.com/2024/04/10/trina-robbins-r-i-p/ Just a legendary creator, and one of my favorite underground artists. I'll try and get some covers scanned later tonight.

Today's book. I'm down to three Ace D&S series SF non-doubles to go:

Did we ever figure out the artist on that one? We agreed the ISFDB was wrong when they said Bok, as I recall.

Dave Barry was definitely where I first encountered the joke. It's still a great one.

One of the all time legendary paperback covers!

Try searching for "Next issue project". I see at least three copies for sale, two on eBay and one at @mycomicshop. Not hugely common but not particularly hard to find, either.

But, let's cut ahead to the big reveal: The group shot (such as it is) of the D-Series Ace Science Fiction books. There's definitely a few I would still like to upgrade, but overall I'm quite happy with the set for now.

And a few assorted items to round out the lot. The John D. MacDonald is the 1st publication of the story, and one I haven't read yet. The Dell and the Pocket were both generous bonuses, I do love the pockets with the sequential numbers at the top. And can any of us here resist mapbacks?

A couple more Aces (they're the ones from other sources) and a couple round logo Avons:

A nice stack in from @Surfing Alien's latest sale today, plus a couple from other sources. We'll start with the Ace Doubles. I'm not generally going to bother with the F-series Doubles, other than the SF, but I couldn't resist the F-102 where the look of the doubles hadn't actually switched over from the D-series style. More importantly, any day where I get a single digit D series book is a great day. The D-223 is a nice upgrade: