OtherEric

He was always apologetic when we disagreed dramatically in the Warren Magazine reading club; he very much stuck to his guns but he wanted to be sure that nobody was taking the disagreement personally.  I always assured him that if we always agreed on every story it would make the club dull if not pointless.
I'm going to include a link to the reading club thread, in case anybody is interested but hasn't seen it.  @Jayman and I have been working to keep it running since Axe disappeared, and we will continue to do so as long as we're able.  I think Axe would be happy to know it's continuing in his absence:
 

Paging Doctor @Randall Dowling
 

he was a great contributer to these boards, i don't even collect magazines but i enjoyed his posts and the images he posted
RIP to one of the good ones

Sad, never really interacted with him too much except for a few posts in the NFL water cooler thread. I remember him being a passionate KC Chiefs fan that had annointed Mahomes as the next coming. RIP

Board member @Axe Elf passed away April 15th. Many of us were deeply worried after he stopped showing up in the Warren Magazine reading club thread he curated, but we were not able to confirm his passing until today.
He was probably most active in the Magazine forums, but I saw him posting everywhere across the forums.  His love for the Warren Magazines directly inspired me to put together my collection, we were both working on our runs at the same time and we frequently pointed each other at books we knew we needed.
I wish I had known him better but I'm glad we were friends on the forum for the couple years we were here together, and I miss him and his funny, insightful comments and his absolute delight in the hobby.
https://www.aldenharrington.com/memorials/robert-yost/5412656/index.php

To add some color to the thread, here's one that I think definitely deserves the label... it's been an iconic image for decades, at least since the Steranko history of comics and possibly earlier.  Not sure if it's actually getting the designation from CGC, but I would be surprised if it isn't:

This is the second most-expensive book I have, purchased here on the Boards, that I've read.  The most expensive is a slab. If some of my books were of higher grade/quality (like FF #48) it'd be them instead.
 

Just recently picked up my first pulp for my collection and it is a designated classic cover 😀 

Vampirella #16
  April 1972
From the Warren Magazine Index:
16. cover: Manuel Sanjulian (Apr. 1972) 
 1) Vampi’s Feary Tales: The Gray Women [Jan Strnad/Rafael Auraleon] 1p  [frontis] 
2) Vampirella: …And Be A Bride Of Chaos [Archie Goodwin/Jose Gonzalez] 22p 
3) Purification [Nebot] 3p 
4) Gorilla My Dreams [Gus St. Anthony/Esteban Maroto] 6p 
5) Girl On The Red Asteroid [Don Glut/Bill DuBay] 6p
6) Lover! [Pat Boyette] 6p 
7) Vampi’s Flames: Jose Gonzlaez Profile/Vampire/Another Night Shot/Spectral Vengeance 
[J. R. Cochran, Clint Banks, Mary Lou Jurina & Gurn Lee/Jose Gonzalez, Tom Blackshear, Charles L. Pauly & Lloyd Fukuki] 1p   [text article/stories]
8) How Our Artists See Themselves… [J. R. Cochran/Bill DuBay, Dave Cockrum, Richard Corben, Jerry Grandenetti & Billy Graham] 1p [Self-portraits]
9) Cilia [Nicola Cuti/Felix Mas] 7p 
Notes: Another sub-standard issue, with only Pat Boyette’s tasty ‘Lover!’ rising to the level of a quality story.  Future comic writer David Michelinie sent in a letter.  Goodwin’s decent script for Vampirella was again brought low by inappropriate and awkward art.  In fact, Gonzalez’ artwork on this issue’s fan page was considerably better than what he was producing for the Vampirella strip at this point.  The lame Dracula appearing in Vampi’s story claims to be the same Dracula from the Goodwin/Crandall story ‘The Coffin Of Dracula’ from Creepy #8 & 9 and, thus, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but he looked and acted nothing like the ‘Coffin’ Dracula.  He’s short, paunchy and looks a bit like an aged Italian count.  According to J.R.Cochran, in a 1974 letter to the fanzine Canar #21-22 (May-June 1974), the feature page effort ‘How Our Artists See Themselves’ was the cause for the departure of editor Billy Graham when Jim Warren strongly objected to the appearance of the finished page, which had been based on a layout Warren himself suggested. 
——————————————————
Posting this one a bit early as maybe we could have some extra people interested this week. Saddened by the loss of Axe Elf but determined to go on, this issue looks to be a good read despite the indexers view. He/she sure had a dislike for Gonzalez and apparently nothing but a Chris Lee or Lugosi Dracula would fit the bill for these stories! We shall see…

Here is an example of a very famous issue/cover that did not get the designation. 
 

Eerie #38 thoughts:
Cover:  File this one as "nice cover that doesn't do much for me personally"
Monster Gallery:  This may be a little more Lore than Gallery, but it at least clearly focuses on a monster, and before the monster became more widely known.  Add some nice art by Brocal and this one's a winner.
Stake in the Game:  I can't find much about Gual online, they did around 15 stories for Warren, it appears.  I'm not terribly impressed with the story, it's decent filler... but you can't really have a 21 page long filler story.  I also feel like Gual was drawing heads disproportionately large relative to the bodies, and as @Jayman suggests, the twist is somewhat stapled on at the end just to have a twist. This is actually the second time I recall that they've split a story within an issue, Carmilla back in Creepy #19 was split as well.
The Carrier of the Serpent:  A solid story by Brennan and excellent art (that I don't personally care for) by Grandenetti.  It's interesting... my respect for Grandenetti has grown immensely over the course of the Reading Club, and I'm definitely enjoying his stuff more in the sense that I can intellectually admire his craft.  But I still really don't like it in the conventional sense.
A Stranger In Hell: Almost more a mood piece than an actual story by Brennan, with extraordinary art by Maroto.  Excellent stuff that I don't have much to actually say about.  It seems to me like Starlin was heavily influenced by this story when he created Gamora's original look a few years later.
The Night the Snow Spilled Blood: I'm seriously tempted to just quote @Jayman as my comments on this story.  Spot on with everything.
I can't call this a very good issue, but it's got a few solid stories.  I think it probably hurt itself by splitting the first, weakest story in two, so it begins and ends on the same weak note. 

Thank you for explaining far better than I could why the August 1928 Amazing is a classic cover, above and beyond it simply being on a famous issue.
I'm not sure the number of classic covers is quite as low as 50, but part of my point in starting this thread is to tease out which ones actually deserve the title.  The Batwoman Weird Tales is perhaps the only other one I would say with 100% certainty qualifies, and I can think of quite a few others that I would include.  But I had never even seen the Spicy Detective cover before today that I recall, and I think I'm informed enough about pulps that I should at least recognize any cover with the designation, even if I don't agree with it.

Paging Doctor @Randall Dowling
 

An addition to the Ace Double collection, and the last Pennant with any SF/ Fantasy content.  Most of this one is labeled non-genre by the ISFDB, but they have a couple flagged as relevant.

Several books in today.  I know the series is no longer popular, but I figure anything that was so successful for so long deserves a look.  And the Pyramid editions have some great covers.

betcha can’t quit now can you?

Board member @Axe Elf passed away April 15th. Many of us were deeply worried after he stopped showing up in the Warren Magazine reading club thread he curated, but we were not able to confirm his passing until today.
He was probably most active in the Magazine forums, but I saw him posting everywhere across the forums.  His love for the Warren Magazines directly inspired me to put together my collection, we were both working on our runs at the same time and we frequently pointed each other at books we knew we needed.
I wish I had known him better but I'm glad we were friends on the forum for the couple years we were here together, and I miss him and his funny, insightful comments and his absolute delight in the hobby.
https://www.aldenharrington.com/memorials/robert-yost/5412656/index.php

CGC's pulp division is like that kid who discovers Alex Schomburg for the first time. He's amazed by Alex's technique, line, action, and attention to detail. Compared to every modern comic cover, it staggers the imagination. It seems too vivid and artistic for a mere comic book. "What a classic cover!," he exclaims, and hurries to all his friends' houses to share his thrilling new art discovery. Then he discovers a second Schomburg cover. "Another classic!" Then a third ... and a fourth ... eventually, he discovers all 500 Schomburg covers. His enthusiasm never subsides. Declaring all 500 to be "classic," he has drained the word of all meaning.
Schomburg was a great artist. But only a few of his covers are "classic."
In reality, there are fewer than 50 pulp covers that deserve the "classic" designation, and these are ones that have been singled out for excellence by the pulp collecting community over the course of decades. Amazing Stories' "Skylark in Space" is a classic, not because it is visually arresting, or wildly lurid, or has bosomy, semi-nude women in bondage. What makes it classic is that pulp collectors singled it out for distinction from very early on, it is the first (or one of the first) visualizations of a man flying, and has been reproduced in books about pulps, pop culture, and science-fiction for a long, long time as being an archetypal sci-fi pulp image. 
 

R.I.P. Axe Elf
Enjoyed his energetic musings in the WC threads. Condolences to the family.
-bc

The Persian Cat - John Flagg (1950.Gold Medal Book 103) cover Willard Downes PBO
A couple of blogs say this is the first Gold Medal, but there are a couple of anthologies before it, so that doesn't seem quite right.  John Flagg is a pseudonym for John Gearon, though Flagg seems better known (likely from the 8 Gold Medals he wrote).
The title page says the book is a screenplay for an upcoming Warner Bros. film, but apparently that did not happen.
Full, shiny lamination on this one, pretty nice copy

Several books in today.  I know the series is no longer popular, but I figure anything that was so successful for so long deserves a look.  And the Pyramid editions have some great covers.

To add some color to the thread, here's one that I think definitely deserves the label... it's been an iconic image for decades, at least since the Steranko history of comics and possibly earlier.  Not sure if it's actually getting the designation from CGC, but I would be surprised if it isn't:

In today. 

For anyone wanting to enjoy a small sample of Axe Elf's creative wit, check out his review of Creepy #24 on page 25 of this thread. Even on this sad day it cheered me up...  

Several books in today.  I know the series is no longer popular, but I figure anything that was so successful for so long deserves a look.  And the Pyramid editions have some great covers.