Crimebuster

Latest batch of arrivals! From my Big List: And this crazy cover - this copy is a lower grade placeholder until I find an upgrade, but it was cheap so I couldn't pass it up: For my Women's Lib subset: And for my Vietnam War subset:

As far as I can tell, yeah. I've heard from a few other people that have books of his that the sig on it looks similar to theirs. And it looks like from when he was a kid based on the handwriting. Photobucket ate my pictures of it otherwise I'd post a scan.

Yeah, My Love 31 / Our Love Story 18 and My Love 10 / My Love 25 I noted for the Women's Lib covers. I have a personal interest, as I want to put together a subset of all the women's lib romance covers (DC and Charlton both have 2 or 3 as well), but I also think the subject matter is going to continue to be more and more relevant and collectible in the same way that Wonder Woman #7 has become a breakout key (though obviously to a much lesser degree). For Our Love Story #28, I just think it's a fantastic pop art cover. It feels like the pop art embodiment of what people think of romance comics as. I also think the coloring on the reprint makes the cover of Our Love #28 much more dramatic than the original, Our Love Story #15. I mean, I love Marvel's frame covers, but the yellow background just makes this explode off the cover much more than the blue background. I've seen a few copies online, and there also seems to be some variance in the intensity of the colors depending on (I presume) when in the printing process it was made. Finding a copy that is both high grade and has deep rich colors might be impossible. We'll see! (not my copies)

I've got about 15-20 issues of Our Army at War from the Kunkel Pedigree - a bunch of beat up comics with the name "Kunkel" written on the cover of each of them. I like having the name of the OO on the book, unless it's done Stan Lee style over a character's face or something. And it's cooler when you have a whole bunch of issues form the same kid's collection. My Action #252 has the original owner's name on it - Denis Kitchen. I've thought about contacting him to let him know I currently own it, but... I dunno. Seems weird.

Oh yeah, thanks. I will update my list with this when I have a chance! I've never personally been a fan of the DC Giants, mainly because I don't like reprint books, but I understand the collectibility of them. This actually prompts two questions from me, curious what people's thoughts are! 1) Reprint Covers - It seems like a lot of the interest in specific romance issues is driven by the cover, so I'm wondering how reprints affect this. Both Charlton and Marvel have reprints of issues where they used essentially the same cover, just with tweaks to coloring and trade dress. Does this lower the interest in or value of these books? Or are they taken on a case-by-case basis? In at least a couple instances, I think the reprinted covers looks a lot better than the original, such as Our Love Story #28 and I Love You #126. But I could see how having multiple issues with the same cover could drive down interest in both issues. 2) Lois Lane and Romance Adjacent Titles - How do romance collectors treat cross-genre books like Lois Lane? Young Love #69 reminds me of Lois Lane #113, for instance, while Lois Lane #114 is for me a classic Giordano romance cover. I'm just curious what other romance collectors think of Lois Lane or other titles like it, which have romance elements or overtones (Supergirl #3 is another fantastic pure romance cover on a non-romance book).

closed, thanks for looking!

Question - it seems like My Love #14 is much more desirable than Falling in Love #118. Is this strictly because of scarcity? People like the cover better? Or is FiL #118 just overlooked?

Hey guys, let's discuss Bronze Age Romance! I've been collecting romance for a few years now, but am just really starting to make it more of a focus, thanks in part to some conversations and encouragement I've received here on the boards in recent weeks. As a result of those conversations, I have gone through all the Bronze Age romance books from Marvel, DC, and Charlton, and put together my own want lists and ranking charts of what I think are the top Bronze Age romance books from each publisher. I personally find Bronze Age romance to be much more vibrant and interesting than Silver Age romance, so while I am also still studying the Silver Age books, I am planning to make the Bronze Age my collecting focus for romance. I know I'm breaking the first rule of Fight Club by actually revealing what I think the top books are, especially since so many great romance books are undervalued, and are so hard to find in grade. But I'd love to have a discussion about what books are underrated, which books are overrrated, and see if there's any kind of consensus on the top Bronze Age romance books. I just think this is a seriously underappreciated segment of the hobby, and I'd love to hear from other romance collectors. I also didn't want to clog up the current Romance collecting thread with a bunch of discussion, since that's more for posting our books, so I figured I'd start a separate thread. Anyway, here are my highly subjective lists. I am using the cover date of May, 1968 as the beginning of Bronze Age Romance, as that is the date for Falling in Love #99, which I just can't consider Silver Age despite the 12 cent cover price. Thoughts? Paging @Dr. Love! TOP 27 BRONZE AGE ROMANCE 1. Love 1971 2. Just Married 104 3. Falling in Love 99 4. My Love 14 5. Night Nurse 1 6. Secret Romance 30 7. Our Love Story 5 8. Just Married 102 9. Sinister House of Secret Love 1 10. Love 1970 11. My Love Special 1 12. Young Love 68 13. Young Love 106 14. Love Stories 150 15. Heart Throbs 120 16. Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love 1 17. DC 100 page super spectacular 5 18. Falling in Love 118 19. Haunted Love 5 20. Haunted Love 6 21. Secret Romance 1 22. Career Girl Romances 71 23. Love Diary 64 24. Summer Love 48 25. Young Love 69 26. (tie) Our Love Story 1 and My love 1 Bronze Age DC Top 25 1. Love 1971 2. Falling in Love 99 3. Sinister House of Secret Love 1 4. Love 1970 5. Young Love 68 6. Young Love 106 7. Love Stories 150 8. Heart Throbs 120 9. Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love 1 10. DC 100 page super spectacular 5 11. Girls Romances 144 12. Falling in Love 118 13. Young Romance 170 14. Young Love 69 15. Secret Hearts 147 16. Girls Love 137 17. Dark Mansion 2 18. Sinister House of Secret Love 4 19. Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love 3 20. Young Love 104 21. Girls Love 139 22. Love Stories 149 23. Young Romance 194 24. Secret Hearts 137 25. Heart Throbs 124 Bronze Age Marvel Top Ten 1. My Love 14 2. Night Nurse 1 3. Our Love Story 5 4. My Love Special 1 5. Our Love Story 1 6. My Love 1 7. Night Nurse 4 8. My Love 31 / Our Love Story 18 9. My Love 10 / My Love 25 10. Our Love Story 28 Bronze Age Charlton Top 20 1. Just Married 104 2. Secret Romance 30 3. Just Married 102 4. Haunted Love 5 5. Haunted Love 6 6. Secret Romance 1 7. Career Girl Romances 71 8. Love Diary 64 9. Summer Love 48 10. Haunted Love 7 11. Just Married 86 12. I Love You 95 13. Haunted Love 11 14. Time for Love 40 15. Teen Age Love 63 16. I Love You 126 17. My Only Love 6 18. For Lovers Only 73 19. Just Married 101 20. For Lovers Only 67

Dropped to $85! Last drop before this is sent out to the unwashed masses ebay!

1. The Dark Knight 2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier 3. The Avengers 4. Guardians of the Galaxy 5. Iron Man 6. The Incredibles 7. Black Panther 8. Batman 9. Superman 10. Thor: Ragnarok 11. Wonder Woman 12. Batman begins 13. Spider-Man 2 14. Avengers AoU 15. Logan 16. Captain America: The First Avenger 17. Spider-Man: Homecoming 18. Doctor Strange 19. Constantine 20. Superman 2 21. Deadpool 22. Dredd 23. Lego Batman 24. Hellboy 25. Unbreakable 26. Captain America: Civil War 27. Ant-Man 28. X-Men Days of Future Past 29. Iron Man 3 30. The Dark Knight Rises 31. X-Men First Class 32. Spider-man 33. Iron Man 2 34. X-2 35. Thor 36. GotG 2 37. Thor: The Dark World

Price drop already! Now just $98 shipped! WOW! Proof that America is great again!!

You know, usual rules, etc. USA only, sorry! Price includes shipping. Paypal only! No HoF probies, etc. Onward! This is a complete set of Marvel's various Red Sonja titles! 37 issues in all! Mostly mid grade, with outliers in either direction. $110 $98 $85 shipped! This lot includes: Marvel Feature #1-7 Red Sonja vol. 1 #1-15 Red Sona vol. 2 #1-2 Red Sonja vol. 3 #1-13 - #5 is signed by cover artist Pat Broderick! And some of these actually have date stamps from 1985 and `1986! You don't see that very often! Wow! And all for less than $3 per issue!! Try not to plotz!!

Got in a lot of "readers" from ebay and was happy to find among them a handful of solid mid-grade books. Nothing spectacular, but some nice, tight, flat books with gloss:

You may have personally found it bland and not especially original, but your feelings don't determine whether or not it was either thought provoking for other people or a cultural phenomenon. Clearly, it's provoked a lot of thinking in many quarters, and it's also clearly a cultural phenomenon. Just because you choose to discount that culture doesn't change those objective reality.

This just arrived, checking another off my list!

Any idea who did this cover? GCD is unsure but thinks maybe Giordano. I think that's on the right track, but I wonder if its more a team effort by his studio. There looks to be more than a little Neal Adams in the inking and the male figure particularly. And that severe Nurse Ratchet looking woman in the background looks like Chaykin to me. I know Adams and Giordano were partners in the 70's, and Chaykin at one point worked for Adams, so... yeah. Best guess from me - Giordano roughs, "Many Hands" finishes from Giordano, Adams and Chaykin?

More Big 25 cent era goodness! I just love this design era for DC.

Picked this up at my LCS today for like $3.50:

Found this at my LCS pretty cheap, presumably because this was one of the books (I think?) in the Harvey warehouse find:

Third book checked off my list. The paper sticking out the top is thanks to Charlton's terrible production values - it looks like they cut this book with the edge of a brick or something, it's so jagged. But it's in very nice shape, and it's just a crazy weird cover from a young Jose Luis Garcia Lopez before he went to DC. There are a ton of artist covers on romance books, with the artist painting their love interest or something, but few of them have the woman as the artist - and none of the others have a random crazy dude in tighty whities screaming angrily at the couple. So weird!

One of my all time favorites. Just love it! The background images seem like they were done by a different artist than the foreground image to me. But what do I know?

Alas, a popped staple. But so good! It also seems like the blues in this cover vary depending on when in the process it was printed - some seem darker, like this copy, while others are a brighter, more vibrant shade.

One of a few DC books from this period that hint at interracial romance without really showing it. Though, to be fair, DC covers in general seem to have a lot less kissing and actual romance than those from other companies. This is one of a couple books I've noticed where the guy is called by a Hispanic name.

Why don't any of them have pupils?!