sterlingcomics

There was another story that I'd like to re read from a HOM or HOS. Had to do with a guy making a deal with the devil to bring his little girl back to life and at the end he gets her and everything seems fine. In actuality though, the last scene is the man obviously deranged (and tricked by the devil), holding the dead girl. Pretty shocking for a code approved book!

I was able to get a torrent with all of the HOM/HOS books in digital form before they got taken down (I'm of course legal b/c I own the physical books); I do plan on re-reading the series and giving you guys some of my ideas of the better stories.

My favorite horror series (so far) is actually a modern book: Rachel Rising. I had heard good things for a while, but just looked into it as the series was ending (which just happened). I'm about halfway through the TPBs now. Really good stuff. I can't recommend it enough, especially if you like horror, suspense, and Good vs. Evil type stuff.

 

I'm assuming it has TBPs for me to get caught up, or is it a recent startup? Will check.

 

 

The series stared ~2011 if I remember correctly, and it just finished this year. Yes, there are individual TPBs that collect several issues at time, but the omnibus just came out which collects all of the issues (42). Had I not already started getting the TPBs, I'd get the omnibus. It's a monster at 900-ish pages! Terry Moore sells the omnibus from his website, but your LCS may also carry it.

 

http://www.terrymooreart.com/

 

Ordered the omnibus from instocktrades.... previewed the art on youtube and looks interesting...thanks! At .05 per page the omnibus feels like a great bargain.

My favorite horror series (so far) is actually a modern book: Rachel Rising. I had heard good things for a while, but just looked into it as the series was ending (which just happened). I'm about halfway through the TPBs now. Really good stuff. I can't recommend it enough, especially if you like horror, suspense, and Good vs. Evil type stuff.

I'm assuming it has TBPs for me to get caught up, or is it a recent startup? Will check.

Totally agree!

One of my all time favorites from those early issues was The Game by Neal Adams in HOS 178. Something about the innocence of a child being able to outwit evil. Also taps into the psychological terror of a father worried about the safety of his son! A perfect story IMHO!

In my mind, a child is not susceptible to evil since it has not been soiled with complex moralities that evolve us as we mature in life. Good/Evil is not necessarily a complex thing, we as adults make it so based on our ethics and morals. I love picking at the philosophical aspects of stories like this, which is a get tool for introspection. A story that can do MORE than simply shock and entertain make it the best. I'll throw out some more examples in a while once we hit more rounds.

6 books for slow press received @ CCS 6/23

Transferred to CGC 9/19 for MFT SS

Received - 9/20

Verified - 9/22

 

Scheduled for grading - 10/4

Graded - 10/6

QC - 10/8

Um???... so this changed this afternoon... are they working on Saturdays during con season now???

I know I've received e-mail from them on Saturday, so I wouldn't doubt it. Bless them if they are.

For me personally, the STORY is the most important element. Swamp Thing promises "sophisticated suspense"...so a great underlying story that continues to peel back the layers before the big reveal are the ones I like the most. As others have mentioned, the atmosphere/tone is the most important element.

Likewise, the best horror comics from me follow this same premise. What constitutes horror to me is the unthinkable, and those that use psychological / real elements is what pulls me in. Stories like "The Demon Within" in House of Mystery 201 perpetuates what I think great stories of this kind can really be.

Yes, there's also a place for "monster/supernatural" stories, it's just a different kind. I sometimes get in the mood for the gross/slasher variety, but that's not where I get my rocks off so to speak. The Kickstarter Untold comic looks to be of this variety, but I hope it can pull off some of the psychological aspects as well. Walking Dead found a niche both in gross/physical horror along with some of real world physiological aspects of putting reality into the unspeakable situation that our protagonists must deal with.

Because Bronze Horror was still under the comics code authority, the stories had to hold back a bit as compared to the physical / gross horror that permeated the pre-code error in the mid 50s. It had a mix of the smart stories that EC had but with a more modern slant (at least at the time). I definitely liked the Gothic nature of the early 70s issues....a lot of what I like in bronze are in those first 3 years of the 70s. Shows like "Night Gallery" out at the same time also captures what I think is a compromise of both the physical/physiological horror with some of the more comedic and eclectic stories that sometimes look like a reflection of a bad acid trip.

So, what do you like about horror in general? What do you think is being done both right/wrong with horror comics in the bronze age as compared to comics today?

To get your creative juices flowing, here's a critique about horror movies today...

That video was hilarious. My favourite part was that Chuck says he buys everything for 1/4 of value and sells for 3x value. That one line sums up the MHC pricing pretty succinctly and if that's working, no wonder he's still in business.

It's more like buy at 1/8x and sell for 250x.

Order placed. Now to hope my order can be "located" in whole.

 

As expected: Ordered 5 copies of an "in-stock" comic; getting 1.

 

Because of this decrease in my order, my originally free shipping is now $8.

 

Never again.

Uhhh.....I'd expect them to allow you to cancel out of the transaction, personally. Getting 1 / 5 is a huge difference. Based on what Chucky said, he's "fishing" around for how much he can sell a book for without actually selling it. Expect the books to re-appear with a higher price.

He might do better as a business by doing pay per views on his drag events.

Order placed. Now to hope my order can be "located" in whole.

 

If raw, don't get your hopes up regarding grading.

Yeah, I'd expect at least 1.0 to 1.5 grade delta (on the downside) from a CGC standard as a STARTING PLACE. Note their web site only denotes a VF and NM, so the scale isn't specific enough. That and grading and cataloging 10 million books is bound to be problematic.

I think we have over a petabyte storage of MH adventures here. We should probably dedicate an entire subforum for this garbage.

"Is it the weed? Is everyone hi?"

Shape of .... a cool tool.

Form of.... water?

BTW, I would put in a mandatory ~5 seconds pause per lookup. See if that helps things out a bit. Way back in 2003ish, when Borock was with the company, I requested that they make a scalable web service that could be used with vendors. This might be a good POC to prove this if it can provide value and reduce data entry requirements for both sellers and collectors.

Whoa, this is awesome!!!! Thanks Stronguy and Conan!

In all honesty, the barcode and the ability to do a lookup in the inventory beats all of the competitors hands down---they can't touch it....why not flaunt it? They should have pages on their website describing it in exquisite detail...but I've always loved a good mystery.

Thanks Stronguy...so you're saying what I'm labeling as unknown currently looks like slab type? If so, why are the XMens coming up as 8? Is that for Moderns? Why would one of them be 0 then?

 

Example:

Uncanny X-Men, The,147,CGC 9.8,00025030098000000079077009,

Uncanny X-Men, The,148,CGC 9.8,00051621698000080962204004,

 

I think it has to do with the age of the invoice. 0079077009 was graded back in 2004; the other books was graded in 2012. They may have not started using it until much later.

Makes sense...kinda like a "for future use"....

I still think the other numbers we are now saying is "slab type" is probably reserved for future use...I also wonder if the restoration level mechanic is somehow tied into that area. We'd need "new" restored slabs to see if they did that.

All in all though, I'd say we've just about cracked the code. I'll summarize it here later.

Thanks Stronguy...so you're saying what I'm labeling as unknown currently looks like slab type? If so, why are the XMens coming up as 8? Is that for Moderns? Why would one of them be 0 then?

Example:

Uncanny X-Men, The,147,CGC 9.8,00025030098000000079077009,

Uncanny X-Men, The,148,CGC 9.8,00051621698000080962204004,

We all have these things. Might as well see how much data we can squeeze out of this.

I have no Qualified.

I have no Restored

I have no SS.

I do have books with OW and COW, but do I have more than one? I've been exterminating my collection of them for the last 10 years, so I'll have to see.

I "suspect" that the remaining field may give us the CGC book "class". Just need more folks with different books with scanners.

Given this data and the fact we can get the other pieces from the verification tool makes me very much wanting to create an inventory system that can populate everything in a sheet with just the serial number. It was a goal a long time ago but never moved on it. I might now.

Thanks for doing this, Antpark!

I've modified my original post---new information below:

NEW: After looking up the comic in the census, I've also discovered that one of the data components is the COMIC ID in the registry. For example:

https://www.cgccomics.com/census/grades_standard.asp?ComicID=14410

NEW: After looking at the 1st data unknown field, I am fairly certain it relates to PAGE QUALITY. All WHITE pages have value 23 and all OFF-WHITE TO WHITE PQ have values 16. I need to see multiple scans with OFF-WHITE and CREAM TO OFF-WHITE to confirm

Example bc information:

00144102398000111075590008

00 - prefix that is optional

14410 - comic id

23 - page quality (23=WHITE, 16=OWW, ??=OW, ??=COW, ??=BRITTLE)

98 - grade of the book

00011 - data component unknown

1075590008 - CGC book number

So one advantage I can see from sellers using the bc information is to dynamically assemble the census page on their listings using this information, thus making "bad" information regarding the census impossible, since you're referencing a link with the latest information--and without having to look it up manually.

Of interest on those X-mens....they all had 00008 for that unknown field except for one.

There is a flaw however in using two digits to rerpresent grade. How do u know it's a 1.0 vs a 10? Maybe a 10 is represented as a 00.

^ I'm a tech geek that happens to get paid doing what I like to do....this is just fun!

My bad, I had one 1 too many. I modified my original post. Two previous posters may want to remove my quote to prevent confusion.

If anyone has any brain cells to tackle this enigma, please do! What's clear however is that the barcode has more data than what it is presenting. The grade of the book is 9.8, and I see that in the data stream. The date graded "might" be part of it, but it's a mess. I'll scan more tonight to see if there's a correlation.

OK, got my scanner. I was surprised to what I found when I scanned: Example:

NEW: After looking up the comic in the census, I've also discovered that one of the data components is the COMIC ID in the registry. For example:

https://www.cgccomics.com/census/grades_standard.asp?ComicID=14410

NEW: After looking at the 1st data unknown field, I am fairly certain it relates to PAGE QUALITY. All WHITE pages have value 23 and all OFF-WHITE TO WHITE PQ have values 16. I need to see multiple scans with OFF-WHITE and CREAM TO OFF-WHITE to confirm

Example bc information:

00144102398000111075590008

00 - prefix that is optional

14410 - comic id

23 - page quality (23=WHITE, 16=OWW, ??=OW, ??=COW, ??=BRITTLE)

98 - grade of the book

00011 - data component unknown

1075590008 - CGC book number

We also need to see if there's a pattern between Universal, Qualified, Restored, and on page quality.

Data via the verification tool:

Certification #: 1075590008

Title: House of Mystery

Issue: 221

Issue Date: 1/74

Issue Year: 1974

Publisher: D.C. Comics

Grade: 9.8

Total Graded At: 2

Page Quality: WHITE

Grade Date: 03/14/2012

Category: Universal

Art Comments: Michael Fleisher and Len Wein stories

Wrightson, Kaluta and Thorne art

Bernie Wrightson/Michael Wm Kaluta cover

Grader Notes: None Available

Of course, the last 10 digits is the CGC number presented on the book. Does anyone know what the other data is or for? I'm guessing it could represent the invoice number...

My scanner is neat...it has an "inventory mode" where it can store all of the scans and then I can later "upload it" to the keyboard buffer by scanning a barcode. It also can be configured to send an "enter" at the end of the data stream, which is important if you're entering it on a spreadsheet or using it as input in a data entry system (more on that later). It does seem to me that having a wireless option may be worth it after all.

Here's a link; I sent a reasonable offer. It comes with a USB cable for charging and a blue tooth adapter if you need it and driver software on a CD as well as a user manual.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/272176740413?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Finally got my books. Now to crank up my creaky scanner.

Well, I'd love to show everyone some of my recent acquisitions, but apparently someone shipped me the wrong thing. Maybe they'll figure it out and contact me soon--tend to doubt it, as it took a month for them to ship the damn things. Kinda questioning why I came back now.

 

Sorry man, that sux. Any hints?

Well I only collect 6-8 titles roughly. Just some upgrades. Snagged a few Charltons though.

Well, I'd love to show everyone some of my recent acquisitions, but apparently someone shipped me the wrong thing. Maybe they'll figure it out and contact me soon--tend to doubt it, as it took a month for them to ship the damn things. Kinda questioning why I came back now.

Depends on the day of the week its graded and what kind of mood the grader is in.

Love that cover! Really nice copy, too. 9.6 or 9.8?

 

Thanks. Actually it's a 9.4

 

Really! I really thought it was a 9.6. Very nice book.

Two creases

You can always have FedEx packages delivered to a retail store location and then pick it up when it's delivered. This way it's kept in a secure location and there's less risk of a package being delivered with no proof. All you need to do is supply ID when picking it up. My company does that a lot with test equipment so that it's in market by the time a tech arrives and they don't have to wait.

Bingo. But that stare....is ominous.

^ It's one of the reasons why I never (and I repeat NEVER) have my stuff sent to a residence location. Technically a bit "harder" to have it "lost" if they go to that location multiple times per day etc. I also believe areas where they frequently visit might be managed a bit closer. No proof, just a gut feel. Makes sense though, if "x" location generates "y" income that some manager might have an eye on it to keep things running smoothly/happy.

Sorry to go OT but I think we all would like a courtesy update from the OP. PDQ.