tb

Looking through the last couple of pages, it's fun to see the changes in women's hairstyles between the '20s and '30s. What better exponent for the changing perceptions of beauty than the pulp cover girl that had to fit next to the beast. These covers clearly sold magazines back then. Makes me wonder which trends caused this old theme to fade away from the newsstands. Lost innocence, perhaps? http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~mjoseph/Images_Beauty_Beast.html http://beauty.rivkashome.com/old.htm

A little more information from the New York Times "Times Machine". The following articles are copyright The New York Times. I am posting them as examples to show how what an interesting resource this is for the history of comics and animation. References to Walt Disney first started appearing in the regular movie column, "The Screen". The earliest I could find was from November 11, 1928 (attached). The next reference is from July 15, 1929, which briefly mentions "an amusing Disney cartoon". On October 29, there is a positive one line review of the "Silly Symphony" "Springtime", followed by similar reviews of "Jungle Rhythm" and "El Terrible Toreador" on November 23 and December 2. Curiously, some of the earliest articles outside of the movie column are on censorship (see below). There are around 750 hits on "Walt Disney" prior to 1940.

Chistmas? I wish I had an answer. I asked the question after thinking about Mr. Zoom's links to internal Disney swipes of animation sequences, for example in the "Jungle Book" and "Robin Hood". I wonder if the "Trick or Treat" swipe from "Skeleton Dance" simply was a way to reuse conceptual artwork or whether it was an early example of animators paying homage to their idol, Ub Iwerks. When I worked for Pixar, many of the story/creative people were big time traditional animation buffs and they loved to add obscure references to classic movies that hardly anyone would recognize. "Skeleton Dance" would have been a perfect target for such a tribute, which is why it would be cool for a geek like me if there were later references somewhere. I have an extra interest in this scene since the third example is hanging on my wall.

I hope the NYT won't mind me copying this 1935 editorial and the reply from the publisher. What I think is interesting is the tone of the reply to the condescending article which clearly struck a nerve. The last few paragraphs, which predict what future historians will think of pulps, are well worth the read.

Thanks for the pulp pictures, bz. I was reading through the New York Times archive from the 1920s and 30s. It was fun to see the heated criticism of pulp covers at the time and the passionate replies from the editors to some of that criticism. --- One unrelated question to the animation fans: does anyone know of other examples in the following sequence?

Talking about France and NYT articles, there was a very interesting piece on visitors at the Louvre earlier this week. The author observed how the vast majority of guests were walking quickly through the exhibits, pausing briefly to shoot pictures with their cell phone cameras. He contrasted that with two young girls who walked slowly between the paintings and sculptures, observing them for some time without taking any pictures. It was very insightful (the last sentence was absolutely brilliant) and I've spent a lot of time afterwards thinking about how the popularity of handheld recording devices and social networking are changing the experience of going to a museum. Relating to our hobby, I am trying to decide whether sites like CAF are raising the awareness of originals or whether they are inflating them by making digital copies so easily accessible. I don't want to derail the thread; just a pointer to an article I found unusually interesting. Last I checked, it had prompted 418 comments. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/arts/design/03abroad.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=louvre&st=cse

FFB, that's a very helpful link and I will look at it very carefully. Some of these products look like they would help. Your point that a lot of work already has been done in this area is well taken. I will take some time to read up on the literature. The more people we can get interested in this subject, the more informed discussions and decisions we can make. From my experience on the boards, I'd expect that acquiring this knowledge and communicating it to collectors will be two completely different challenges. The poster who made a single "sleepy" graemlin actually made an important statement that sums up my own observations: even if this information was available, I doubt most collectors would care to read or act on it unless it was presented in a form that they could relate to. Eventually, I think doing some kind of experimentation on actual comic books with lots of illustrations will help communicate the knowledge. But before I can contribute to design such experiments I need to have a better grasp on what has already been done. george_bailey: In terms of the spine, I am actually more interested in very high grade comics that only have been opened a few times. It is interesting to hear other angles to the same problem.

I don't want to derail the thread from the original focus, but the new information I have learned over the past few weeks has made me think more about the broader picture. Many of us are storing valuable collections, both in terms of cultural and market value, in varying environments across the US. We all try to do the best we can to protect them, but none of us understand the exact impact of lowering the room temperature, keeping the humidity more constant, etc. If we were to approach a professional lab, which I think would be feasible given the amounts I see people investing in their collections every year, one possibility would be to have them to conduct a larger research study over longer period. For example, we could take 100 books as control samples, measure the various accepted scores today (tear, folding, ...) and then have collectors across the country store samples along with their collections. Other test samples could be stored in controlled conditions at varying temperatures and humidity. After a, say, 5 year period, we could have a much better understanding of what happens to the paper and the impact of making an investment in proper storage. My own, incredibly naive, opinion is that my collection represents not only a cash total but, more importantly, a cultural value. I would like future generations to enjoy these books long after I am gone. This is important enough to me that I am willing to invest in this kind of research as I am confident it would make a contribution in terms of prolonging the life of pulps, magazines, comics etc. I am realistic and not optimistic that collectors would care enough to help with such an experiment. It is easier to stick our heads in the ground and assume that the paper will last until we sell our collections. We probably don't really care what happens after that, anyway. But at least I wanted to use the opportunity to throw the idea out there.

I certainly don't want to fall victim to analysis paralysis: it would be a huge step forward if just we could make something happen for a start. If you have ideas for a specific set of experiments, I will support it, help cover any expenses, and be very grateful. I think it is a major embarrassment to our hobby that we know so little about the forces that slowly have been destroying it for decades. If it were up to me, we should not only be doing research on pressing but eventually also on quantifying the effects that the environment has on comics. I thought it was extremely interesting how BR was able to assign scores of 1.88 and 2.12 to my two books. I would love to know where the books in my current collection rank on such a scale and how quickly the scores will change over time. There are surely things we can do to quantify that, for example by cutting books in half, storing them in different conditions for 5 years, and then measure whatever score we choose for each half. Yes, it would be boring as heck and certainly not as entertaining as talking about pressing. But it could actually have an impact on prolonging the life of Golden Age comics whereas the thousands of hours we have been talking have had absolutely none. That's why this thread has been so refreshing to me.

I liked bronze_rules' suggestion of making a list of criteria for testing: Mr. Bailey's observation on spine roll is interesting and something I wouldn't have thought of myself. Below is a picture of otherwise intact pages with a brittle spine. My own impression is that over 90% of brittle books are throw away because the spine breaks. 40 years from now, the majority of Golden Age comics could look like this one. Since it is the weakest link in the chain, I think it should be given special attention in the testing. It doesn't have to be the fold test, but the issue should be brought up to the experts who help us design the tests. There may be particular aspects of our problem that they normally don't deal with during endurance testing of modern materials. I'd be glad to contribute towards paying for the testing.

I don't think anyone will disagree that getting access to a lab would be the best way to proceed. I just wish that we, as a hobby, were better organized so we could go about approaching researchers more professionally and with one voice. Jon Berk once mentioned some of the initiatives that the "American Association of Comic Book Collectors"(?) took, including assistance with grading for Sotheby's/Christie's and paying Tracey Heft to evaluate CGC's holder. I wish we had a more active organization like that today. In terms the spine issue, isn't the spine exactly what is of most interest to us? Other tests are fine, of course, but the problem with the spine is that this is where you have forces acting parallel to the fibres. I am not a specialist in stress-strain analysis, but I have some experience with it and can't imagine that the spine would not stand out as a huge hotspot if you were to do a finite element analysis on the process? The spine is where brittle books almost always come apart first in my experience. Another thing I have noticed from 1920s pulps is that sometimes what might have been a light crease 80 years ago will fracture today at the lightest touch. This makes me extra concerned about pressing the spine of comic books since the manufacturing/folding process itself may have weakened the fibres. Pressing such books 70 years later, without a formal understanding of what we are doing to the paper, is a little scary to me.

BR, I skipped the details for brevity since I didn't think anyone else would try it. Each interior wrap has four pages. I placed the wrap in front of me as I would if I would read it. I then gently slid my index finger along the spine from top to bottom. Next, I very gently folded the wrap 180 degrees so I was looking at page 2 with the spine to the right. Again, I slid my index finger down the spine trying to apply the same pressure every time. During the folding, I tried to be very careful. At some point, the spine will start to split and a very slight rip would tear it immediately. I counted the folds until the spine was completely separated. I deliberately picked paper that was old and weakened to start with (see pictures) in order to be able to skip the aging oven step. If you use fresh paper, I imagine you might need many more iterations. This is obviously very ad hoc and only meant to see if the technique would have any merit at all. I was surprised the results were so consistent for book 2. I was not aware that there are so many different machines available for automating this test. Given that, I think the way to proceed would be to either get access to such a device, possibly using the paid service you mentioned, or buy one. First, we would need to find out which one works best for the kind of paper we are interested in.

That looks very interesting. Googling "folding endurance tester" gives 2,740 hits, including this one. If the equipment can be bought used for < $1,000, perhaps we could even buy one for the prelim testing? Just another option.

BR: It might be interesting to correlate the pH-value with the result of other experiments, such as the folding I did? If you think it would be worthwhile, I would be glad to mail you samples from the two books I used (I attached pictures above) for comparison.

I agree that the folding experiment is crude, outdated, and not conclusive. In other words, it is a perfect match for the pressing discussion itself. I deliberately don't use the word "debate" since, without scientific data, it is really a philosophical discussion. My hope is that some of the other initiatives will lead to state-of-the art results conducted at a professional lab. However, these test have been around since before CGC was founded and no one in the hobby has taken the initiative to make that happen yet. My own feeling is that a low tech experiment could be of value in the sense that it might raise the urgency of the matter if, for example, the folding experiment consistently were to show a statistically significant difference between pressed and unpressed books. The numbers I got last night suggest that the technique might be accurate enough to detect that. One danger is that, if the experiment were to show no difference, it would be interpreted to give a false sense of security that pressing does not cause damage. That would be an argument for waiting to get professional data. I am just concerned this could be a chicken and egg problem? Personally, I am not too concerned about destructive testing. There are plenty of cheap books from the 1930s in uncollectible condition, like the ones I used yesterday. That risk has to be weighed against the (small) chance that pressing indeed causes long term damage: in that case we are currently witnessing the destruction of a large fraction of surviving Golden Age comics. I do strongly agree with BR that any such testing should be carefully thought through so that books are not destroyed unnecessarily. If we can agree to a set of rules for the experiments, I would be willing to contribute some time to help with the work, whether it be done mechanically or manually.

Thanks for the very interesting link. It seems like it should be very doable to find the answers with these techniques.

BR, thanks for taking this seriously. I should have made it more clear that I certainly am not making any claims that this proves anything. I merely found it encouraging that the samples for the second book were as close as they were and think this potentially could yield some interesting answers given enough samples. Not least since it is the first numerical result that anyone ever has tried to produce to my knowledge(?). Even the handful of tests that I did took several hours of immensely tedious (and painful) work and I just don't have more time to put into this. Hopefully there will be easier methods.

tb, Don't go sticking the Nedor into the Viking oven at home just yet. The aging ovens used to conduct these tests are special pieces of equipment that are temperature and humidity controlled. If we're going to destroy books, let's do it properly, in the name of science! Since a few people expressed interest in this, I decided to sacrifice a few tedious hours on trying the bending experiment that I had read about. This is about as low tech as it gets: I found two very worn Mickey Mouse Magazines from the late 1930s: one with brittle pages and one with cream pages. I picked books with relatively bad pages to avoid the need for an aging oven. I then cut the books in half, removed the staples, and folded each sheet of paper around the spine until it broke. I tried to do the folding as carefully and uniformly as possible, but, obviously, significant variations in the numbers are to be expected. My hope was that the results would fall into a sufficiently narrow range that any significant difference between pressed and unpressed books would show up given a sufficiently high number of samples. None of these samples were pressed: I did this only to get an idea of whether it would make sense to proceed with the cutting-in-half experiment that FFB suggested. The first book was so brittle that only one interior wrap was usable: Upper half: 79 folds Lower half: 72 folds For the second book, I tried 5 interior wraps. Page 1: Upper: 164 Lower: 239 Page 2: Upper: 339 Lower: 297 Page 3: Upper: 315 Lower: 374 Page 4: Upper: 299 Lower: 180 Page 5: Upper: 212 Lower: 271 Though these only are preliminary results, my own conclusion is that this brain dead technique, which everyone with enough patience can perform at home with no fancy equipment, just might be able to detect whether pressing a Golden Age book causes measurable damage to the spine. It would take a large number of samples, though. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, FFB?

That's very interesting. For other publishers, the range of papers used may be much broader. 6 years ago, I took scans of interior pages of a large number of 1930s Mickey Mouse Magazines, many of them file copies that most likely are among the best existing copies. My intention was to try to measure the decay of the paper over a longer period. I still have the books, but unfortunately my scanner died so I am not sure how to make an accurate comparison. The pictures show just a few samples. If you look very carefully at them, you will notice fairly major differences in texture and granularity. And these variations are just within one title for one publisher. A couple of the samples a much brighter than the rest. These are actually from some of the earliest issues from 1935 which were printed on a very high quality paper. I have never seen any of these books with anything but white pages in superb condition.

Thanks for taking the initiative, JP. I think we can pursue this in parallel using several different ideas - nothing is off the board as far as I am concerned. Contacting professionals is one way, but grass roots experiments like yours could make it easier to get experts to listen and help if preliminary results suggest that pressing could cause damage. I like the tone of this thread. It doesn't matter what any of us think about pressing: there are plenty of opinions elsewhere. What's missing is hard data. Without that, there's no premise for the debate.

FFB, Unfortunately, I honestly only have very high grade books in my collection. I only have one or two pre-1945 books that could be destroyed. Finding the right parameters for the baking might require destroying quite a few books and then we'd need additional books to get a meaningful sampling. In terms of the bending, I don't think the article I read required any fancy equipment, although it was over 10 years since I read it (the MIT libraries had a surprising number of journals on this kind of stuff). As I recall, they simply made a sharp crease and then manually folded the paper across that crease until it broke. I am sure we could dig up similiar references and contact the authors for details if we actually were to do this. Even if it is not super scientific, such an experiment could at least give us a rough idea of whether there is more to explore. If we did the experiment and the pressed paper consistent broke twice as fast as the unpressed, it should set off a major alarm bell. On the other hand, if there was no measurable difference it would at least be one thumbs up for pressing.

I get frustrated because I don't think people consider this enough. They extrapolate one book's results to all books. They press a book from 1968 successfully and think it will be similar for a book from 1942. And the scary part for me is that even with all these unknowns out there, it is not slowing down the amounts of Golden Age books being "processed". SDJ: Your last paragraph sums up my own feelings. You seem to understand paper as well as anyone here and I am glad you and FFB have taken the initiative to this thread. I simply don't understand how hundreds of boarders can post tens of thousands of messages about pressing, but when it comes to actually taking the initiative, doing the work, and paying the money required to answer the question scientifically there is dead silence. Honestly, that's why I am reluctant to put any of my own time, which is sparse enough as it is, into this. I do know several professors at UC Berkeley but none associated with the Forest Lab that FFB mentions. Also, knowing what it is like to be on tenure track at a competitive university, I fear it would be difficult to get anyone to help with this project for free. I think the best bet would be to contact authors of some of the papers that FFB mentions. If they won't do the experiments, they should at least be able to comment on how we could conduct such experiments ourselves. FFB: I like your suggestion of cutting the books in halves. The other types of experiments that you mention sound valuable but I am not familiar with the literature and don't know how to conduct them in practice. The one experiment that I suggested seems like something that wouldn't be too hard to do, unless, of course, everyone is too busy talking about pressing over in the General forum.

Thanks for starting this thread. This is the most productive one I've ever seen in terms of answering this question. For several years, I've had an idea to an experiment that I think might decide whether pressing is harmful. I've tried to post it a couple of times but it always gets lost with no replies. Just for context, I was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Computer Science at MIT and also did research related to Materials Science at Stanford. I did not study paper per se, but I read hundreds of research papers on the decay of other materials and also came across some on paper. My results were published as part of an article in Scientific American. One article that I remember in particular was a Swedish study on the strength of paper. They used a technique that appeared to be fairly common. First, the paper was baked in an oven for a long time at a relatively low temperature. This simulated the aging process. Then each sheet of paper was folded and bent back and forth until it broke. The number of times it was bent was counted. Now, suppose you took two 64 page comic books, each made up of 16 sheets of paper. After removing the staples, the two books could be mixed into two new books where book 1 would contain sheet 1, 3, 5, ... from book 1 and sheet 2, 4, 6, ... from book 2. Next, one book could be pressed and the other left as is. Both books could then be baked to simulate aging after the pressing. Finally, the bending experiment would be performed and the number of bends for each sheet would be noted. If the pressing damaged book 1, I would expect the counts to be lower than for book 2, otherwise not. Just an idea. I've thought about doing this myself, but since noone else seemed to care I didn't want to spend time on it. In any case, I very much welcome the discussion on how this question can be answered scientifically.

Great cover BZ! I liked some of the articles in CF and Screen Thrills Illustrated too. I was more of a detective mystery and serial fan than a monster fan but I did enjoy seeing Blaisdells' creations and Ray Harryhausen's models. I also liked the big three movies, i.e., werewolves, vampires and Frankenstein, oh my. Speaking of vampires, I think Mr. Door Tree posted this vampire cover which could easily be one of my favorites. It was cleaned up a bit with photoshop. bb I've been watching "Nosferatu" and "Vampyr" over the last few weeks. Given how many times big apes and robots seem to have appeared in comics in the 1930s, I am kind of curious about what the first appearance of a vampire or first mentioning of Dracula in a comic book might have been?.. I tried a search on the forum but couldn't find an answer.

I love the top sketch. It's fun to see the construction lines that separate the composition into 4 quadrants. The boat was pretty full already so it can't have been easy to fit Scrooge into it. This solution looks very natural and balanced. As I have mentioned in the past, I am not a big fan of the paintings that changed the original composition in order to squeeze Scrooge into them. Not to take anything away from this painting, which is also beautiful, but I personally prefer the earlier versions, like the one Bangzoom posted in his thread a while back. I realize most collectors feel differently since so many requested paintings with Scrooge.