Brock

This is the final issue of Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children... I found this a few days ago, and had never seen it before:

It’s hard to tell. If people get excited, it will rise... but if they get turned off, it will flop.

To each their own, but I’ve always valued the content over the platform.

Some publishers will do anything for distribution outside of the usual Diamond channels.

Does anyone have a sense of how hard Animaniacs 7 is to find?

Nothing quite captures the full allure of the CGC boards experience like having a passive aggressive argument about first appearances three or four times a a day...

That's why I snagged them as well, but I'm not sure...

My understanding (from these boards) is that 13-18 (the "second season"/last six issues) are tougher, and that 17 and 18 are definitely "books you just can't find in the wild."

Here's a couple of pickups this week... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #60 through #70 newsstands in higher grade: and Lost in Space 13-18, mostly in NM.

Just turn your screen the other way...

So, just in case additional details are of interest, I was 12 in 1979. I was starting to get the collector bug, but newsstand distribution was spotty... Howard the Duck #1 and Star Wars #1 were already “legends” among those of us who were into comics, and so getting access to the books we wanted was always a goal. This was the era of Byrne X-Men, and the launch of Micronauts and New Teen Titans, and we were all run collectors who didn’t want to miss an issue. Distribution was spotty, but comics always arrived on the same day (Tuesday, IIRC), but the books wouldn’t be racked until the following day. For a select few, if we showed up Tuesday afternoon or evening, the store clerks would let us go through the books early... there were probably 4 or 5 of us that were allowed to do this. I was younger than the others who were doing this, and probably learned of the opportunity by watching them... We had no influence on what was ordered, and I don’t even know how much influence the stores themselves had on this. The books were a mix of Marvel, DC and Charlton, though generally not other publishers of the day like Archie or Gold Key. Generally, if a store was getting a title, it would get every issue, so we could keep our runs intact, but stores did not carry all titles (hence, the need to build relationships with several stores at once). We would often see titles advertised, but then not be able to find those titles. The DC Implosion was particularly confounding for us, as we had no idea if these many new titles (Vixen? Demand Classics? The Deserter?) were real or not. I would say it was a “good will” marketplace, where store owners and store clerks were dong their best to be helpful, and build long termcustomer relationships. This may reflect that fact most of these stores were small, independent operations, and not part of larger chains.

Are you asking if I’m old? This would be about 1977-1980. By 1980, I’d moved to the big city and discovered comic shops.

That’s really interesting, and makes a lot of sense... but the issue may be even more nuanced. I’m originally from a community that’s so small and so remote that no one even flies over it! But - “back in the day” - the local convenience stores that carried comic books knew that there were a few collectors around, and would hold the comics behind the counter for a day or two before racking them, in order to give the collectors first crack at them. New comic day is not just an invention of the direct market...

I wonder about this one... Perhaps it might be best to avoid using books that "sold out" on day one in the direct market? ASM 252, Thor 337, X-Files 1, etc. sold out so quickly and rose in demand so fast, that everyone scoured the newsstands to scoop up additional copies. That would make for a much higher newsstand survival rate, a near zero return rate, and (perhaps) a skewed set numbers for those books. Just a thought...

In my experience, many of these Warrior books are tough in high grade. This is partly because they’re not only magazines, but (oversized) European magazines, which come with all the storage issues of treasury editions. Coupled with the relative “uncollected” nature of the title, and its limited distribution outside of the UK, these are tough books... but the condition issues, I think, keep average sale prices low. Truly high grade copies will pop at some point, I think, much like #1 has started to do.

There were a lot of problems with how Marvel handled the relaunch of Miracleman, but I think one of the most egregious was that they started with high-priced reprints of 1950s era Marvelman reprints. To me, it makes no sense to try to draw readers into what is often regarded as one of the best-written series of all time by pushing out expensive reprints of dated, mediocre and subpar stories. I think they poisoned the well before the regular series even began. And then they relaunched with a new #1 midway through the series... And then they cancelled that series midway through the story (again)... Perfect recipe for a flop.

I saw there a list of which shops provide this service available? And do they typically charge a fee for this service? And can someone provide a link to or a number for this form?

Marvel’s Generation Next miniseries from the Age of Apocalypse event has checkerboard covers. Ironic that Marvel seems to have more of these than DC in the modern era.

This is interesting, and I think gives us the confirmation that these are likely store stickers... The book pictured is Jungle Twins #1, which had a 15c cover. However, it was also printed with a 20c variant cover. This means it’s unlikely that 15c copies would be stickered by the publisher to ensure a higher 20c price, as the publisher was already printing 20c covers. I can’t say that’s definitive, but it seems pretty convincing. I would say thanks to George for raising this in the first place, though... I think it’s fascinating that some store (chain?) was routinely stickering books with higher cover prices for an extended period (i.e. at least through the 15c to 30c timeframe). The identical sticker font strongly suggests this, which I find unusual and intriguing. Are these concentrated in certain regions?

Does this count? Of course, it's not a DC... But it does seem to me that there have been a few more over the years. None spring to mind immediately, but perhaps we can start a list? I did find a list of all the originals at this site: http://moocowcomics.blogspot.com/2005/07/dcs-checkerboard.html

This makes sense to me.

Did he explain that to the people he met there?

Hello Mister O - This sounds like a great trip, though a little daunting... Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Edmonton all have a ton of great shops, but they also have a ton of great boardies, who would be better positioned than me to rank them. As an aside, Edmonton has a lot of antique malls with decent comic selection. For Regina, my experience is limited, but if you take the alternate route from Edmonton to Winnipeg (rather than Calgary to Winnipeg) you could hit Saskatoon. I thought that Collector's Edge in Saskatoon was a little gold mine of picking, though generally 1980s and later. Thunder Bay is actually a great comic spot too, with two shop that have large back issue selections - Hill City Comics and Cards, and Comix Plus & Music Exchange. As mentioned above, Ottawa is a dead zone for comics. There's a couple of shops, but no big back issue selections to speak of. Although I spend a lot of time in Montreal, it's all work and no play, so I don't know the shops there. In Moncton, there's a great shop called Comic Hunter, which is definitely worth a visit. I'm less certain of the Fredericton shops, but I'll be there in a couple of weeks, and can let you know what's good (and what i haven't picked clean!). If you make it any further east than Moncton, both Charlottetown and Halifax have some great stores. Strange Adventures in Halifax has frequently been called the best comic shop in Canada, though the back issue selection is relatively small (6-8 long boxes at their main location). A couple of caveats... Google is not your friend, sometimes. It will still identify the ghost of comic shops past in some places, telling you about businesses that closed years ago. But where you do know shops are open (and real), a little research can help. Distances are big, and sometimes selection is small. Case in point - and I mean no disrespect to boardie Camper49 above - but while Sudbury is a cool town, and Comics North is a nice little shop, it's pretty small and really carries only some recent overstock in its limited back issue bins. Worth a visit if you're there, but not meriting a big side trip. Happy to share more if it's useful - you can also always feel free to PM me.

That’s about twice as hot as I was thinking...

I had a buyer offer me more than the BIN once. Needless to say, I accepted his offer. I wish there were more like that...