Moondog

Welcome back, BZ. Glad you're better.

Thanks, Scrooge! Great run of a over-looked title.

The images in Gerber of All-Picture Adventure 1, All-Picture Comedy 1, All-Picture All-True Love Story 1 and All True - All Picture Police Cases 1 were my Windy City copies. My notes on AP/AT 1 state "VF - Browning". My notes on AT/AP/PC 1 is "NM - Beautiful!" Ernie wanted to shoot my copies because the covers were so perfect. One can tell the difference by looking at the APA 2 which shows tons of creases and wear. I'm not sure who ended up with these but they're nice!

This is really the only good cover in the entire run. Love it!

AND HOW!

Well I can dream, can't I? :wink: Actually I could also add This Magazine Is Haunted #3 to the list as well. Someone blink my envelope, bwahahaha! Excellent pickup! The Frank Frazetta cover illus is what gives it extraordinary value. I love Beware 10! That sure looks like my old copy. Here is my upgrade: Is this one of those Frazetta covers with a hidden signature like FF somewhere?

Back in the late 70s I came across a small cache of mid-50s 3/4 cover remainders. They were in boxes with a sign - a nice package! I got 2 boxes of westerns and 2 boxes of romance books. Apparently retailers would sell the box for 60 cents but I don't know why the sign appears to direct consumers to buy a single copy for a nickel... And the box says 12 comics and the sign says 24... Anyway, I've always loved the sign. It's so purely American!

Had one of these too, Bo. I think Al Stoltz bought it. Had Superman 62 inside.

! I was thinking the same thing and saw your post, Bob!

Right next to this (too bad you can't see it) is Finlay's book plate. How f'ing cool is that!!?

I promise to take more photos the next time.

I spent the afternoon with my old partners in the Chicago Comicon, Bob Weinberg and Larry Charet. We had lunch then spent 2 hours enjoying Bob's incredible pulp and pulp art collection. Here we are surrounded by Finley art in a hallway. Here I am ogling an original Weird Tales Brundage... Here's another shot of the three of us with more art! Art is displayed on every available spot on every wall in every room of the Weinberg home. Bob's collection is a national treasure!

Interesting. I had not heard of the list Maggie Thompson found. Boardie 4Gemworks has done a lot of sleuthing to identify books that seem to have been intended as Four Colors, but that ended up being published either as "nn"s or as issue 1s. Here's the link to his discussion from a few pages back in this thread: Link to list Thanks for the link. Geppi purchased a Dell warehouse in the Chicago area (right from under my nose...) around 1993 or so. I was visiting him in his new Timonium offices a few months later and he says, "Check out what I just got." We go into a storeroom and it's just packed with comics that were just unloaded from the Dell warehouse. Stacks of Ken and Barbies and Beatles were right in front of me. I'm poking around and find a metal file box with index cards. They basically outlined what comics were designated FCs and I mention to Steve that these are the missing FCs. We both go, "Huh. Wow. Cool." We had business to do so I basically forgot about it. Maggie saw it too in a subsequent visit and was much more aware of the significance and basically figured out what was what and wrote it up in CBC. At least this is what I remember... Great information. So, it sounds like an issue of the Comics Buyers Guide from around 1994 might contain Maggie's article. If it's not a full-blown article it may have been a news item.

A recent pickup. Weird Hitler appearance...

Thanks for the link. Interesting reading. Guys have been "jobbing" returns for years. The fellow who sold me the Windy City collection in 1986 was a jobber back in the early 40s. That always struck me as ironic - one of the nicest GA collections in history was ultimately acquired by a guy who once bought returns for a penny and sold them for 2 pennies!

Great moments in romance collecting history! Not surprising that it happened at a show, that's where Michelle did a lot of her buying over the years. A true completist, she cared not for condition particularly, pillaging the boxes for $1 romance. Or course she had a lot of other interests and those genres cost quite a bit more. I believe Dan lives here in San Diego. You've met him, Gary? No, but I did say hi on the phone that day! Some years ago I made a major T/A/M find and helped out quite a few collectors. It was a 90% complete teen humor/romance/humor collection. No super-heroes except for Sun Girl and Blonde Phantom. Gary Watson and his buddy Jim in Ohio got a lot of it. Interesting back story on this collection. A guy and his young daughter would go to shows together in the 70 and 80s. He collected Timely super-heroes/war/horror/sf. He was a completist so he did the same for his daughter. Joker/Millie/Patsy/Girl/Little Lizzie/Love Romances/etc... The guy and his wife get divorced - very contentious. The wife throws out all of the dad's comics but not the daughters! So the collection was intact until I bought it.

Interesting. I had not heard of the list Maggie Thompson found. Boardie 4Gemworks has done a lot of sleuthing to identify books that seem to have been intended as Four Colors, but that ended up being published either as "nn"s or as issue 1s. Here's the link to his discussion from a few pages back in this thread: Link to list Thanks for the link. Geppi purchased a Dell warehouse in the Chicago area (right from under my nose...) around 1993 or so. I was visiting him in his new Timonium offices a few months later and he says, "Check out what I just got." We go into a storeroom and it's just packed with comics that were just unloaded from the Dell warehouse. Stacks of Ken and Barbies and Beatles were right in front of me. I'm poking around and find a metal file box with index cards. They basically outlined what comics were designated FCs and I mention to Steve that these are the missing FCs. We both go, "Huh. Wow. Cool." We had business to do so I basically forgot about it. Maggie saw it too in a subsequent visit and was much more aware of the significance and basically figured out what was what and wrote it up in CBC. At least this is what I remember...

This was my favorite cover of all time until Tales of Suspense 80.

I got mine in a drug store/ice cream shop on the east side of Joliet!

I think it's important to point out a slight error in the original post. These were not "affidavit" returns. Originally the newsstand was required to clip off the logo and return it for credit with their distributor. Subsequently it was decided to strip off the entire front cover (like yours). Finally, sometime in the 1980s (I believe), distributors were required to provide publishers only an affidavit that stated how many copies were sold and how many were returned from newsstands. They were then instructed to destroy the unsold copies. This practice led to the infamous Mile High II collection.

We had the same thing in Chicago when I was a kid

These missing 4-Colors - are these issues that were originally slated to be 4-Colors that ended up as their own title? They fill in the gaps in the later 4-Color issues? If so, is there a definitive list someplace? I believe I read something in CBG a long time ago that Maggie reported on finding the list in a file copy buy that Geppi made. I saw the list too when I was visiting Steve in Baltimore, but never had the time to do the research.

Well, at the high tide point, out of a finite romance universe of 5,846 books I had 3,774 (Timely/Marvel/Atlas consisted of 556 issues, and I had 312.) Close enough for government work, as they say - and, in a world of limited resources, close enough for me. That number of 5,846 is my reckoning, btw - someone else might figger it differently. My understanding is that at least one of these three people had completed the task at some point in their lives: Michelle Nolan, Jim Vadeboncoeur, or Dan Stevenson. Michelle found one of Dan's last wants at my table in Chicago a few years ago. It was fun when she phoned him from my booth.

Ooooh. An interesting question. First one that comes to mind on top of that list is The Black Knight, 5 issues, all great covers and superb content. Yellow Claw too, Michael. Great Maneely, Severin and Everett covers. But my fave is Hillmen's Pirates.