Surfing Alien

On 5/22/2024 at 9:41 PM, OtherEric said:

It was retitled for the book version.

 

I do have to say, the contents were pretty good for a Fantastic, the Lieber novel and a Bloch short story 

P.S. and a pretty amusing letter from a young "Bob Silverberg" of Brooklyn, NY

On 5/22/2024 at 10:17 PM, Darwination said:

I feel like I recognize the upper half of that cover with the female matador.  I checked it against a one-shot magazine from 1956 called True Woman's Aventures I remember, but it's a different painting:

https://www.pulpinternational.com/pulp/entry/Cover-and-scans-from-True-Womans-Adventures-magazine-circa-1956.html

 

 

There's a high likelyhood that it was re-used somewhere as almost all Universal Publishing covers were. The bottom photo cover was re-used on a Beacon Book for sure, my copy is buried right now but I'm sure of it. The top might not have been on a Beacon due to it's seeming unsuitability for sleaze  but those thrifty em-effers would have re-used it somewhere.

On 5/23/2024 at 2:01 AM, PopKulture said:

John Gunnison has it as Belarski in his Pulp Art Masters book. In my corner of the world, his opinion carries substantial weight. 

Ward passed away in February 1945, so there's also that 

https://www.pulpartists.com/Ward.html

I really love this one, one of his best Gold Medals imho

On 5/21/2024 at 1:35 PM, Darwination said:

Barye Phillips is growing on me, the brush work is really rough, but those colors

 

Barye was "The King" to his peers for many reasons, one of which was his speed and ability to capture enough detail in an image that would translate down to a paperback cover and look great, without wasting time on too much detail that would be wasted when reproduced. That said, his spare style was still a thing of beauty as any study of his original paintings will show.

I've always remarked that it is amazing what he could do with a few squiggly lines. A thing that he did over and over again was the use of a few curved or squiggled black lines to suggest outlines and details on the color fields he painted as the main outlines of his images. It is apparent in her hair and skirt and the pocket of her shirt in your "Red Runs The River". He rarely outlines his figures because his lines of color were so natural.

My pal Ruben owns what is arguably the most famous (and best) 1950's Gold Medal noir originals, the cover to Gil Brewer's "Satan Is A Woman" He has it on the wall next to his working desk and any time I've video chatted with him I ask him to move over so I can see it better

The colors, as you mentioned, are amazing, but I love Phillips' brush work, it is almost impressionistic. He got so much across with a little wash of color, it is very deceiving to the eye when shrunk down to a book cover. Of course, his composition was impeccable as well. Joan Turner's placement over her vanquished victim is one of the all time fridge magnets.

Fortunately, he was famous enough in his time that there is plenty of bio material available on him, although it is crazy that there is no coffee table book on him and his work. It's estimated that he painted over a thousand covers in his short 20 years painting pb covers. McGinnis was more prolific but it took him 60 years to do what Phillips did in 20.

Here's his bio from Paperbacks U.S.A., which also mentions his ability to vary his style - another testimony to his greatness. He was able to emulate whatever the directors wanted him to, which explains further why he got so much work.

On 5/20/2024 at 9:12 PM, OtherEric said:

People ask crazy money for that analog.  Not sure if they get it, but they definitely ask.

I think every 1970's issue of Analog printed has been preserved somewhere since the day they were bought so there's a bit of relative scarcity for the more desirable ones but any can still be found randomly in the wild. That's part of the beauty of vintage pb/digest collecting though. The 70's & 80's stuff is still wide open.

Cool digests  I still need "Come And Be Killed" and "Navy Romances" 

On 5/19/2024 at 8:07 AM, Bookery said:

(though I'm working on it with a 1500-page start so far... caveat... it will never be finished in my lifetime, so don't expect it will turn up soon wherever fine books are sold!).

You could lease out your work in progress to CGC for zillions of dollars

On 5/19/2024 at 8:07 AM, Bookery said:

The argument is that paperbacks aren't all that valuable, but does anyone really think that copies of vintage stuff currently valued as $10 wouldn't soar to $100 if in a slab if graded 9.4 or above?  How valuable would those Jim Thompson books suddenly become?  

Beyond that, as a very active buyer in today's market, there are already hundreds of vintage paperbacks that top $100 in high grade. It's a way different market than when the last guides came out 20-30 years ago.

On 5/18/2024 at 7:31 PM, Darwination said:

That Mansion of Evil is hella cool, btw

👍 Considered a cornerstone book in any vintage pb collection since collecting them began...

On 5/18/2024 at 7:31 PM, Darwination said:

The appropriate frame. 

This.

On 5/18/2024 at 6:20 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Indeed. Trading cards look good in their little cases. This just smacks of wanting to get into the market quickly before being ready with a product specific holder. 

To be fair, these are kind of one-offs. There has been no announcement or directive, but rather, I'm just showing that, short of offering a pb/digest "service", they will grade anything that fits the description if you pay for it.

And it should end speculation as to whether they would grade pb's like the "Old Book-man" G-Vg-F standard. It's obvious from both pulps and these examples that, if they were to offer a "pb/digest" service, they would employ the same grading standard they use for all other paper.

On 5/18/2024 at 6:08 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I agree. That Green Lantern is a beauty but looks completely lost in that ugly great holder. All I see is oceans of skew-whiff, empty plastic. CGC would be better holding off until they have suitable cases to match the dimensions of the collectibles they seek to add to their ever growing portfolio. 

That one is particularly offensive, as they put it in a magazine holder  The others look like comic book holders and a little less crazy but if they made the whole thing the size of a modern or silver sized comic book, I could see them looking pretty snazzy.

Ok, I deliberately made that a provocative statement to generate a look see, but it's actually true, and been true for a while. It has been brought up a bit in the paperbacks thread, and just recently in the "Thrilling, Amazing etc. Pulps" thread, so, instead of continuing to bomb those threads, I figured a I'd make a separate one where anyone could drop their in without judgment, or bombing other threads.

This copy of RSG that was recently auctioned at Heritage was a factor in the discussion:

So I'll submit these to you here, for your perusal, to declare that CGC does, indeed slab Digests and PB's, and would likely slab any paper mag or novel and grade it to the comic standards. just like they have done with pulps.  A lot of room for bargains in the mid to higher grades considering the vast majority of pbs and digests are listed for sale in the useless G-VG-Fine "Old Book-man" grading system that kind of mirrors where comic books were in the early 1970's.

My caveat to all that is, and has been, that the cases are waaaay to big for the format and downright silly looking at the pb level. That said, I still would go for grading if they tooled up a nice unisex slab size that would work for both digests and paperbacks, with the outside dimensions about the size of a modern comic book. Then they would fit in a regular comic storage box and have lots of other storage cost savings attached, to make it more cost friendly and useful to us poor PB collectors

On 5/14/2024 at 1:06 PM, waaaghboss said:

They're certainly getting closer, digests are already on the menu and cgc is hungry 😢  saw this on HA

Yup, I posted that back in the paperback thread when it went up for auction. It's the same copy that a prominent comic dealer had on their website, raw, a while back. 

On 5/17/2024 at 11:33 AM, Robot Man said:

I didn’t know they did that. I checked the census and it is the only one. Submitted as a comic book? I am considering my high grade copy that includes the rare, usually missing, page 2. Don’t know how to value it though.

CGC has been grading digests and paperbacks for quite some time. I'm pretty sure they'll grade anything you send them that will fit in a current holder. The problem is, the capsule is too big and they look a bit ridiculous. I'd submit some if they made a holder that was about the size of a comic book, but I suspect they're not ready to tool up for that.

On 5/17/2024 at 11:04 PM, Darwination said:

On the Cameos, how much do collectors pay attention to the edition number?  Like the Girl Hungry I posted over in digests was like the first of three editions.  I didn't realize there were three printings at the time (and it's high grade anyways), but I never would have known the reprints follow each other so closely.  I'm not sure the fact ones a reprint would bother be too much if it's in top shape

True High Grade is so rare on all the sexy digests, that they are all sought after in high grade. 1st numbering/printing is a preferred want for me but I'm an old fogey collector who appreciates the Canon - although sometimes 1sts are not available and maybe irrelevant to CGC-cover-only- is- the-Bible-Type cover collectors