Surfing Alien

I tried searchimg this thread for this book but find it impossible on the phone to narrow down a search to this thread.

It's a pretty crazy Flessel cover as it's later than his Adventure stuff and  the victim is obviously Tojo himself, one of the most racist mass murderers of all time. I don't understand why it's not labeled a Tojo cover? It was in my Overstreets??? 

On 5/14/2024 at 9:09 PM, Darwination said:

The low prices are part of the joy of paperbacks!

Beautiful Skull cover from 1943. $10 in high grade. Might even be racist  A cultural artifact for sure.

On 5/14/2024 at 7:47 PM, Darwination said:

Maybe a paperback would fetch more if you labelled it "racist octopus burned alive by flamethrower"

 

 

The comic didn't have to be named such to be worth a lot, it's just the sad fate of the paperbacks to be worth less (not worthless!)  

I shared this on Have a Cigar but figured I'd link it here. I still have some comics. To fit in the context of this thread, I'll just say that if this was a paperback it would probably only be worth fifty bucks

On 5/14/2024 at 9:55 AM, johnenock said:

A real nice copy. The lady on the cover looks like an elf:

 

I really like how Bischoff's stylized approach works for Fantasy & Sci-Fi. This was a landmark collection for Bantam.

On 5/12/2024 at 7:28 AM, jimjum12 said:

Somebody had a Jack Daniels sandwich for lunch at the Printers'. GOD BLESS ... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Probably not as common to find as with comics since the extra cover wasn't stapled to the book like with a comic book. These extra covers probably fell away and were discarded.

On 5/10/2024 at 9:36 PM, OtherEric said:

I'm getting close on my Kurtzman collection.  Complete runs of Two Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat, every MAD he worked on, both issues of Trump, I still need a couple Humbug issues, complete run of Help!, Jungle Book, and a complete run of Little Annie Fanny.

He did a lot of small work in the 1940's that would probably be tough to put all together but you might as well get as many as you can if you find them for the right price

On 5/10/2024 at 2:17 PM, OtherEric said:

Today's addition is a flat-out classic that I don't recall seeing in the thread before, although I might just not remember it:

Don't think I posted this awesomeness in this thread but I did sell my undercopy in one of the sales threads. A classic  Kurtzman piece 

On 5/10/2024 at 5:48 PM, Black Cactus said:

I’ve been working on collecting the Spade Classic series from Star Distributors. It’s gay sleaze from the early 1970’s, and most of the covers feature black & white illustrations by Gene Bilbrew.

I was attracted to the monochromatic work, but did immediately notice it was not Bilbrew’s better work.

It helped me make the connection that these books were published between 1972-1974, the last two years of Bilbrew’s life (he died in 1974) when he was struggling with substance abuse and the collapse of his industry. I thought that was an interesting dynamic in regard to this series. It may have been some of Bilbrew’s last paperback cover work.

There are other cover artists snuck in, and I suspect the publisher asked them to copy Bilbrew’s style. 

I’d love the forums help in identifying which covers are Bilbrew and which are not, if you all don’t mind looking at a bunch of dick bulges. There’s no explicit nudity. 

This is a pretty small group, you're probably much more likely to find people with enough Bilbrew and other hard sleaze artist knowledge on the Facebook "Vintage Paperback and Pulp Forum" group. There's 40k people in that group.

Pretty good for an incomplete. Of course, this is all about the cover so may have to get mine entombed 

On 5/9/2024 at 8:26 PM, Pat Calhoun said:

super score: thanks for posting the great BC

A cornerstone run of any collection. If you ain't got USA Phantoms, you ain't got a vintage pb collection 

On 5/9/2024 at 8:31 PM, PhantomLadyKiller said:

Trimming never goes purple, but it makes me turn purple, even when I was a kid I hated resto. My father liked to tape pbs, I liked to peel it back off when I lobbied him for the book for my collection.  (I may qualify as the youngest vintage pb collector of all time). Resto is resto, grrr.  I saw a cgc 7.0 blue label with trimming noted.  I dont even trust that all trimming on pulps can be caught with their system.  Micro trimming has been applied to pulps just like comics, it slips past the most hardened veterans with gimlet eyes.  Unless you truly loathe it, and then it jumps out at you like a hairy bug trying to play dead in the corner...

Trimming is not resto. It is destruction of the book. My peeve is that CGC said in early releases that trimming would keep grades in the Blue VG range but not noted as restoration and now there's higher grade blue labels with trimming noted. I guess it's part of the "Learning Curve" we'll hear about.

On 5/8/2024 at 1:25 PM, jimjum12 said:

I still don't think it was Edward, but I did bid on this one. GOD BLESS ... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Here's a better scan of my copy. It's the scan we used for my Raymond Johnson article in Illustration

It's a masterpiece imho. Love that brick work and the way they sliced up "Ripper" among *ahem* other things...

On 5/7/2024 at 1:09 PM, Darwination said:

The Croydons have aren't so polished but have their own special look.  My fave is the Scandals at a Nudist Colony.  I knew the Immoral Models was a cut above (as far as artistry), looked it up and it's Lou Marchetti. The redhead is great, but the schmoe in the background isn't nearly as well done.

Hey, that "Schmoe" is Lou Marchetti! 

They do have a charm, and are devils in high grade. Also a very twisty run, going from all L.B. Cole WWII crime digests, to a run of L.B. Cole romances, including 4 pb sized, then to a long run of ultra thin paper cover digests that include rare  Whittington originals and some wild JD books, highlighted by many Marchetti covers. One of my absolute favorite vintage pb runs. Nobody should seek them out though, there's nothing to see here