Randall Ries

https://www.facebook.com/jdouglas33/posts/10164757559960234

Ah. Might have included the grading notes plus a shot of the back cover in the 1st place, yes? Nevertheless. Should have been a 7.0 green.

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/07/17/20-superheroes-you-probably-didnt-know-were-lgbt/

I THINK I have two of these or perhaps 2 of #7 signed like these. I hadn't seen this particular placement before. His was usually a sprawling signature.

Is Hawkeye the Aquaman of the Marvel world? Maybe not. I remember reading Avengers stories in the 1970's and Hawkeye stood out for awhile. Wasn't he Goliath for awhile? Memory....failing.

This. It's one of the reasons I bought a nice, raw Bat 222. The Neal cover, yes. Always. But also the fact that Paul McCartney won't live forever. Neal won't either. I suppose it's the same gamble as buying because of a movie rumor or an actual appearance in a movie of a minor character now a major character. The difference is that the movie may or may not do well. And ultimately will fade from view a bit. WW 1984 was a bomb and people won't forget it. And Gal Gadot alienated a lot of Jews. But McCartney AND Neal will remain deceased forever. BUT! Like yourself, I buy what I want to buy. Because I like it or want it. Watch Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade again. When Panama Hat tossed the envelope of money over his shoulder flippantly to Fedora and his diggers. That's how I am. Toss the money and don't look back. Look at the object with love and pride of possession. It's a great 3 seconds of that film. Really subtle.

I wish Smart Money would shut its damned mouth about buying raw as well.

I was just reading Swamp thing 10? 12? In it, one of the letters to the editor was complaining about issue 7 being lame. Or whatever word we used in 1973 to describe "lame". I read this in 1973. And reread it a thousand times since Was the first Swamp book I went after in the 1-10 series when I began collecting again. Was fascinated with the way "Alec" finally got fed up with Batman and knocked him on his Batass.

I'm not seeing it from this photo. It looks as thought it got all Hell pressed out of it but it doesn't appear to me about to pop. I have seen staples where I could see daylight between the spine of the book and the arc of the staple. Not to be confused with the arc of the covenant. But the staple still had a good grip on all the pages.

By setting a reserve? I was thinking along the lines of a normal selling situation. Perhaps even at auction - as we saw last year - two or three potential winners drove the bidding up into the stratosphere for common, well populated books because they were 9.8's. A 9.8 Bat 227 sat on Metro's site for well over a year. When someone bought another 9.8 at auction ($40k? Something like that) Metro revised their ask from $9k (Unreasonable price to begin with) to $30k overnight. The high offer on that book at Metro was $7k-ish. Still is. It wasn't selling for $9k. No-one else has bid and yet there it sits at $30k to this day. Greg Reece upped his ask price as well for his 9.4 overnight. And Metro is trying to sell a signed 9.6 for $6k. And there they sit. The difference between a 9.6 and a 9.8 is negligible. I have never had an offer accepted at Metro even though they say they accept offers. Accepting an offer only seems to mean "You can offer whatever you like. Doesn't mean we will accept the offer." At least, 2020 was a weird year and as yet I haven't seen prices drop very much for keys. But if 2020 was an outlier year, then ask prices should have settled back down to what they were basically before COVID. Maybe they have and I haven't noticed. But if auction prices are determining a books real value, then a lot of collectors are left out in the cold. It used to be a books rarity was its desirable quality. When 9.8 Transformers #1 start selling for 10's of thousands, then it's the seller determining the values if buyers are willing to pay that much for mediocrity. Then again, I may be confusing a collector with a speculator. And speculators shoot the collector in the face when they do it. When I start seeing speculators spending 10's of thousands for 1980's Gold Key Looney Tunes books, I'll start collecting stamps and coins again.

The only correct name for this lounge is Crewman Six Social Club. Crewman Six - as you may know - were the red shirts on Star Trek. The first to get vaporized. The first to get taken by a salt monster. The first to get executed by space Nazis. The first on the firing line. The misfits. The Nomads and the silent genius'.

The point is to have it NOT heavily moderated. That causes another dimension of stress. Do you know that when a cop is introduced into traffic flow, accidents increase by a large %? And there is such a thing as dud topics. COVID is polarizing. Vaccines are polarizing. It's either you are going to or your not. Both have consequences. Data suggests those who aren't vaccinated are the ones dying by a gigantic margin. Nothing really more to say about it. I am the forever pessimist. But the lounges I have seen are successful, not always tranquil and not for the sensitive or the thin skinned. Most importantly, they are not governed by moderators like a nursery school. Moderators are members too and can certainly join in and usually do. But moderating a free forum usually does more harm than good. Don't ask me how or why, but lounges - the ones I have been in - work.

Goth books, Goth food...

We all have one of those. Irrelevant. And now - since there is a newly created lounge - beside the point.

Huh. Usurper. Just call it "The Lounge" and be done with it.

Maybe you don't speak for everyone.

Thanks! I believe it would take some pressure off. I think it's prudent.

Agreed. I think a lot of comments are hilarious. Also a lot are just ridiculous and not worth commenting on. It would never occur to me to run tattling to a moderator like a 4 year old girl. Grow some hair and roll your eyes or have a laugh but keep moving. We are all adults. Learn to cope. I have supervised landscaping crews and given grown men their instructions. They only go from instructions to orders when someone questions them and can't hack the answer. I never liked it to get to that point. Never liked telling anyone what to do. Do the job with your style, but get the job done.

Well, if you are going to "limit" the topics, then of course it would be tough to make it actually free flowing. It's beyond well intended, the idea. It actually works and has for decades. I myself used to pilot a music trading page. One of my caveats was "feel free to talk about whatever you like. Religion, politics, sex, violence, love, hate, movies music. I don't care. An I have instructed the mods to stay off peoples backs about it." It worked just fine. We respected one another and trusted one another enough to let people have their say or share their observations. I only removed one person for an unrelated matter. He revealed the sites name publicly and it was a private site. No one needed to know about it. Security first.

"Much"? For you? I find that hard to believe. Nevertheless, it illustrates my point. You - on that site - have a choice as to whether to participate or not. As much or as little as you want to. Your judgment of "much" has no bearing or validity. It is "much" for you. But not to others who enjoy it. And there lies the rub. When others feel that something is over-the-top but go one step further and inflict their opinion onto others and in fact solicit support from moderators or even owners of a site to get their way. And here - by intimating "much" - is a veiled attempt to kill an idea before it is even tried. While you are one person who feels it is "much", there are hundreds that DON'T. I'd love to know the name of the music site. Feel free to PM me the name. I'm a member of a lot of them.

Well, lounges aren't "unmoderated". They still fall under the auspices of "the rules" but the idea is to be able to create topics or threads that are beyond the basics like talking about music on a music site. The lounge is a lounge. I have rarely seen people "hate" one another in a lounge. Because? It's understood that when you go into the lounge to hang out, it's not "anything goes" but it's looser and more random. The warning is there. Enter at your own risk and don't cry if you can't hack it. The lounges on those sites have been there for 20+ years and work quite well.