Randall Ries

That has nothing to do with it. Don't try changing the subject. The point is that the people submitting 1,000's of books per month are the ones slowing everything down. Causing TAT to be ridiculously extended. It is what it is. They have no room or reason to cry about it. By extension, they are also the reason books are being damaged and lost. Of course CGC would prefer them to everyone else. Their involvement with the hobby begins and ends with their bottom line. Oh and dictating terms to the collector. But if dealers are going to person_without_enough_empathy about TAT, then they have themselves to blame for it.

I thought he was first Sgt Rocky for one issue. Then Sgt Rock. His first name was Jeremy.

Are you really that helpless and infant-esque you need a refrigerator to do all that? And what happens when all that breaks down? Do you starve? Or call Momma? God DAMN I wonder what your bathroom is doing for you? LOL!

Jesus, yes. I don't need my refrigerator to suddenly become self aware. Wasn't a T-1000 that did me in. It was a Frigidaire-2000. Smothered me with my own potato salad.

Never said there wasn't garbage in "the old days". Where did I write everything off as garbage?

More accurate description. Just because you can't hack it doesn't mean it isn't true. Show me a more self absorbed generation. Please. Hint: You will have to wait until YOUR kids are teenagers.

It's a cover up and a way of avoiding the fact they have no way to approach something with an aesthetic. It's "too busy" It's "too crowded" It's "TMI". It's actually called "I am intimidated by things that aren't spelled out in one sentence, line drawing or sound bite. My attention span is 4 seconds and that's YOUR fault. So, I will pretend to yawn because I am so much more evolved than you, senile old goat." The reality is they aren't as evolved as much as they think they are. Age is a weird thing. I recall telling my uncle I liked KISS when I was 14. He didn't judge per se, he just asked "What about Van Morrison?" Not so much. He just kinda smiled. Now I like VM FAR MORE than I do KISS. Quality lasts. Flash and severe marketing always goes away. I was into Neal Adams Batman as a kid. My uncle was into Walt Kelly's Pogo and Hal Foster and Milt Caniff. I just could not see it. He simply tried to share with me and relate and show me superior. Now, superior is a dirty word. Along with the word elite. Unless the word is applied to a branch of the armed services. Blaaaah. Keep your hired killer and capitalistic world.

Seems as though when movies began to drive the comic books the stories began to stink along with the art. Many movies that are comic related just suck. Every Batman movie sucks. If people could just sit back and see that. We grew up with writers that could actually write and put a sentence together. This cover was one of the last ones that seemed to advertise what we were about to see. It was what we had waited for for over a year to wrap up.

It never occured to me to ever post a selfie on purpose or a picture of what I was just served for lunch. And they called us from the late 1960's and early 1970s "The 'ME' Generation". We had NOTHING on this self centered generation. The love of self has never been greater in human history.And ironically while claiming they "hate" themselves. Poor self esteem. Poor self image problems. Then stop looking at yourselves so much! I KNOW you are but what am I?

Easily.

A scapegoat, eh? How about just getting your head around the idea that flooding CGC with common, frightfully easy to obtain books to grade thousands at a clip consistently is very likely the PROBLEM. Unless we other collectors are sending in all our Bat 1's, Supes 1's and thousands of runs of silver age Spiderman's and Fantastic Four's and are gumming up the works? Well, how about it? As I have said many times: People can spend their money any way they wish. I don't care. And if someone is paying the bills and selling their moderns, well good for them. Beats real work. And when I say that I find the writing in modern comics lacking or outright terrible, there is plenty of evidence to support that. Along with the artwork. But if that's someones thing, if they like substandard, then that's ok by me, too. If that makes me "elitist", then I take it as a compliment. I do have an appreciation of superior craftsmanship and pride of excellence. And know what excellence is, BTW. You want Frank Robbins or Bob Brown or you want Alex Ross and Neal Adams? Particularly in the US, the bar is set so low it seems like most people have no idea what quality is anymore. They only seem to realize it isn't quality when the "deal" they thought they were getting on that outdoor patio furniture was actually because it was made out of garbage and fell apart when subjected to the use they expected they could get out of it. So, maybe someone could provide the actual statistics. If there are statements flying around here like "I have almost 1,000 modern books waiting to be graded and that is MY USUAL MONTHLY NUMBER and I am not alone in this I know MANY people who have MORE submitted and they are angry", I would like to know how many people are sending those in, the numbers v how many people are sending in actual collectible books in the Gold, Silver and Bronze genres? Is someone sending in thousands of silver age books per month consistently? Or bronze? Because I have been puzzled all these months reading about damage to peoples books. That Avengers 4 thing by Phil the Governor set me off more than it did him, it seemed. WHY would a company who prides themselves on grading and customer service suddenly experience the damages and seeming lack of QC alla sudden? Contempt? No. Inept? Don't think so. It's a painstaking process that requires TIME and thought. A certain deftness. It isn't like Laverne and Shirley at the brewery. But that was suddenly focused for me when someone in this thread mentioned now many books they send in per month. And he wasn't alone. Apparently MANY dealers do this and more. Because my point has simply been if MANY dealers are sending in thousands of modern books per month, then sitting on pins and needles and citing "My way of life and my primary income source", they are the ones gumming the works. They want them graded to sell the 9.8's, I have to imagine. To overcharge for books that probably aren't worth what they are asking. Charge $25 for a book that'll never be worth more than $3.99. Versus an Avengers #4 which has actual historic and financial value and is worth more than your monthly submissions by far and in every way imaginable. And my point - if this is actually THE problem - included they should NOT be complaining about TAT. They are the problem. They have created the problem not only for themselves, but for everyone else. Not just high TAT, but the resulting damages inflicted on books actually worth a damn by going too fast in every step and process of grading a book. The point isn't whether they have the right to. Of COURSE they do. It's whether or not they have the right to whine about TAT when their business model apparently is creating the crush of hyper common books being sent in to be graded. It isn't the point of "Well, how do YOU know what will be valuable in the future?" I DON'T. But I can draw a pretty good hypothesis when I go to any LCS and see 40-50 long boxes filled with mediocrity. "How do YOU know they are mediocre?" Because they are sitting there en masse not selling, that's why. And for months. They have been looked over a billion times and they are not selling because no one wants them. They have no VALUE and they never will. As of late, it seems like sellers have been fabricating ways to MAKE useless books worth something. In fact, I found a copy of Punisher War Journal 6 I had stashed away in a box with some othe rgarbage. I thought to myself: Self? This book is in mighty nice shape. It has both Wolvie and Punisher in it. It's Pt 1 of a 3 part "saga". It's worthless. What would make it valuable? OH I KNOW! I'll claim it's the first appearance of the Cheetah pelt! Yeah! A 1st appearance!" No. It's a reach but it's the reach we have been seeing more an more of lately. Maybe LCS should pack them all up and send them to CGC for grading! ALL LCS. Hit them with 10's of thousands of books all at once! CGC, CBCS, PGX and the new grading company's function is to grade. But selfishly (IMO) sending 1,000 books per month of modern drek (I am not the only person using that word) cheats the actual collector and the NON profiteer who has some books that are rare, keys or are actually valuable on the books own merit, not the stupid 9.8. Why in the world would anyone want a run of the mill 2021 book graded? High print run. Meh art and dreadful story. To try to sell to a neophyte? A speculator? You can call it filling a demand and customer service all day long but at the end of the day, it's to push off a "product" by the hundreds or thousands. I am simply saying if that is the case, the dealers who want to sell volumes of books in this speculative "market" ARE the problem with TAT. And TAT - AFAIK - is the issue at hand here. Not MY dfinition of "drek" or substandard art and stories. So, maybe they ought to just suck it up, wait like the rest of us and don't cry about it. Plenty of employment out there. Go find a real job and do that while you wait for your moderns to come back. Because of you guys, I have to wait just as long or longer to get my 8.0-ish Bat 232 to get graded and returned hopefully unharmed. Because backlog means the minions are forced to go faster. And faster means mistakes and mistakes means damage and loss. It's easier to deal with a CGC inflicted scrape on a 9.8 Newsstand Detective 1000 than it is a 7.5 Flash 123 "Flash Of Two Worlds". Why not buy top loaders or simply bag and board and put your drek in those and let the customer decide whether or not to send them in to grade. You are abusing what CGC and the grading companies were meant to do. Barring that, wait like the rest of us. Because of them, the rest of us have to wait and look at the rip in our 9.4 Batman 227 that was NOT there before CGC got their hands on it. .

The great Bill McClintock.

Time for the flex:

I was obviously joking.

I want a book I buy to be graded according to the shape of the entire book. This is the reason I feel grader notes should be included as part of the service. We all have 7.0 books that look 9.0 or better. It'd be nice to know why since the cover looks great both front and back it took it in the pants. Must be something in the book. But the flaws can't be seen.

We are coming up on the 35th anniversary of the publication of "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns". Some of you weren't even born yet or were still pooping green when this masterpiece was sprung on an unsuspecting population. It's impact on the human race cannot be overstated. For this Neal Adams/Denny O'Neil Batman fan, this was a mind hump. In fact, issue 1 had already been released and we were waiting for issue 2 when my LCS told me about the new mini series in "Prestige Format". I was sold by description alone. And of course the 1st printing of issue 1 was sold out. I was really hoping they would stop with the terrible stories now that Miller and Janson had pretty much set the bar and tone for The Batman for the future. But someone missed the meeting and Burton's movie was made. Oh well. Don't have to watch it. I have seen it once. That was plenty. Since then, many "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" tributes and homages have sprung up. This is probably my favorite cover homage giving what I found to be a touching scene in the first book.

Lois went from cute to brute in a relatively short period of time.

"I...er...have a 10 inch Kryptonian...uh...ding-dong."

Possibly the most negative and dark song ever recorded.

Well done. I didn't want to hog all the Wayne Boring weirdness. As a kid, I would cry out in the middle of the night over this exact thing: How in the WORLD can Clark Kent wear his glasses on one side of his face? ALSO! Whoever was writing that strip had a terrible predilection of writing the word "Uh" every other word in Superman's dialogue. Like on the cover of Action Comics 242.

Not to be outdone by Win, we have Wayne Boring. His Superman set the tone for squinchy leg and chest cavity girth. Oddly, his early Action Comics covers were actually semi-normal .

And then there was Win Mortimer. My least favorite Superman artist. When all the heroes gained weight and were in a weird netherworld bewteen gigantism and dwarfism:

I don't think even he would agree with you here. He is my favorite artist hands down and makes mistakes as all artists do. Or tries to cover mistakes with worse mistakes. Now. How about another serving of Batman Squinchy leg?

No such thing as NSFW in my book. I'd post pornography if it made a decent point. And I were allowed. LOL!