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Dr. Love
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Posts posted by Dr. Love
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Besides being the most prolific romance publisher - and not by a small margin either, nearly double the output from DC - no other publisher was as brazen at cross promotion as Charlton.
BUY MY BOOKS!
from swimming pools - in ground "Buster Crabbe" regulation size for goodness sake!
to paid trips to California Disneyland - or NYC!
would you like your own Real Live PONY?!
hows about a Treasure Chest, matey?
or the vague but impresive WIN 8000 PRIZES
- mustang33guy, Yorick, PopKulture and 11 others
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The Charlton crew was something else. All mobbed up, they say. Certainly, those with Italian heritage were very much at home. John Santangelo, the big boss. Al Fago, D*ck Giordano, Rocco Mastroserio, Sal Trapani, John D'Agostino, Vincent Alascia, Art Cappello. Vinny Colletta. And the strange one, the outcast - Steve Ditko.
Trust me when I tell you there's a lot about Charlton you may not know. For instance:
"At approximately 10:00 a. m., Friday, August 18th, 1955, a natural disaster struck that changed everything for the staffers at Charlton, and even threatened to close the company's doors down permanently. The aftermath of Hurricane Diane cut a swath of destruction through the Carolinas, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and, of course, Connecticut. Eleven inches of rainfall caused massive flooding that claimed the lives of hundreds of victims in the Connecticut Valley area. All 129 acres of the Charlton grounds were submerged in 18 feet of water. $300, 000 worth of paper inventory, mats, comics art work, and plates, among other things, were destroyed by the flood in minutes.
"When the flood came through," Burton N. Levey, cousin to co-owner Ed Levy and Charlton executive, said, "we had to get on top of the building because the water was rising, and a helicopter landed on the roof and took us off—that's how I got out of there! I watched my car float down the river."
"The press was entirely underwater, the building was underwater," Joe Gill said. "[Artist] Maurice 'Reese' Whitman had to be taken off the roof by helicopter. Cars were washed away. When the smoke cleared, Santangelo called a meeting of the artists and myself. He was an inspired speaker in his broken English, and said he was going to carry on (though, in the meanwhile, the guy had gotten umpteen dollars in flood relief from the government, for free; this was an enormous boost for him), but he couldn't continue to pay us the same 'high rates. ' He said that we could all continue working at half of what we had been working before. I was dropped to two dollars a page [a quarter of what the major companies were paying at the time]."
According to the Oct. 1955 issue of Newsdealer, the springing-back of Charlton was "a story of employee personal contribution which defies the imagination." The article says how the employees and community dug Charlton out of the wreckage, ultimately running the presses again in ten days, though staffer Giordano doesn't recall "it being that quick." Nor did Burt Levy: "It was a disaster and it took us a long time to get going again." "No," Ed Konick said, "it took several months to recover; we were operating but using outside printers. It took a long time to clean up that mess." Despite notice that the company maintained "a full payroll," there is no mention of either Santangelo's disaster relief money, or the pay-cut employees suffered.
"If I didn't write fast, I wouldn't be able to get along under that price structure," Gill said. "So, we were working for those rates, and the artists were only getting $13 a page. What could you expect from an artist with a wife and child, and how much time and care could you expect him to put into a page? There was the pride of doing good work, but it was impossible to do our best work consistently over a period of time. I did a lot of garbage, and some good work—not much, but some. Charlton got a helluva lot more than they paid for out of me. People who are critical of Charlton artists and writers have to remember that the price structure of the company was a big factor." Giordano said the regular rate for art—pencils and inks—was $13 a page. "After the flood, it was halved to $6. 50; later it went up to $10; later still back to $13."
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I'm not sure, Ron. I can see mid 200's for this book, but it's gotta be two guys throwing punches? A bit of a head scratcher.
pros:
Romance ON FIRE
well, given MCS' hard grading, it seems clear that if graded it would be the highest graded (vs the sole 5.0 at present).
It's a #1 in a decent sized 10 year run of 45 issues. #1's get the bump, always.
It's a Charlton. Sooner or later the runt of the litter gets its day in the sun, rotation wise. Early Charltons are very very rare in grade - which for Charlton, means Fine and better.
$430 is yesterday's $130? But 5 years ago you couldn't get that for this book, except maybe from me if it was a VF, not a F.
cons:
It's a Charlton! Poor art, poor manufacturing. Girodano's not high on the collectible artist list.
It's post code. But then, all Charltons are post code, except for True Life Secrets and Pictorial Love Stories.
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MCS auction, graded as Fine went for $430
not what I would call shocking, but instead things that make you go...wait, what?
- pmpknface, Point Five, adamstrange and 3 others
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On 1/11/2024 at 11:34 AM, agamoto said:
It reminds me of what Mike Nelson once said about the best restoration he's ever seen, and that's the restoration they didn't catch.
Have you tried reaching out to Mike Nelson about your concerns?
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On 1/13/2024 at 9:43 AM, adamstrange said:Drawn by unknowns like Kubert, Toth, and Kane, what can you expect?
not to mention that wannabe Infantino
he's the worst
- adamstrange, Kevin.J, steelcity and 5 others
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On 1/12/2024 at 1:51 PM, PopKulture said:
Strangely, the first issue had the DC logo, and then it didn’t for a long time. Then they carried a National logo but not the Superman ‘DC’ logo we’re accustomed to; instead, it read “National Romance Group” with a heart in the bullseye logo instead of the DC initials. I think it was well into the 12-cent era when the title started carrying the regular logo.
April 1957 as a matter of fact
As far as the distinctive DC look - we can thank Ira Schnapp for that.
Check this out, boys, it's fascinating - The Visionary: the Life and Times of Super DC Designer IRA SCHNAPP
https://web.archive.org/web/20070107230611/http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/372/
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another of the infamous board Rorschach tests
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recently, like last month, achieved the sole high grade by .5 (on the interior cover)
a book that's not known for it's cover, and is pretty well represented (12) in half grades down to 5.5
HA bringing the heat, and then some. Congrats to the seller and buyer!
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Two fighting it out for this highest grade
HA does bring the heat
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The refutation of physical damage to the book, twice and strongly, on the seller's part is the most concerning aspect of this kerfuffle. Either it was a bald faced lie or the eyes wouldn't see what the mind didn't want to see.
Hit the bricks it is and good riddance.
- KCOComics, thehumantorch, Dr. Balls and 2 others
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Why take possession of the slab? You can see an image of it elsewhere. For that matter, why even need to see the image of the specific book? You know what the book looks like in general.
Let's day trade the grade instead. And as long as we're doing that, options are reasonable as well - puts and calls - the right to buy or sell a particular grade of a particular book at a particular price.
Just like acorns embody the possibility of the oak tree, once slabs were created all of the above became possible outcomes as well.
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On 12/30/2023 at 1:56 AM, COI said:
You guys remember when pressing in and of itself was controversial? Most of you probably don't. 15 to 20 years later, the lesson I learned is that the actual contents of a slab is far less important than what's written on the label. It was inconceivable to me back then that the market would ever be okay with paying a significant premium for some '9.6' when there was a real possibility that the '9.6' in question was sitting in a '9.0' holder just weeks prior. How quaint, right?
I'm not saying that this situation is analogous to pressing; what I am saying is that the pressing scandal and subsequent change in paradigm surrounding the practice is evidence that the vast majority of people trading in slabs will do the mental gymnastics required to move past this scandal as well, because focusing on the label and ignoring the contents of the slab is the entire game. How else can you explain the market adapting so easily to pressing, or forgetting that there may be tons of unaccounted for 'Ewert Specials'. OR for that matter, the very fact that there is a premium for WHITE pages, or the sometimes obscene price spreads at those arbitrary 9.6-9.9 levels on common-as-dirt books?
The label is all that matters. No one is going to stop buying Hulk 181s because there is some unknown percentile chance that some of them may be qualified books in universal holders. I'm not saying this is good or bad, right or wrong, nor am I saying I agree with the mindset, but that's where we are. No one cares about what's in the slab; what they care about is that the cert number on their book isn't on a list. Some number of provable examples will surface and be taken care of, based on the efforts of CGC and some motivated collectors, then the 15, 25, 35 percent-ish of terminally online buyers who are even aware that this happened at all will move on.
The community isn't going to sacrifice the golden goose because of a bunch of missing value stamps, tattooz, or over graded Mark Jewelers copies, especially in the context of a market where the grading company under scrutiny holds 90%+ of the market share, just as they didn't sacrifice the goose over violated principles in the pressing scandal, or violated books in the Ewert scandal.
Just so. Red pill yourself, this thing we think of as a book, once slabbed, is just an image and then became just a number. Like the idea of money itself, a dream within a dream!
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The opening scene from Ep 1 takes a bit less than 3 minutes and is absolute Reacher perfection. Everything about it embodies everything about Reacher. Everything they wrote after that scene does not. The supporting characters in that scene - the shop gal, the victim, the victim's son, the bad guy - all lean into who Reacher is and how he operates in the world. The writers know how to deliver peak Reacher - if they want to.
They've got lightning in a bottle with Ritchson and appear determined to muck it up. Keep it simple - he's a simple simple man, that's the appeal - solitary, strong, violent, loyal, honorable, intelligent but non verbal - and the essence of the Reacher story is he stumbles on a thread end and pulls on it as the Alpha Protector, unflinchingly follows where it leads. Like the opening in Ep 1.
And I don't want to see Reacher run. Tom Cruise runs. Reacher. Doesn't. Run. If you get this, you'll get him.
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Reducing my Fawcett romance lot on page 2 from $125 to $100
- Funnybooks, DavidTheDavid, skypinkblu and 2 others
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I'm a Snyder fanboy generally, but incredibly and sadly I must tell you this movie blows. Your milage may vary but if you dig it then we live in alternate universes.
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nice Fawcett romance lot, F to VF -
$125(what they cost) shipping included within USA, all proceeds to Jim -now reduced to $100SOLDRomantic Story #9
Romantic Western #2, Crowley
Sweethearts #72 (52 pg)
Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler
- Funnybooks, crassus, Point Five and 4 others
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On 12/21/2023 at 2:28 PM, Badger said:Flash #125 $250 includes shipping USA. Add $25 for international. All proceeds to JimJum.
take
- Funnybooks, skypinkblu, jimjum12 and 2 others
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GOD BLESS ...
What are the rarest romance comics?
in Golden Age Comic Books
Posted
Yup. Colletta's fashion sense (funky patterns, as per Point Five!) was more in tune with the times than Baker's, who was more a 40's type of guy. And two of Colletta's "tells" are how he drew his background elements, clouds and plant life. But the swipe for Romantic Secrets 20 - or homage as I prefer to think of it - from Romantic Marriage 24 is pretty clear.
Also remember Baker passed away in August of 1959 and his work output was greatly reduced that year. "...yet it seems at this point, Baker was only doing a routine job, without much attention to detail, possibly on account of his ill health as well as of the meager wages that Colletta was paying him." (Art of Glamour, 2012)
So this is the only Charlton cover that made it into the Art of Glamour checklist, as indexed by Alberto Becattini and Jim Vadebonocoeur Jr. For what it's worth, I agree.
Romantic Secrets 19 (1/59) - inked by Colletta