Taylor G

Not collectors of films, but interesting depictions of collectors in films. I particularly like Alan Mowbray in That Hamilton Woman: Things do not end well for him, he is left shattered after his collection is lost at sea: Another interesting one is Paul Scofield in The Train (I'm not saying he's sympathetic): Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair is an obvious one, but anyone who does this should be drummed out of the hobby, for his packing practices if nothing else:

CLOSED.

They may be the extreme end of the continuum, but singling them out seems to be letting others (dealers and collectors) off the hook too easy.

Use an (archival) backing board, sized for the Mylar sleeve (bagsunlimited has several choices), and use archival mounting corners to mount the artwork to the backing board. That prevents damage to the art as it moves around in the itoya.

Artist's Edition Index.

Hewetson hated the Heap, and hated that fans kept making him bring it back.

"5 Por Infinito" preceded the Dracula magazine that was published by New English Library. It had story and art by Esteban Maroto with assist from others (e.g. Ramon Torrents drawing the women). Dave Karlen:

This reminds me of the destruction of the early Doctor Who episodes, because the BBC in its monumental stupidity reused the master tapes and recorded over them. Same thing happened with early Monty Python episodes, despite Cleese trying to buy the master tapes off the BBC. I'm not sure which is worse, this kind of rank stupidity, or the greed of people in our community who carve up pages and sell the original panels e.g. Clarice, the story that many consider one of Wrightson's best, now lost because someone wanted to make a quick buck. Then there's the breaking up of the pages of a story, which no-one bats an eye at today. This attitude, voiced recently on this board, seems fairly prevalent still and no doubt this is what Sol Harrison was thinking back in the day:

I wonder if the storyline of "Wonder Woman and Professor Calculus" inventing the computer brain takes any inspiration from Hedy Lamarr (yes, that Hedy Lamarr) who invented spread spectrum (now used in your cell phone among other things).

The first programmable computer would have been the Colossus built at Bletchley Park, there were versions of it running in 1943. However the British with their penchant for secrecy had all Colossi dismantled (and parts returned to the post office!), and all documents and drawings destroyed. It was forgotten until historians dug up information about it in the 1970s. If you read E. E. Doc Smith's Lensman books, which were written in the 1930s, a "computer" is someone who sits at their desk and performs calculations. People (e.g. Alan Turing) were certainly exploring the theoretical foundations of computing machines in the 1920s and 1930s. Robots and automata of course have been around since they were telling stories about Hephaestus. That Wonder Woman picture is neat, clearly computing machines had caught the popular imagination by 1947. ETA:

300dpi is adequate if you're making prints, you need better if you're doing any editing. Heritage scans are adequate for auction previews or smaller-scale reproduction in "Art of ...." books, no reputable publisher would use them in AE-style books. Dunbier recommends the Epson 12000XL, scanning art at 1200dpi or more. Just imagine that this art is being scattered to the winds, and these scans are going to be all that we have left. It would be nice if they were better than print quality.

A suggestion for the future: Please add a category for Complete Stories. The most depressing aspect of this hobby is the willful breaking up of classic stories, to the point where Scott Dunbier can't find complete John Byrne or Dave Cockrum stories for his artists editions. It'd be nice if there was at least a little recognition of this in the hobby, even if most people don't give a damn. Entering a splash page in this contest, as a representative of a story, would be stupid. It'd be like entering the opening credits sequence for a movie into a movie contest.

CLOSED.

I have Yet Another Botched Framing Job, where someone left glue on the back of a piece of pencil and ink art. The paper is rippling, the framer thinks due to the glue and it will straighten out if the glue is removed. Any advice on how to remove it? I've used a heat gun in the past to remove something glued to a page, but this seems different. I've heard of Goo Gone, not sure if that's appropriate in this situation. I've got estimates for having it removed by an expert, but I can't really justify the expense on a relatively inexpensive page. I guess I can just have it framed as is, but you know how it is, once you know it's there....

I've never understood the regard for Vampirella #113. It's not Warren, it's Harris, the company that later brought us Manga Vampi . It's mostly reprints of mediocre stories. It's reusing a mediocre Enrich cover. Creepy #146 at least has a cool new Corben cover (and reproduces some genuine classic stories).

Gerald Scarfe.

For those that are on a budget, it's arguably pointless to go after some of these: Creepy 18-28, 117-146 Eerie 13-22, 111-139 The first range (the "Dark Age") was when Warren's revival of EC stalled and they couldn't afford to hire the top notch writers and artists they had before. They were saved by the success of Vampirella, the arrival of the Spanish artists, and fresh domestic talent like Corben and Wrightson. The second range ("Decline and Fall") was when they were in decline, to a large extent because Marvel was deliberately squeezing them off the newsstands with their own B&W magazines (Skywald was an early casualty of this strategy). There are still some good all-reprint issues among these. Vampirella notably managed to maintain their high quality up to the end.

I just wonder how it has been stored in the past. Beyond the obvious damage from light, the evident tanning around the edges of that piece of art is a red flag, if it's an accurate depiction of its condition, it makes me wonder if they did something like use cardboard backing when they framed it. Apologies to the original consigner if this is not the case, I'm just going by what I see above. I've just seen some atrocious amateur-hour framing of $$$ art. We are after all only the curators for this art.

If you like the David Roach book, you should also have the Diego Cordoba book: To some extent I prefer this book. While the Roach book provides a comprehensive but shallow overview of all of the artists, Cordoba drills down on the most prominent of them. It's too bad it's only available in softcover (it's a special issue of Illustrators magazine). Cordoba should do a follow-up for Skywald.

Paypal is a ripoff at the best of times, but they should absolutely be your last option for international transactions. They've been coasting for years on effectively having a monopoly on paying for Ebay purchases. For domestic US, if you have the money in your bank account, Zelle is free for some banks. You can accept payment via your email. But a word of warning: Zelle is notoriously prone to identity fraud, e.g. by phishing attacks where someone forges an email from you for payment but with the email modified in subtle ways. Once someone has the payment, there's no way to get it back (unlike Paypal, but Paypal lays you open to chargeback fraud if you're a seller). For international, there are several better alternatives. I've used TransferWise, they have a clever scheme for reducing currency exchange charges by matching flows in one direction (e.g. US$ -> Euro) with flows in the other direction (Euro -> US$) within their payments network, in the best case avoiding the currency markets altogether, so they give better exchange rates than your local bank. You do need to link your bank account to their system, money is transferred by bank transfer (and you have to pay for that), and I've learned more than I want to know about how ludicrously insecure US bank accounts are, but this is what happens when the industry writes the regulations. ETA: Just to be clear, payee receives payment via transfer into their bank account, they do not need to be in the TransferWise network. Another alternative for international is Xoom, but they are owned by Paypal, so I assume that once they've driven the smaller outfits out of business, their business plan is to be as egregious as Paypal, so I will give them a miss.

So the takeaway from this is: Stay away from CGC-rated books. Besides the speculative inflation of their value, they are probably garbage because of multiple pressings, the original clunker with a fresh coat of paint sold to the next sucker.

Worth mentioning that Dave Sim had his comic writing debut in this:

Not only was the cover of Nightmare #9 reused for Creepy #145, the back cover and inside back cover of Nightmare #9 (an ad for the next issue) showed up as the back cover and inside back cover of Eerie #42, due to a printer mistake. Warren and Skywald were sharing the same printer at the time.

FDIC only insures bank accounts against bank collapse.