Zolnerowich

I was highly dismayed to receive this email from HA this morning. Since there's a lot of boardies in The Keystone State, I figured I'd pass along this dismaying information. Please note: As of August 1st, Heritage Auctions will be required by state law to charge applicable sales tax on any items delivered to addresses in Pennsylvania for the following categories: Art & Antiques, Books & Historical Manuscripts, Comics, Currency, Entertainment, Historical, Jewelry, Timepieces & Luxury Accessories, Movie Posters, Nature & Science, Sports, and Stamps. Exemptions include dealers with valid sales tax numbers who are purchasing for resale and who furnish us with a properly completed resale certificate for Pennsylvania. Please see paragraph #25 in our Terms and Conditions for more complete information. Sincerely, Heritage Client Services 3500 Maple Ave. 17th Floor Dallas, TX 75219-3941 Bid@HA.com 1-800-872-6467

Very curious, up through #16, the cover colors were consistently vibrant, with minimal variation across individual copies. It seems starting with #17, things started to go haywire at the printing press. This is all speculation of course, but I'll speculate anyhow: Planet 17 has a cover date of March 1942. This means it hit the stands 1-2 months before that. The indicia in #17 doesn't say anything about its "on sale" date, but the inside front cover of #16 states "THE NEXT ISSUE OF PLANET COMICS (No. 17, MARCH) WILL BE ON SALE AT YOUR NEWSSTAND JAN. 10th." No doubt with the attack on Pearl Harbor occurring one month before the on-sale date of Planet 17, the Fiction House publishers suddenly had to deal with war rations on paper, and probably ink too, leading to increasing unpredictability and dropping quality control on our cherished Fiction House line of comics. The interesting question is why was the printing quality at Fiction House affected so much more than at the other publishers?

Totally agree. One of the best Wonderworld covers by Fine; I think it flies under the radar because there’s no superhero underpants on the cover.

Whoa. That's a cool gif thingy, or whatever the kids call it these days!

Any Planet with strong colors is worth the effort, and is arguably harder to come by than a higher grade copy with lackluster colors. Yep, those rivets are getting more and more elusive to find. The last few cons I've attended, there's never more than a small handful available, and mostly in the #40-#60 range.

Nice as always! What is that "Planet" decal (with rivets no less) near the shiny CGC symbol at the top right of the slab?

You're totally right! The green matches much better than blue would, with regard to the color palette on this cover. Of which, those are some nice vivid colors on this copy; they're often pretty washed out. Fine also did the masthead illustration... so you get a little bit of Fine in each and every issue of Jungle, all the way up to issue #163 in Summer 1954!

A bit of comics.org sleuthing always pays off: It's from Comic Cavalcade #6 (Spring 1944). Cover and details of story below. The Mystery of Countess Mazuma! Wonder Woman / comic story / 13 pages -script: William Marston [as Charles Moulton] (signed) Pencils: Harry Peter [as Harry G. Peter] (signed) Inks: Harry Peter [as Harry G. Peter] (signed) Colors: ? Letters: ? Genre: superhero Characters: Wonder Woman [Diana Prince]; Steve Trevor; General Darnell; Etta Candy; the Holliday Girls; Elva East (intelligence operative, introduction); Miss Tompkins (Elva's friend, introduction); Countess Mazuma (villain, introduction); Mazuma's friends (villains, introduction for all); Franco Mendez (villain, a spy, introduction) Synopsis: The disappearance of several girls, including an intelligence agent, leads Wonder Woman to a secret diamond mine where the girls work as slaves. Reprints: in Wonder Woman: The Golden Age Omnibus (DC, 2016 series) #2 (2017) Indexer Notes Writer credit from "The Secret History of Wonder Woman" (Jill Lapore, 2014). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AND NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED FICTION HOUSE PROGRAMMING...

Not an uncommon book, but not so common with strong reds and purples. (Magic Number = 3)

But if CGC is still using their inventory of flawed holders, then it makes no sense to ask them to re-holder the books. They'll be as Newton'd as before. Maybe that's why CGC has no rational response for their customers right now.

Not a bad start for your 8th post! Tremendous!

Yes, when these books appear, they often appear in waves, stimulated by the tsunami of the first book. The problem is, no one can predict when the next tsunami will hit! #6 is definitely among the toughest, also #2 and #10. Close behind these are #5 and #8. Other than #13-15, other tough books in the "Rivet" run include #17-19. Heck, most of them are kinda tough. Some just much tougher than others. Here's my copy, by way of Berk by way of Larson:

Calling all cars! Calling all jhuttons @jhutton2 ! Show us that 7.5!!

Well, I'm very glad you didn't bid me up more on my 6.0 copy!!

Yup. That and 15 of course.

About time already! You've probably owned every other Planet issue three times over by now!

What issue?

Interesting. That old label has the cover artist all wrong. Oh yeah -- amazing copy!!!!!

Whew! That's smokin'! I'm sweating bullets here!

Let's keep this party rolling like it's 1953!

Congrats! It couldn't have been too easy to complete that run. And a great way to finish with that 9.0!

Ditto. A Planet Comics I was following was also pulled. A lot of funny business in this particular Sunday auction! Someone messed up.

I'm not exactly an "older" Planet collector, or I hope not anyhow! But for a long time I was one of those people with low enthusiasm for issues 65-70 because the interiors were all reprints. As @jimjum12 suggests, I have been won over by these late issues with their great covers, esp. 65, 66, 70-72.

@adamstrange always comes through with these historical pearls! Interestingly, as per comics.org, the indicia for Planet 64 and 65 states that these issues were still published by Love Romance Publications, but then for Planet 66, no indicia information was included at all with the issue. Almost like issue 66 had gone rogue. With issue 67, Love Romance Publications is back in the record and persisted through the end of the run (#73).