Get Marwood & I

Never mind the visual inadequacies of the THG Duffman, check out the $100 bargain. A hundred dollars!

Hello Duffman, nice to see you drop in. It's funny you picked out the Kirby cover as I was going to do a post on it myself. You saved me the trouble! Do you think, at the time, Kirby was 'unimportant....unknown'? Not as a gentle a shot as first appears maybe Keep the drivel coming, it's always nice to get some feedback in the pence graveyards. The ambit is indeed solely Charlton, but you can always pop over to my other threads to find comparable witterings there. Check my signature links or, if you don't have them turned on, my profile page

You've got it Jim! Hold the fort, and enjoy the craic

I'm not sure liz. Are we allowed to post private 'cease and desist' notices?

You've certainly got the bit between your teeth here @gozer! Very, very well done

thank God for you Jim.

I've got a reprint from Norway of this

...by David Blowie

I'm not sure they ever will be scarce in the way that we define scarce books from the 50's etc. They came out when collecting was a widespread hobby with lots of dedicated collectors preserving them in ways that previous generations rarely if ever considered. We'd need a nuclear war or something to wipe most of civilisation out before Spawn 1 / Spider-Man 1 1990 ever became scarce Hec

Not the same thing but there's an encapsulated sketch here to show how it could look: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CGC-SS-Jim-Starlin-Sketch-Commission-Incredible-Hulk-Stan-Lee-sig-Original-Art-/252708909947 OA would be a logical next step wouldn't it?

Fake news! How silly. That would never happen in real life Oh, hang on I don't think Kirby's Spidey was that bad actually. It was terrible.

Why, is he on them?

Ah, yes, but does it liz?

Squeeze - Cool For Cats

"Fairly annoying, but I can wait for the fix, no problem" is winning the day, largely due to an Arch and Dena Team-Up! Should be a comic

The second thing that reminder me that I was once an ASM completist was an email from Milehigh Comics, heralding the arrival of a slew of ASM #798 variants: So, we have a Red Goblin now do we? Where will it end. I took a look at some of the variant covers and was reminded of one of the reasons I gave it all up. I mean, do I need to say anymore here - look at these duffers: Not very good are they. One thing I really grew to dislike was paying large premiums for variant covers of this kind of quality. I always had mixed feelings about the proliferation of variants. On the one hand, if you could afford them, they were a fun completist's dream. Loads of books to collect, to build a set etc. I had no problem with a limited number of different covers, if they were quality and or relevant to the event. I used to like the embossed covers / glitter, die cut etc. Those were fun to collect and usually at similar prices to the regulars. I even thought the 142 666's was a great one off event (I was one short!) I liked things like this: ...but hated things like this: It may well be the FF's anniversary, but why do I want them on my Spidey book? Look how keen I used to be!: In the end though, the negatives outweighed the positives and I fell out of love with it all. So off they all went. But the Mile High email reminded me of a time when I would have been getting ready and excited to get them all. Sometimes, I get a little sad that I've forgotten more about Spidey books that many collectors know now, such is the curse of a leaky brain. Still, I do remember the good fun I had.

Two things reminded me this week that I was once an avid Spidey collector. The first was this eBay sale of the ASM #184 All Detergent giveaway: When i was collecting 'everything' this was considered the holy grail for ASM and copies with the sticker intact were thought to exist in numbers that you could count on one hand. !0 years ago, I would have bid on this and probably would have gone much higher than this end price. I manged to get two copies during my collecting days, but both were stickerless. One gave a pretty good clue as to where the sticker was... ...and the other was a graded one: I wonder who has them both today? I sold them as a set as I recall and make a whopping £30 profit on my original investment: I never was much of a business man. Still, a profit's a profit. Although,looking at current eBay prices, maybe I should have hung on for a bit longer: I still have a fondness for the book. You never really lose that completist streak, and I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't still like to own a copy. But times move on, and so do our books if we're not careful. Ah well. A nice trip down memory lane, if a little wistful.

Four votes in an hour. We're on fire boys!

The Twitching Hour.

No, sixty nine.

Of course. We need a number 2 around here tonight.

Trousers?

That's for you Jim @porcupine48