jimbo_7071

I don't think that this one is rare, but there are only two copies in the census, this one and a 4.5.

Falling vehicles to falling in love.

Raymond and Foster were both several orders of magnitude above Kane in terms of talent, so it isn't surprising that he would swipe their work.

What's the white stuff dripping off of that . . . log?

"I did the show every year from 1994 - 2019 . . .." Has there been much high-grade GA most years? The last time I attended, the only guys with high-grade GA were Ed Jaster and Chris Foss. (If you were there, I must have missed your booth, or you must not have had any high-grade GA on your wall.) I did buy a book from Ed, but I decided that it wasn't worth paying admission to see the inventory of two dealers, so I haven't been back.

With romance books, I feel like I'm flying blind in terms of trying to determine what's a fair price. I don't know which ones are actually scarce because even though prices have been increasing, Joe Collector doesn't perceive them as being worth much of anything, and the values in the OPG are low for most of the books, so romance books don't get submitted to CGC that often.

But are they actually rare, or do they just not get slabbed as often? We've seen other books that appeared to be rare until prices took off, and then census numbers skyrocketed, too.

Depressing because you feel you have little hope of building a collection that nice? I hear you. I don't sweat it too much, though; I figure I was just born too late to have a realistic chance of building that kind of collection.

Fire to water.

This was the 6.5. It was $7,500, which was $600 more than what the 7.0 Rockford had sold for five months prior, so it was a strong price to say the least, but I like like the Promise copy a shade better because it was cut to show slightly more artwork along the bottom edge (and a sliver more along the right edge). The Rockford does appear to have deeper reds, so it's close. The book is not rare, but it isn't easy to find a copy above fine. There should be some nice pedigree copies out there, but it's probably one of those books that collectors hang on to. It's my second-favorite Pep behind #34 (which I don't own).

WW II baddie parachuting into an unhappy landing to WW II baddie about to take a dirt nap courtesy of a chute trooper.

I looked at quite a few books in this auction but didn't go after any. Most of the ones that I had some interest in had "lightly rusted staples" in the notes. I don't know whether a large number of those books came from the same hoard originally or what.

It's not a bad copy. In general it seemed like the mid-grade copies stayed a little closer to fair market value. I bought two 9.2s and a 6.5, and I was happiest with the price on the 6.5.

Ultimate Nazi about to get the beating of his life to ultimate Nazi about to lose consciousness; hero busting through a window to save a sidekick to sidekick busting through a window to assist hero.

Tiger Girl in a tree to Sheena in a tree.

Boy chopping down a tree to woman perched in a tree.

About to pop a floatie to about to pop a tire (or two or four).

I'd say they overpaid for both. (To me a 9.0 WHITE would be worth more than a 9.2 OW/W, but since page quality standards seem to have loosened over time, I'd want to see the books in hand.)

Kurt Schaffenberger cover and art to Kurt Schaffenberger art; Jr. to Sr.

You can take that as a yes, @L'Angelo Misterioso. @fifties was one of those precocious kids. He learned to talk before he was even born. As soon as his head popped out, he was like, "Hurry up, Ma! Push! I ain't got all day!" (His grammar wasn't quite perfect until he was three or four days old.) At two years old, he was already sick of superhero and funny animal books and moved on to horror and GGA.

I don't think it will get anywhere close to $250K, but we'll see.

That's a highly subjective statement. (Of course they would say that, however, since they're selling a Pep 22 right now.) The Crypt of Terror #17 was certainly influential. It wasn't horror comic, but it was the first EC 100% horror comic, and EC dominated the horror genre in the early 50s. Horror comics went on to spawn a massive culture war that shook up the entire comics industry and led to the voluntary censoring of comic books for decades by participating publishers via the "Comics Code Authority." The Archie characters have remained popular, but I'm not sure that Pep 22 was really "influential." I've never thought of it that way. To be honest, the first magazine-format issue of Mad (#24) was probably more influential than any non-superhero comic book.

Torch in a Cap book to Subby in a Torch book.

I don't like much of the DC GA artwork from any later than about '41. I like some of the early Batman, Spectre, Dr. Fate, and Sandman-original-costume covers, and that's about it. It's difficult to articulate a reason why because the artwork isn't necessarily bad—the bodily proportions seem correct, the perspective seems correct, etc., but it seems sterile and uninteresting. It seems too bright in terms of the color palette and the lack of shading and texturing. It's too neat and clean. It's boring. I'm sure I could find plenty of exceptions if I looked (a few come to mind right away), but my overall impression of DC art from about '42—'69 is negative. I don't start to like DC artwork again until the Neal Adams and Bernie Wrightson covers of the early 70s—and then there isn't much of anything that I like after that.

Timely hero breaking into a flooded chamber to Timely hero as the cause of incipient flooding.