Zonker

Thank you to Shootydog for payment; your books went out today via Priority Mail. (thumbs u Any payment stragglers will need to wait a while until I'm back in to town to ship.

...and kudos to the_blob as well for buying a generous helping of books and paying promptly. Thanks, man!

Dang man, got your books already! Great deal for a buck a pop and fast....thanks much! Cool! I mailed 'em Saturday and you received 'em next business day. The USPS must be trying to prove they deserve their rate increase.

Many thanks for the immediate payments from Annihilus and prisoner6 from last week's $2/$1 sales thread. . And belated kudos to jordanscott Bronzed Jbone Underdog for past purchases, all executed flawlessly. You guys all rock!

Does anyone know / Has Arch said whether the new version of the code still supports user-preference stylesheets or "skins?" I seem to recall from a previous upgrade that the Mods had to rebuild the stylesheet options in the newer version. If so, can we have "The Blues" back as an option?

According Julie Schwartz, the early B&B and JLA covers did not feature Superman/Batman because he wanted to feature the other characters since supes/bats had their own solo books. I think there was also a concern at the time about overexposure of the most popular characters by featuring them in too many books. Times have apparently changed.

Yeah, I know, I was just riffing on the crusty old-timers versus newbie thing. Thanks for pointing me in the direction of Redhook's original thread, that was a nice read in and of itself.

Classic N00b mistake. Sorry to let the class of '02 down. (At least I didn't post in that earlier thread! )

I'll fix it.

On-line and up to something like 60 installments (through 1988 so far). I never made it to his That's Entertainment shop in Worchester when I lived in Boston years ago, but I was interested to read about his involvement in the creation of a couple of milestones in my own collecting history: - One of the first employees at The Great Escape when founded in Nashville in the mid-1970s. (My first big-time LCS when I went to college in Nashville in 1981). - One of the partners in Sparkle City, one of my major sources for mail order back issue comics in the late 1970s. He also talks about finding a huge collection of late 1950s early 1960s DCs in Boston, but I'm not sure if that is related to the Boston Pedigree or not? Anyway, if you're ever looking for an antidote to Chuck's Tales from the Database , give this a shot for another perspective on comic book retailing from 30 years ago: web page

Thank you to GreatEscape for picking up one of my Golden Age VCC leftovers! On the buying side, kudos to Quality Comics for a couple of accurately-graded Golden Age books sold through his recent website auction. Thanks Brent! And to ComicSupply for his accurately-described mid-grade stash sold here on the boards: Thank you Russ!

Does anyone know what story was to have been reprinted in Battle Classics #2? The first issue was from B&B 52. This one looks like a Rock/Mlle. Marie xover?

Many thanks to 1CoolEngineer, tilleycs, and nickwire for paying so promptly! Your business is appreciated: Thank You!

Many thanks yet again to greggy and to october for some sweet VCC books, as usual: conservatively graded, fairly priced and expertly shipped.

Thanks to skypinkblu for prompt payment, pleasant communication, and most excellent taste in bargain-priced comics.

No evidence, Johnny. Just that when I read this from the Slings & Arrows Guide (p. 615 in the 2nd edition) it sure rang true. After all, Kubert did something similar in one of the later Enemy Ace issues of Star-Spangled (#146): reprints of old war stories, newly "introduced" by Von Hammer. I'd be more convinced the OAAW 168 story was intentionally the same Unknown Soldier if he were shown having a bandaged face, or following his usual MO of impersonating someone else. Instead (at least in the reprinted version, please correct me if I am misrepresenting the original OAAW story), the character is an almost ghostly apparition, dressed in standard-issue combat fatigues. And the name "Unknown Soldier" itself is quite generic. The tomb in Arlington cemetery has been there since shortly after World War I.

I have to disagree with this perspective, Johnny. SSWS was intended to be the launch of a new series... and it was conceived to be the first appearance of the character. Just because someone under deadline pressure subsequently dug out an old prototype story and wove it into continuity doesn't invalidate the importance of SSWS 151. If someone tomorrow wrote a story that revealed that Siegel & Shuster's super-powered Dr. Occult from 1936 was really a pre-costumed Superman with amnesia, would that stop Action #1 from being the first Superman appearance?

Thank you to kidcolt for buying my stuff!

Thank you to topofthetotem, moonlite and finecomics for prompt payment!

Thanks to greggy for another outstanding collection of high grade Bronze DCs. Kudos to pirate, heinlein99 and krazy_kenny1 for lightning-fast VCC payments.

Thanks to greggy and ckb for tightly-graded, reasonably priced books. And of course secure, lightning-fast shipping. Excellent transactions all the way around.

DC will soon be soliciting for a Showcase volume of The War that Time Forgot. Can someone knowledgeable tell me if the stories are readable 40 years later? Zonker? Anyone? Sorry, man. I'm pretty much out of the loop when it comes to this series. I think I may have read a reprint of one of the Neal Adams-drawn installments 30 years ago. If I had to bet, I would guess the formula would wear out pretty quickly reading them all in one sitting!

More on John McClure's theory... Way back in #69, July 1999, a fellow by the name of John McClure had an article on all the DC Giants. His thesis is that the 100 Page Super-Spectaculars started as DC-4 because this was "Volume 4" in DC's experiments in Giant-Size books. John believes: Volume 1 was the original 80-Page Giants Volume 2 was the subsequent 68-Page Giants Volume 3 was the "Super DC Giant" Series, which began with S-13. John believes this was some sort of reverse-code for Volume 3, Number 1. Volume 4 would be the 100-Page Super-Specs Then, when DC introduced the Treasury books, they started with the Rudolph one-shot, which could be thought of as Vol 1 Number 1. Then the first Treasury with an issue number is denoted by DC as C-21, which John de-codes as Vol 2, Number 1. It may seem that John is reaching here, but it makes about as much sense as any other explanation for why first issues pop up with notations like DC-4, S-13, C-21. My only suggestion is that John McClure's split between Vol 1 and 2 is unlikely. I would imagine either: Volume 1 is the 80-Page Giant series in its own title (#1-#15) and Volume 2 is everything (80-Page, 68-Page, 52-Page) that continued on in the numbering of the regular series titles; or Volume 1 is the collection of pre-80-Page Giant #1 one-shots (e.g. Superman Annuals 1- 8, Sgt. Rock's Prize Battle Tales, the original Secret Origins book from 1961, etc.) and Volume 2 is the collection of 80-68-52-Page Giants, both in its own series and later contained in the numbering of its host series). Whew! Z.