Zonker

Looks like all we can know for certain is that 3 people (assuming nothing shilly) want this book that bad, with jtomlinson2000 and nice0guy each winding up with their copies. That leaves worldsgreatestsuperhero still on the prowl. Go get 'em Sterling!!!

Then it's a passion I don't understand. I wouldn't do any restoration to the comic because of my passion for it. Would seem like I was gouging the comic... Think of it this way...I see a color flake. I get color flake repaired. Book looks flawless. But everytime I look at the comic I know the flake was there...so what's the point? Jim See, I think you've really hit on it there! That aesthetic you're describing is something that is very common on these boards (cf the pressing threads that ate Comics General)... so much so I'm sure it seems obvious to the assembled wisdom here. But I'm not so sure it is true of collectors as a whole. I think for lots of us, it's gotta be learned. (And it's a whole lot cheaper if we make sure never to learn to look at our books this way!) The conventional wisdom here is Restoration is horrible, Pressing is Restoration is horrible, so by all means give it a scarlet letter (or a purple label). I'm not saying that way of thinking is wrong by any means... just pointing out not everybody looks at their books the way described above. Anyone who's tried to explain the finer points of comics collecting to a civilian knows what a minority we are in the big scheme of things. And therefore ultra-high grade aesthetes are a minority of a minority! Not that there's anything wrong with that, etc. etc.

Shout out to Marketplace poster MyParentsComics for some great deals on and off eBay. If the Fine/Very Fine sweet spot for Silver/Bronze is your thing, check him out: Good inventory in those grades, great pricing, accurate grading, and get this... I PayPal at mid-week, by Saturday the package arrives, setting the new funny-book land-speed record for the trip from Arizona to North Carolina! See for yourself at... http://www.myparentscomics.com/

Was that standard DC practice in all 100 Pagers, or was it localized to just some titles (reprint articles)? Hey Sterling, not sure what you're asking, but if you mean did all the 100 Pagers have reprints, the answer is Yes. The general model was they had 20 pages of new material (just like the concurrent 20 cent books), and 80 pages of ads and reprints. There were some 100 Pagers that were 100% reprints though, even after the 100 Pagers got 'integrated' into the main title numbering. Examples of all-reprint issues that come to mind include Shazam #8 and Superman #272. On the other hand, one of the few exceptions to the 20-pages-new-material rule is House of Mystery #229, with a 36-page story not previously seen. Of course, it was an inventory story left over from the Gothic/Love experiment (Sinister House of Secret Love, according to the GCD)

Hey Kids! Collect the whole set!

This is a very long thread, but we kinda hit on that somewhere in this thread...there was an I...Vampire appearance in Bold at the end....Destiny appeared in a Superman comic, Bold 94 with the Batman/HOM combo... I don't think these have been posted yet (not my copies/scans, just pointers to what's out there!)

Wasn't Wayne Howard a Wally Wood assistant and/or ghost?

Not horror. Nominally science fiction. But "goofy" is certainly accurate!

Is there some reason to think this was a mistake? I've always thought they varied the intended color within the DC 'bullet' from month to month as part of the cover design, see for example:

Well, true they are both Nick Cardy covers, but I think it is more likely due to a) same title / same editor (Boltinoff) b) the sheer volume of horror books DC put out in the 1970s meant they had to re-use a lot of ideas

Yeah, that's the thing: Because of the Implosion, the contents of Batman Family #21 were moved over to 'Tec, and BatFam was cancelled. The Marshall Rogers train story was originally planned for 'Tec, while the Starlin/Russell gorilla story was the BatFam one. I'd be willing to bet the Hawkman story originally planned for 'Tec eventually showed up in the back of one of those Worlds Finest dollar comics. But I don't remember a story like the one shown on the unpublished cover ever showing up...

What story was that unpubbed cover supposed to represent? I don't think it matches either of the ones that found their way into 'Tec 481? Oh, and Pov, this was a consequence of the '79 "DC Implosion" when the money-men at Warners almost cancelled Detective Comics before somebody told them what DC Comics stood for. Instead, they merged Batman Family in with 'Tec, which is why the logo is the way it is. Still, I gotta wonder if there is a missing inventory story somewhere to go with that cover?

I'm going from memory here, but I believe these were Joe's 'comp' copies from his years at DC, so they'll be any and all DCs, not just the ones he worked on. Also, for some reason I've only seen Bronze or newer books, so I don't know if the earlier books are locked away somewhere, or if Joe kept them for himself, or if the comp program didn't exist in the earlier days.

It gets a little more complicated unfortunately. There was a Golden Age Hawkman villain called simply The Ghost. His origin was never revealed, and it was meant to be ambiguous whether he was really a ghost or not. A very young Joe Kubert drew all his appearances. And The Ghost was unrelated to Flash (?) villain The Shade. Then in the Silver Age, writer Bob Kanigher revived the concept in the Atom & Hawkman split book from the late 1960s. This time Murphy Anderson drew the character (behind the outstanding Kubert covers, below), and they called him the Gentleman Ghost, and gave him an origin that explicitly acknowledged him as a ghost. But he looked identical to his Golden Age counterpart. So you could say the Ghost was the Earth 2 character, the Gentleman Ghost was the Earth 1 counterpart. It was the Gentleman Ghost that crossed over into a couple of Batman issues in the early 1980s (both having Joe Kubert covers as I recall, a nice nod to the visual father of the character). Now... what I don't know is how/when/if this character became the host of the DC horror comic Ghosts. I first noticed him in one of the Ghosts digest reprints, where they paste him over the original appearances of Cain or Abel to introduce the stories. Was he called "Gentleman Ghost" in the Ghosts book? When did he start popping up over there? EDIT: re-read the thread, I take it the version associated with the Ghosts book is called "Squire Shade?"

I recognize 7 of 'em from memory. (the Jeff Jones, the Kaluta, a couple of Cardys, an LD, the Aparo, and whoever did that Marvel one.) Too bad no partial credit! Nice idea for a contest!

One problem with the Comicsquest trivia contest is the amount of fandom-generated information available to be Googled on the web. So, some ideas that wouldn't lend themselves to text string searches would be... -post a page from a book, ask that the artist be id'ed. -describe a plot, ask that the issue be id'ed. Shiverbones has covered an admirable number of "firsts" on his page (i.e. "First post-Code rotting corpse!") but maybe he has a few ones he's not yet used?

Kudos to precodekeith for a sweet trade of Bronze Age Horror readers. And to stronguy for a nice mid-grade SA Flash pickup on eBay.

I'm curious: where are those Grell drawings from? I'd guess an EC fanzine of the 1970s, but I have the Squa Tronts and don't recall anything by Grell in those. Also, I don't recall him being a fan artist before he broke in to the pros... so what gives?

Yessireebob. Nick Cardy aka Nicholas Viscardi. Did some Golden Age work for Quality Comics, was one of Eisner's assistants. (Remember that Aquaman 42 logo-busting cover?) No doubt he also worked in pre-Code horror... any favorites you can point me to?

I think that is it exactly. In 1968-1971, you have Neal Adams doing most of the covers, and we know from various interviews that Adams was coloring lots of the covers he drew, experimenting with new printing technologies as to color, etc. Very subtle colors and often rich color gradients. By the time of the 20 cent issues, Nick Cardy was doing most of DC's covers, and I'm not sure how involved Cardy was in the coloring process. Now I love Cardy, but he's very much a 'slick' comic-book artist, certainly doesn't aspire to be a photo-realist like Adams. Cardy is kind of Romita to Adams' Ditko (though the Adams=Ditko part of the analogy is terrible , I'll admit). And maybe that explains why I agree with POV, the 20 centers, i.e. the Cardy covers, really grab you in high grade: you want to see those day-glo colors at their peak.

That really is an exceptional Detective copy! The colors on this one seem much deeper than any other example I recall seeing of this book.

But didn't Infantino as first Art Director and then Executive Editor or Editorial Director or whatever lay out most of the covers first anyway? As speculated above, the kids may have been an editorial dictate in any event...

Low to mid-grade DCs from late 1960s, into the 1970s. Tons of JLAs from about #68 to #108 in Fine or less (including readers for most of the 80 page giant issues). Some low-grade bronze age DC horror comics I've since upgraded. Lots of Kirby 4th World issues, same general story: Good to Fine+. Plus many Batman (say 201- 335) and Detective (401- 510), some of the later issues reaching into VF+ territory. Oh, and selected Adventure Comics in the Jim Shooter period (347-380). Mid-grade as well, and many of these books exhibit foxing... Let me know if you're interested in specific titles/runs, just understand what I have is likely all low-to-mid grade and almost certainly DC...

Kudos to Chromium, for not only super-fast payment but also for taking the time to specify exactly how to ship to Belgium from North America. Now I find it really hard to believe there are folks on eBay who can still justify saying No bidders/shipments outside USA. Zonker's embraced the Dark Side and is a dealer now...