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I hate to harp and be THAT guy, but it's really not a complete run without this missing tidbit, at least to my OCD on the matter! Oh wait....maybe I can sneak this one by?

I had 2 copies, but a friend who works for an auction house, guilted me into sharing the wealth, so to speak, so I consigned my lesser copy to him and was quite pleased with the results, even though it took a toll on my OCD!!!!

Slightly higher grade, I suppose......(sorry for all the bag glare, but the pic was taken for another reason, and I recalled having it on my hard drive since I didn't feel like digging it out again)....but I have also added a pic of the even more difficult to find 1965 Male Annual which not only includes PCat's first appearance, but also the unadulterated and unretouched original Wallace Wood rendition, that had been embellished and futzed with in the Pussycat One-shot....Enjoy, Oh BOY!!!

Interesting that when the ISBN is searched, nothing seems to be attached to it! Could it have been part of the box set that FBI released recently as some sort of premium? I've never really examined the first print of L&R, though I read that the first may have not been stapled? Very curious why that number is there.

My brown and worn down copies have been permanentized, if you will....... ....and so on........

More tan, actually....and forever young, to be sure!

Have I told you guys my real name? I'll give you a clue.... It is referenced at my AbeBooks home page..... https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/StoreFrontDisplay?cid=2945227

Oh, and maybe the 8/67 already included an installment of LAF, but in case it didn't you may need to seek out this little tidbit:

Congrats on your completion! A major undertaking and no doubt a major amount of space needed to store the 'run' in! Thankfully the two-volume set from Dark Horse put the kibosh on my aim to do the same, and I salute your fortitude!

Actually it is the Arthur Szyk illustration on the cover that got me salivating! A major favorite of mine! thanks for that!

It is! And it's even pictured on the rear cover of the Definitive Reference book from Vanguard, 2013.

Though his son Colin refers to it as a 'magenta' sort of variant, here is the tale, cut and pasted from a Facebook post by Ron Turner (6/21/23), by way of Colin in the previously mentioned Fogel UG group. Pretty much the same way Gary told it to me at his home, probably while we were watching the bootleg copy of The Jolson Story (1946) that I had just laid on him! Dot Communist by Ron Turner ----- A Day at the Office: Thrilling Murder ----- The phone is for me. Gary Arlington who never calls is on the line. “Wilson is on something. He’s screaming at the pressmen,” Gary says. “Come down here, quick.” "Gary, where are you?" He is at Howard Quinn, the printing company at the corner of Alabama and 16th Streets. I drive over and S. Clay Wilson, who is an imposing figure, is yelling at a short man from Fiji of Indian extraction: Indar. They are standing next to a long series of Goss web presses, and all the pressmen are in blue work uniforms. The noise is deafening, but Wilson can be heard over it. Indar looks like he is about to drop a one-ton roll of newsprint on S. Clay. Gary has agreed to publish Thrilling Murder, an underground comic that will have a signature printed with both red and black ink, instead of the usual black on white newsprint. “It's f-cking Kool-Aid! It has to be blood," bellows the famous Zap artist, creator of the Checkered Demon, Captain Pissgums, Ruby the Dyke, and the Perverted Pirates. Indar is trying to explain that to get the blood-red color, equal amounts of the red ink must be mixed with yellow ink and the work order didn't say anything except red ink. The presses are shut down and everything goes silent. The workers are all on the clock and observing the conflict. I talk to the company manager, Don Sanchez, and we work it out. Gary will be charged a fee for the "make ready" blood-red ink. He will accept the small number of already-printed copies with the Kool-Aid blood, and all will go back to normal. Sanchez should have a footnote in the history books for using a split font to make the rainbow color on the original “Oracle” that Allan Cohen produced around 1966, one of the first ever Psychedelic Underground papers in the world. Don couldn’t have cared less about that. He was into ’50s Chevys with convertible tops and fins. That printing press is long gone, and today in that same building the Dandelion Chocolate Factory is now rather busy next to the SPCA who's animals can smell the desirable chocolate but must not eat the deadly (to them) treat. I go back to my office to see what Gordian Knot awaits untying. Wilson goes back to ’s Bar at Sanchez and 16th for his morning cocktails. Gary goes back to his comic book store on 23rd and Mission. And if you are lucky, you may someday find one of the rarest of underground comix – pinkish-red blood inside.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD DEPT: (Mainly because I finally found one) Re: Thrilling Murder Many years ago I asked Gary Arlington about the identification points for a true 1st print of TM. The issue with the cover stock was well known, but he told me that a REAL 1st could be identified by the blood color that had been added to the interiors. Apparently the printer did not mix the ink well at first, and the original batch came out with purple colored blood/juices! This made S. Clay Wilson angry and he attempted to get ugly with the printer. He felt the purple color made his centerspread look stupid, so most of that run was supposed to have been destroyed, but like everything, there are always some that get out. The ink was corrected quickly and the large percentage of issues do sport the bright red coloring. Tonight I finally stumbled onto one of the purple issues and could not have been more thrilled! This 'point' was backed up in a post on the Fogel Underground Facebook page when either Ron Turner or his son Colin posted about this rarity and basically told a similar story to the one Gary had told me, but with a little more details...names of the printer, or locations or both....I forget. But anyways, here are a couple of photos I took in my crappy lit living room with an old tablet camera. I still think you can see the difference....In the first scan, the cover on the left is the first print. You can even see a discrepancy there, as well, but I'm pretty sure the one on the right is also a confirmed second print with the more matte cover! Hopefully one can discern the top specimen has the purple coloring in the two following pics.

The Holdovers (2023) d. Payne

Aside from the first 30 issues and some random single issues from the 'numbered' run that have special meaning to me, my interest in MAD are the odd collections. I don't want everything MAD but there are subsets that interest me.

What? Me worry? The thrill of the hunt! The many blind alleys of there possibly being an insert under all that plastic and tape!! All you Warren guys have to worry about is whether that bloody Captain Company order form on the last page got used! Such a mishugas!!! MAD Forever and For Keeps!!!

Sadly, just as I was getting ready to do a volume 2 with some more assorted strays, my local bindery decided to call it quits.....now I have this forlorn pile collecting dust as I ponder it's eventual outcome....alas.....

So what is one way the MAD Annual obsessive can deal with all the excess issues with no inserts or partial inserts present? Why custom binding perhaps? Here's an example now!!!

The copy in the closet has it attached, but here's my dupe with record unattached, and the 6 complete copies of Ridiculously Expensive MAD I own with record attached!

Was able to uncover this small batch in a box dedicated to EC's purchased in my teens and early 20's, in the 70's and 80's, which happily was on top and near the front for speedy 'liberation', if you will.....

Photos taken around 1991 in standard 35mm, and sorta stitched together, then scanned. All bonuses present and all intact. Now residing in a box in a very large and well barricaded closet that I am currently in the process of excavating........

Too true! What I do find annoying is 'uneducated' sellers who don't differentiate between Annuals with and Annuals without inserts. I recently came upon a pile of promising specimens at Amoeba Records in San Francisco, but one could not tell from the outside if the inserts were there. They had entombed the mags in heavily taped plastic bags that I presume were done as such so mags couldn't be switched about or some other nefarious action. They were priced moderately, but most would have been a good deal if the inserts were still present. I had to have an employee open all the bags, around 15, and none had the insert! Would have saved everyone time and aggravation had they noted on the label the status, but they are record people. Since the odds of finding 50's and 60's era MAD Annuals with inserts in general get slimmer every year, it was pretty much as expected. I told them what I was looking for and they seemed to grasp, after the fact, that it would have been much easier to note the status on the outside of the bag. I suspect I was the first to go through the pile as a potential customer.....

These dupes and trips were purchased at a local garage sale around 5 or so years ago and that is indeed 2 copies of WFM 4 with the Sunday Comic section present, but not attached! (I may have posted these before, but we're on the subject currently....)

Congrats!!! One of my favorites.....I just uncovered a fourth copy with intact zeppelin and 2 dupes of MTFM #11, both with poster and bumper sticker that I had forgotten about since the late 20th Century.........

Finally liberated from the back of the closet after nearly 30 years of forward accumulation...