Qalyar

Absolutely agreed. Although from the small stack of these I've put together so far, I have to wonder ... what on earth did the Brits have against square corners on these books? Was Logan running from the hounds of Tindalos over there or something? Much of this run hasn't even had the UK versions slabbed at all, so I could get top of census for the price of admission, but I'm sure there are some really sexy copies out there, waiting for me. Somewhere. In contrast, some day, it's going to bug me a little bit that only #4-7 come with MJIs, but that's probably down the road.

Well, these aren't Silver Age, but there doesn't seem to be a separate thread for Bronze pence copies. Some general corner wear (#2 is particularly bad, as you can see from the UL corner visible here) and a couple of these have folded LR corner tips that I've cunningly concealed by photographing them this way. And, of course, one book had to have a pretty bad stacking curl, and that had to be #6... but I think it's correctable; there's no evident color breaking. This is, in general, a fairly attractive run of better-than-midgrade books, which are miles better than most of the pence copies I've seen from this title.

I'm working on the Logan's Run MJI run (which comprises issues #4 through #7). Except for that discolored crease at UL, this newly-acquired copy of #4 at least presents well, but between that flaw, a couple color-breaking spine ticks, and a crunched corner that I'm subtly concealing in this photo, no one is going to mistake this for a high-grade book. The quest continues.

Despite having bought a surprisingly large amount of stuff from Europe in the past few years, my only experience with GSP was one Europe-to-US shipment that required shipping costs about 2.5 times what reasonable (heh, well... "reasonable", anyway) international shipping should have been, then was misrouted by the GSP importer. Twice. I consider it something of a miracle that it reached me, and a testament to the shipper's packaging skills that it reached me intact. As I work in logistics and statistics, I know that a sample size of one isn't very helpful, but... honestly, based on other people's reviews and my limited experience, just about any replacement for GSP is likely to be a step in the right direction. But arranging for your own international shipping is almost certainly the better choice.

I'll send this about the undergrounds. On first glance, I don't see anything exciting. That Fed n Heads is a 4th printing or later (probably a 5th print, which is really a "5th through 11th because they're identical" print). Merton of the Movement is by the same group who did Air Pirates Funnies, except without the controversy or value. I see a couple Dopin' Dan books, but they're continuation issues after the original trilogy. There are probably a few decent value items there. Dirty Laundry #1 is a first printing; it's tough to tell condition in the wide shot, but high grade copies might go $20+. If All Canadian Beaver has a 50 cent cover price, it's a first print (if 75, 2nd) and that could be a $25+ book too.

So, I can tell you a bit about the magazine itself. This was an English-language translation of the Quebecois magazine Safarir, which had a much longer publication history (until 2016). Nuts! ended up with a higher cover price than its competitors and, being honest here, has really terrible quality translations. It barely saw US distribution, and sold poorly in its native Canada. As far as monetary value goes, this is pretty niche stuff. There are certainly people asking high prices for some issues, but are they getting those prices? I am not convinced. Regarding slabbing, magazine slabbing has a turnaround time of about a million years, and this title hasn't ever been slabbed. So you'd be in doubly-unexplored territory trying to market encapsulated copies. I suspect these are better off raw, but I'm not even going to try to speculate on what this run might actually be worth

9.0 Although I have to say, that's an unusually well-centered wrap for one of the JC Penney reprints. I swear Mr. Magoo was in charge of cover alignment for those reprint books.

One of the things I find most interesting about the Spawn collectors' community is that Spawn seems to be virtually unique among Modern comics, in that mid-run books are still sought after, and (relatively) lower print run issues demand competitive prices. Sure, there's a lot of wider attention to #1 and #7 -- more traditional keys -- but I'm not sure there are many other books of this era where the graph of issue number versus market value follows anything like the curve on this title.

Fantastic! Thank you! I was sure it merited a feature, but the Wikipedia list is just the cover stories, and I didn't have copies handy to check.

9.2 And I just have to say that the very high grade, scarce indie books you've been posting lately have been very impressive. I have no idea where you're finding these, but keep doing what you're doing. Also, I'm not jealous.

Okay, so the Forbidden Worlds book isn't a "hero" cover, strictly speaking. But otherwise, here's a bunch of fun with homicidal mirror duplicates!

Here's today's question that no one has likely ever asked before. Can anyone who -- for some reason -- has a run of the 1994 issues of Direct Currents flip through them to see if there is any preview content or other mention of DC's Babylon 5 comic adaptation? It's greatly appreciated!

That's just ridiculous.

I guess this isn't a pedigree collection because they're not original owner books? Regardless, ugly label is ugly. Sorry, guys. Really nice book, though.

This is a particularly cynical, victim-blaming take. First, there is zero chance this book was swapped. This isn't IH181 or something like that where there are, price notwithstanding, a virtually unlimited number of interchangeable copies. There are two other copies known in equivalent condition, and I'm pretty sure they're still accounted for. Second, we all agree that CPR, especially on big books, is a gamble. If this book had been damaged while being cracked out, or damaged by pressing, or mutilated in transit, we would be mourning the loss of a GA historical treasure and shaking our heads at the person responsible. But to use the gambling analogy, the problem here isn't that someone gambled with this book and lost; the problem is that they gambled with this book only to discover they were playing at a rigged game The reality is that CGC made a mistake. Mistakes will happen, no matter how much we want otherwise Now, I think CGC makes too many mistakes and doesn't catch as many of the mistakes as they should before they get out the door. In this case, it is 100% on the graders, not QA, because the mistake was not obvious until the book was cracked. But otherwise, this is the same sort of situation as when CGC slabs a reprint book with an original printing label. They failed to perform their fundamental service to their customer. They lacked duty of care in servicing exactly the sort of book that we expect -- and their pricing tiers imply -- will receive their most professional service. And it's not like this should have been easy to miss. Now, legally speaking, CGC's terms don't usually give much recourse for anything they do. Ethically, that's maybe another story. I'm not sure I think they should make any party here whole necessarily, because CGC is not responsible for catering to the vagaries of market sales even when books need replaced entirely, but this is a pretty unique case. Not unique in that they don't make errors otherwise, but (hopefully) unique because they oughtn't screw up this badly on a Walkthrough-tier book of this profile!

Historically, I would have said that CGC would discard the envelope as it is not affixed to the comic in any way. However, there's some recent precedent indicating that they're willing to reinsert books into DC's new envelopes and slab them thusly. That's expressly not the case for traditional polybags. As for how the market wants these things handled? Who knows, too new for long-term anything to be determined yet. How CGC approaches these as more are produced going forward may have an impact, but who knows.

No accounting for taste. The good news is this is fully reversible, and if you can afford to buy an 8.0 Batman 1, you can afford a Walkthrough reholder to get that off your slab's label.

That coloring job is ... not good, but it's made a lot worse by laughably incompetent color registration. It might have looked okayish if the plates had been aligned properly. Maybe.

I do perhaps stand corrected then. However, since the two marks not only do not match in terms of position, but also shape and orientation, I don't think this can possibly be any sort of consistent "error". Random bits and bobs of ink misbehaving are pretty common and not generally of significant collector interest.

Searching Ebay, I can find exactly zero copies with a similar mark. Honestly, I don't think this is a production error. I think that's a mark from a bright pink marker or highlighter or something along those lines.

Just wanted to follow up on this thread. Port City Auctions never pulled this listing. But despite adding some weak disclaimers about how it "might" be a reprint, it ultimately sold for... $1300. On the other hand, GoCollect believes that even very low grade copies of the GRR reprint have a FMV north of $1500. So I guess if you believe that, you might think this fraudulently altered copy might be a deal at that price... I sure don't, though. MCS has an 8.5 CGC slab up for $850, and that's an infinitely better deal, and a book that wasn't mutilated.

I used to have a longer list of these problems. It does appear that there's been an effort to clean up census duplication; as of 2021, there were duplicate entries for Amazing Spider-Man #299 and Flaming Carrot #28 with different date formats. Amazing Spider-Man #234 has separate entries for "Canadian Edition" (the original terminology) and "Canadian Price Variant" (current practice). I happen to know that the first CPV copy of this book was slabbed in October 2021, so the other CPV-sorted copies are more recent. But that orphans the 4 earlier labels and duplicates the book entries. Because this is probably the case for a lot of books (anything with a CPV slabbed before... whenever they started being called CPVs), this may not be an easily corrected problem.

3.5. Fantastic show, and not surprised it made it to comic form. It has sort of that feel about it. Didn't fare too well as a modern film reboot though; that one probably would have been better with fewer (as in, zero) giant steampunk spiders.

CGC's Census is not an extremely sophisticated creature. If books have the same name and the same publisher, they're going to be appear listed together. In part that's because CGC doesn't (generally) invent distinguishing clauses (like [2nd series], [5th series], whatever) when they're not actually part of the book's publication title. Most of the time, that's fine. It's not ideal, but it's fine. Books like that one you pictured are, of course, glorious failures of QA.

This one is not actually an error, because title shenanigans. Katy Keene (Archie Publications) ran from 1949 until its final issue, #62, in 1961. Archie Publications began printing a revival title -- Katy Keene Special -- in the 1980s. The first such book is Katy Keene Special #2 in 1983. That run has all been slabbed: If you're wondering where Katy Keene Special #1 is (because let's face it, I know everyone is very concerned), it's listed separately because it was published under the Red Circle Comics Group imprint. So that takes care Katy Keene Special, right? Of course not. Starting with #7, Archie decided that Katy Keene wasn't really that Special after all and dropped the final word from the title but retained the numbering. Katy Keene then ran from #7 (in late 1984) allll the way to #33 in 1990. MCS lists all the 1980s issues under the Katy Keene Special title despite the change. I've seen other sites index it as Katy Keene (2nd series), a title that simply begins with #7; this is essentially what CGC has opted to do. Your mileage may vary.