Qalyar

I'm gonna go with a 4.5 here, although I bet the margin of error on grade predictions will be higher than normal for this book. Any time you have a copy whose defects don't follow the traditional damage patterns, it makes it a lot harder to predict how the graders will suss things out. Relevant defects: the omnomnom'ed spine (obviously), slight spine roll, piece out of UL BC, that book-length "reader's crease"-like fold to the BC, that tear/missing chunk (it's hard to tell) near the UL FC, and a few minor other hits (FC LR corner trauma, BC bottom, etc.). The writing imprint at UR is utterly irrelevant at this grade (and GA books rarely take a meaningful hit for such markings anyway). I would absolutely not get this pressed, at least in the conventional manner, because you do not want to correct this book's spine roll. Doing so will move that chew damage to be more clearly visible from the front, and that would be terrible. As it stands, this book is going to present way better than it's structural grade will suggest.

Does anyone have an example of this? A book that had trimming "reversed" and received a gray label? I'd like to see how they notated such a book.

Here's the deal though. That's not a comic adaptation of the film. In fact, the studio responsible for the film is not in any way involved with this book. In all those company labels on the back, do you see Jagged Edge Productions, the people who actually made the film? No. You do not. Note CGC's wording there. "'Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey' movie poster cover homage" (emphasis mine). Counterpoint just claims parody fair use and slaps whatever cover they want on their same small catalogue of poorly-written books. As an aside, I think their usual fair use claim is weaker than normal here, because this swipe is less adaptive, less clearly parody, and is likely to cause confusion with the original (as it has here). Not that anything is going to happen because of that. The only connection between the film and this book is that Blood and Honey provided Counterpoint another cynical method to cash in on the same title they've now reprinted hundreds of times with different covers. Unrelated, but I have no idea why Javan Jordan signed this. He has done covers for Counterpoint, but this doesn't seem to be one of his... I don't honestly know what relationship he has to this book. But yellow labels are cool, I guess.

I had a friend chase some of these for the early Byrne work. CPL 7 is technically the first time Byrne's ROG-2000 appears, but merely as an unnamed character in a panel image. CPL 11 was supposed to be the first actual story appearance of the character, but the CPL Gang had some production delays, so the back-up feature in E-Man #6 (Charlton) actually appeared first (although it literally follows after the one in CPL 11 in continuity). I was able to find cover images back to 5. Before that, I think it was less fanzine and more just "Layton's store catalog". Note that MCS attributes CPL 6 with a Neal Adams cover, but that appears to be in error. Adams did the cover for #5. I believe the cover artist on #6 is Joe Sinnott. Regardless, yours is a fantastic copy (I'd go 9.2 here) of 9/10, and one of the best copies I've ever seen from the series at all.

This is the earliest semi-pro piece Layton did. This is technically a double issue (#9 and #10) of Contemporary Pictorial Literature, a fanzine produced by Layton and Roger Stern. This issue is "semi-pro" because it was actually produced with permission from Charlton (which is why that Ditko piece is there) as something a test to see whether Layton and Stern would be suitable for creating a more official house publication/fanzine hybrid (it was, and that later work is the five issues of Charlton Bullseye). But Contemporary Pictorial Literature existed as a self-published fanzine before this issue (and after it, up to #12). The first couple of issues are, apparently, more or less just Layton's catalogue (he was a mail-order comic dealer for a bit) with a bit of his line art for flavor, although it gradually became a pretty impressive collection of talent. I don't think I've ever seen a copy of any issue before... oh, #6 or so. They're all quite scarce.

This is extremely disappointing and feel contrary to the original announcement on the issue.

No, they really aren't. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is not, in any way, related to Counterpoint's Do You Pooh or any of their other nonsense. Blood and Honey is the creation of Rhys Frake-Waterfield and his tiny British indie film studio. The film is frankly awful, but it also made better than $3M on a budget of less than $100,000, so Frake-Waterfield plans to make not only a sequel, but similar horror film adaptations of other properties whose original works are in or entering the public domain. Expect slasher-film treatments of Bambi and Peter Pan. Hopefully with some money behind them, they'll be better. None of this is related to Counterpoint Comics or its principle figure, Marat Mychaels. Blood and Honey is not a film adaptation of Do You Pooh. And there are quite a few reasons to expect that Counterpoint material cannot and will not see film adaptations. Most importantly, Counterpoint isn't selling a story; they're selling cover variants, and you can't put out hundreds of different versions of a film and have people buy them like they -- for some reason -- seem to do for their "comics". If anyone tells you that Hardlee Thinn, Do You Pooh, or any of Counterpoint's other titles is going to become a film... they are probably trying to sell you Counterpoint products.

A trimmed book is trimmed forever. You may improve appearance by leaf casting material onto the existing paper stock, but what was trimmed away is gone forever; no matter what you do, this will be a purple label. That said, because it is a purple label no matter what, I guess there's no harm in making it look prettier if you want to spend the money into it. Regardless, what I would not do is just leaf cast the cover and not the interior pages (assuming you're intending to resubmit to CGC) because that will be rejected from encapsulation due to overhang. Of course, if this is just going in a Mylar, do whatever Spider-floats your Spider-boat.

One of the more random things I collect are comics spun-off from the Labyrinth film. Boom has done quite a few of them, and many of their variant covers are essentially virgin covers. Sometimes it works for me, but not always. There's definitely a problem where there's no real way to know what book you're looking at without any front cover trade dress! These are all cool enough covers, but there's no way you'd know that they're also from three different books (Labyrinth: Coronation #1, Labyrinth: Masquerade, and the 2007 Special). I don't think any of these would have been hurt by retaining trade dress (and, indeed, the rather pink one -- from Labyrinth: Masquerade -- also comes in a version that does have trade dress). That said, I love this Joelle Jones "coloring book" cover -- from yet a fourth different book, the 30th Anniversary Special -- and it just wouldn't have worked out as well if there was full trade dress (heck, I wish they'd pushed the Fried Pie logo to the back cover, too).

Port City Auctions is stridently uninterested in pulling this listing, which means I'm definitely never bidding on anything they auction. On the other hand, even after adding some half-assed disclaimers, there's a new high bid at $1100. So there's either some hardcore shilling action here, or Port City is sort of right and insufficiently_thoughtful_persons will throw money around regardless of a book's authenticity.

I don't collect much that reaches back to the Golden Age anymore. This book counts, if you squint a little, as it dates from 1955. Since copies were distributed for several years, this is arguably more of a Silver Age book, but, hey, it was printed before Showcase #4! Technically correct is the best kind of correct. Anyway, these were given out to people who toured Nestle's Fulton, NY production facility.

I'm gonna say 7.5 or 8.0 depending on how CGC evaluates that yellow bit. FC UL color breaks, BC LL tick, BC UR crease that refused to press out. Possibly some corner rounding, it's tough to tell with the limited-contrast background. Still, definitely a nice copy of a famously tough multipack exclusive.

Protector, the character introduced for the New Teen Titans anti-drug specials, has had a couple of cameo appearances in real books, so I think technically those must be either canon or at least canon-adjacent. Fun fact: That character only exists at all because of a licensing conflict. Keebler co-sponsored the anti-drug PSA, which was otherwise going to feature Robin. However, at the time, Robin was licensed out to Nabisco for an advertising campaign and so obviously couldn't appear in a work paid for by their competitor!

That's some amazingly dishonest behavior by the auction house involved here.

For the record, I've had no response at all to my efforts on Tuesday to inform them of this. HiBid is sort of a meta-auction site that allows smaller auction houses to operate online without needing their own online infrastructure. This auction is being held by Port City Auctions, and it's frankly pretty stark how different their terms and conditions are from a more respectable operation, like Heritage. Port City explicitly makes no warranty of authenticity for the material they auction and does not even permit returns and refunds in the case of proven inauthenticity (or for any other reason, for that matter). I suspect that Port City does not care that they are auctioning a doctored book under false pretenses. There's still some time left in the auction, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. They still have time to pull this thing.

I know they have numbers as part of the MGN series, but I still feel they're one-shots. There's nothing that connects the various MGN books; they each stand alone except for the "series" number assigned for marketing. Like how the Marvel Super Specials are just (mostly) individual (mostly) film adaptations. They've got numbers, yeah, but the numbers don't have anything to do with each other. But YMMV, surely.

I love Gotham by Gaslight, but I feel this sort of had to be God Loves, Man Kills.

I'll go 6.0 here. There are eleventy-seven spine ticks, and the LR corner is munged up a bit, but the book looks otherwise sound, so I think it might claw its way out of the 5s. Fun fact about the entire Cocaine Comix series: One of the people responsible for putting it together (and a -script/collaboration contributor himself) was George DiCaprio. You may have heard of his son, Leonardo...

Also the Golden Records advertising back cover! The cover price at upper left and the square issue box at upperish right have both been fraudulently created, both are pretty amateur efforts.The issue number box is comically inept, and they forgot the "IND." at extreme upper left when they doctored on a cover price. I've notified their auctioneer; hopefully, this will get pulled.

Agreed. I'd like to have seen better photos of exactly what went on. The label is, upon close examination, fake. But that doesn't answer how the case was compromised (it's far less likely that they custom-built fake cases de novo).

I will note that all of the major coin certification companies have had forged slabs of varying degrees of quality. It's a problem, but it's not the end of the world. I do strongly suggest that CGC annotate the lookup record when counterfeits are known for a given serial number. @CGC Mike

That's a pretty sharp Superman 123 GitD cover for a book that spent time in the dollar bin gulags (also probably the lowest FMV of the four, even it it's the coolest looking).

Hey, I know what book that is! I can't answer what might be done with regard to those copies from a pressing standpoint, but I can confirm that not all copies are assembled with that much misalignment. I have to assume that the hand assembly and linen-cord binding conspire to produce a lot of variation in cover/body positioning.

CGC does not recognize any* of the sticker-based variants (such as the DCU stickers or the various Image newsstand sticker shenanigans). Sorry. *except the Wizard Authentic Editions, kinda. Don't ask, I didn't do it.