Qalyar

Impossible to say for certain from that one image, but it looks like that crease is flat enough that I'd assume it occurred prior to pressing.

And why the world won't end if they occasionally start giving out actual 9.9s.

Different sits categorize this thing in different ways: The CGC Census calls it the "Batman 80th Anniversary Special Edition", noting that it reprints Batman #1 (11/11) [that is to say, Batman v2 #1]; this is distinct from the two variants of the "Batman 80th Anniversary Special Edition" that reprint the 1940 book. MCS considers this a variant of Batman v2 (2011) #1, labeling it as #1SPECIAL. I agree that Key Collector doesn't seem to list it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Fairly sure this was indeed an SDCC 2019 promotional. Absolutely no idea how many might have been distributed. It's probably about the same rarity as other SDCC Batman stuff. May have attracted a little less attention than the 1940 reprint, just because that probably felt like a sexier book than a reprint of something from just eight years prior?

Interesting series, really. Originally, this wasn't a Barry Blair title at all. It started off (at Aircel) written by a guy named Gordon Derry, with art by Denis Beauvais (Aliens, Predator, and lots of D&D stuff). But those two guys had a fallout of some sort with Aircel and both left. The next few issues were written by now-famous fantasy author Charles de Lint and (in part) illustrated by Dale Keown (Pitt, Incredible Hulk, etc)! But ultimately, Blair took over the title for the last several books in the original run, then rebooted it for the 2nd series with Aircel. In 1998, Sirius picked it up for four issues, again written and illustrated by Blair. Blair's art style is somewhat controversial, but he was undeniably a talented guy. That said, this wasn't his story or his world, and it sort of shows. Derry and Beauvais eventually were able to put out an omnibus book reprinting the 13 issues they did for the original run, along with two issues that were never published (because they were replaced with de Lint's stuff).

This is the work of Werner Wejp-Olsen (also known as WOW), who was a long time fixture of Scandinavian comic strips. This was #1 of a three issue series where he attempted to introduce his most famous character to the US comic book market. It didn't really go any better than his earlier attempts in the US newspaper comic strips market. But he had a long career in Denmark. Not everything plays well to every audience, I suppose. Here is a retrospective from one of his former US editors, written after his death in 2018. Draculina was Hugh Gallagher's publishing house for horror magazines, smut, and a lot of stuff in between. He worked on the Tender Flesh film, so it's no surprise there's a comic of it, although he doesn't have good things to say about the comics industry! Draculina was a print publisher from ~1997 through 2001ish, but it's still around in a limited fashion for online material. Here's an interview with Gallagher about the company's history. Fair warning, he's got some ... opinions. A bunch of these were given out at SDCC, along with other promo distribution channels like this one. As a result, these aren't all that rare, but it's kind of a neat book. I assume there are Barry Windsor-Smith fans out there even if he did do Wildstorm Rising. Astro City is underrated, and that cover is fantastic.

By the Horns was a pretty good little series, and that ashcan isn't super common. I'd consider that book a "hold". Frankly, Markisan Naso has had a couple good titles (Voracious, and this one). At some point, someone might notice... Much of the rest of that pickup is just silly for half cover out of a random HPB box.

It's not though. There's a whole constellation of ways that pressing can go wrong. For example, if the pressing process has imprinted a pattern into the paper or has flattened the comic in ways that cannot possibly reflect actual production. Pebbling is also an imprinted pattern, but caused by poor post-press drying practices rather than poor pressing per se, but they usually notate that as "pebbling", so I expect something else is the problem here.. Any of those is a concrete, mechanical flaw. "Poor pressing" doesn't mean CGC's graders think the presser could have done a nicer job and worked out more flaws; it means they believe the presser damaged the book. That's especially true in combination with a grader note like "water logged", which means that these books (or at least parts of them) were exposed to so much water that there is structural evidence of that experience. I can only assume that also reflects errors by the presser.

How else would you press metal covers, hmm?

This depends a lot on the properties of the ink. Generally, I suggest starting out by freezing the affected pages. Obviously, you want to ensure that the pages are kept free of moisture during this process! If that doesn't work, you can instead try heat -- I'd suggest a hair dryer on its lowest setting, kept well away from the paper itself -- although I'd expect you to have better luck with the cold treatment on this ink. In either case, instead of trying to pull the pages apart manually, use a length of waxed dental floss to separate them, working very slowly.

Mea culpa. That's what I get for speculating about books I don't collect. Ramping up the run on issues that are expected to be of particular interest, however, is certainly something that has occurred. Just... not on those books, it seems!

There's no one answer here. Sort of the default case is that a book sells out and the publisher believes there's enough interest to make another printing profitable. That's probably the case for those miscellaneous Batman issues. It's definitely the case for things like Killing Joke or DKR. Runs like Death in the Family probably didn't need 2nd printings because DC knew that was a pushed, high-profile story arc; they very likely had higher print runs from the start. Historically, some indie books (and especially the top-tier undergrounds) went through a lot of printings because they simply didn't have the money to print large numbers of comics at a time! To some extent, some high-profile modern books abuse that process by intentionally shorting the initial print run so that they can go to reprints with new covers to drive collector demand. But there are other reasons for reprints, of course. Sometimes we get 2nd printings because a book is needed in an alternative distribution channel. That's how we get unique prints in multi-packs and the like, as well as reprints for stuff like pack-ins with toys. Sometimes books go to multiple printings because something about the book needs corrected or because something went wrong in the printing process. And sometimes, it's hard to know why a book gets reprinted. Take Charles Burns's indie series Black Hole. The first two books went to a 2nd printing because they outperformed publisher Kitchen Sink's expectations. Then, Kitchen Sink went out of business and the rights were purchased by Fantagraphics, which reprinted #1 - #3 under the new imprint, in part to make them more available to prospective readers of the rest of the miniseries (there was evidently enough stock of #4 on hand to not need a reprint). Those all make sense. But Fantagraphics also eventually sent #5 and #9 to 2nd printings for no reason collectors have ever been able to discern. In particular, the #9 2nd printing was released after the first compilation was already on sale! Why was that necessary? We'll likely never know.

What? Skipped the epilogue in #606?

I love all the covers from that run, honestly.

A lot depends on what you want to count as the "action movie" genre. Many 80s films and film franchises have their first comic appearances in Marvel Comics Super Special. Conan's first global comic appearance is arguably in obscure Mexican comic Cuentos de Abuelito #8 (Corporacion Editorial Mexicana, 1952). This is absolutely an adaptation of the Howard's Conan story "Queen of the Black Coast", but it's an unofficial appearance in an obscure foreign book, so evidently doesn't count for everyone. His first American comic is Conan the Barbarian #1 (Marvel, 1970), which CGC credits as his first comics appearance. But of course, that all greatly predates the film; the first comic appearance of Arnold-style Conan is Marvel Comics Super Special #21 (Marvel, 1982), adapting the Conan the Barbarian film.

Although this comic series never really took off, its creator has had a pretty successful career. Elizabeth Watasin is best known at this point as a novelist, particularly for her lesbian-themed steampunk / horror series The Dark Victorian. Not to knock her art skills, but she's a much better writer than an illustrator, and I think Charm School might have had more success if she'd been able to pair with someone else for the visual aspect of her storytelling here.

Also, while I'm not a big believer that advertising previews (as opposed to in-book preview mini-stories like in Rust #12) count as "appearances", Now Comics News (v2) #6 previews the, um, preview of Terminator in Rust, and #7 comes with a fold-out poster of the character. Included largely for completionist interest.

I'm actually sort of surprised how many of the big 80s action franchises never got a contemporary comic book adaptation. One that definitely belongs on this list: Cyborg (Cannon Video, 1989), based on the Van Damme film. This absolutely fits in with the rest of these, but is going to be a challenge to get in a 9.8 slab. There are only 9 of these on census right now, including just one in 9.8. Looks like a surprisingly low print run promotional. If you're willing to let this drift into 90s stuff: Total Recall (DC, 1990). Bonus points if you track down the limited edition. I'm not sure if Starlog's Total Recall Official Movie Magazine came out before the DC book, but it doesn't appear to have comics content. Universal Soldier #1 (Now, 1992). This book has both direct market and newsstand editions, but they're actually very different. Not only do they have totally different covers, but the newsstand copies are bowdlerized to tone down the violence. Demolition Man #1 (DC, 1993). Timecop. This one's got a funny history. The film is based on a comic book story, which began in Dark Horse Comics #1 (Dark Horse, 1992), but was then re-adapted into a two-issue comic book miniseries beginning with Time Cop #1 (Dark Horse, 1994). It's the comic book of the film of the comic book! The Adventures of Snake Plissken #1 (Marvel, 1997). I think this is the first appearance of Kurt Russell's character from Escape from New York (and, by the time this came out, Escape from L.A.). I'm less certain you'd want to include properties that didn't get comic book adaptations until much, much later: Die Hard Year One (Boom!, 2009). First John McClane comic book appearance. Boom! has actually made quite a niche for itself with these film franchise adaptations. Mad Max Fury Road (DC, 2015). Somehow, this seems to be the first Mad Max franchise appearance in an American comic book appearance. There was a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome magazine in 1985, but doesn't have comics content (unless you count the Richard Amsel cover, I guess). The first global comic appearance that I can confirm is in Fantasia Anuario #22 (Editorial Columba, 1985), a magazine-sized Argentinian publication (adapting Thunderdome), although one source suggests that there might be Mad Max content in an Italian anthology publication, Orient Express #4 (L'Isola Trovata, 1982). No idea whether that's accurate or not, though. Because the world is a cruel and uncaring place, there was never a comic book adaptation of Gymkata.

That's pretty cool, and actually quite unusual. Many -- if not most -- French republications of modern US works are printed in a format called bande desinee, which are, among other things, hardcovers and so not eligible for slabbing.

Is this a reader's crease, or is it just an imaging artifact?

That said, while this series isn't great, especially for a Moore work, I do think it helped sow the seeds for his later creation of Promethea. There are some clear thematic similarities. I speculate that the difference in quality between Voodoo and Promethea comes down to how personally invested he was in each of the respective works. My suspicion is that Voodoo isn't a book Alan Moore wanted to write; it's a book Alan Moore was told to write. And while he's brilliant, he doesn't exactly take instruction well!

Ah, Voodoo, which is a strong contender for "the worst book Alan Moore ever wrote". Voodoo, the character, is an ex-member of WildC.A.T.s and also an ex-stripper, and despite what should have been a really interesting book where Alan Moore got to play around with the Louisiana mythos, we got this. Did I mention Voodoo was a stripper? Yeah, that... is a lot more relevant than it really should be in this four-book run, shall we say. Tim Callahan, writing for Reactor, gave this book a retrospective review. Here's sort of the take-home: It did get great covers the whole way through, though. Lopez and Russell only did #1, but #2-4 all had cover art by Adam Hughes. I think #3 is my favorite of them, really highlights Hughes's style. Interesting enough, since this character was originally in WildC.A.T.s, which was a Wildstorm property, when WS got absorbed into DC, the rights to Voodoo went with it. Unexpectedly, Voodoo got a 2nd series in 2011 as part of DC's New 52. For... some... reason. It actually started out okay, but it's clear that no one was really sure what to do with the series, which changed writers partway through the run and got axed after 12 issues (plus a #0, because DC), more or less in disgrace. If for some reason someone liked the character and these series enough to actually collect them (and no, this isn't one of my pet drek series!), none of this is super rare. The Image books stay out of the dollar boxes, probably carried by their cover art. Jason Pearson's variant cover to #1 (and it's Platinum variant-variant) would mostly just be hard to find in top grades because black covers and all. Nothing at all from the DC run is rare or valuable, although #1 went to a 2nd printing that is far less common than might be expected. If you want a challenge, German publisher Splitter reprinted the 4-issue Image series as a 2-issue mini with double-sized books (each containing two of the original US issues). Interestingly, the German #1 uses Pearson's racy variant cover instead of the Lopez and Russell work (did I mention the character is a stripper?).

I like giving context to indie drek! Davdez Arts mostly served as the imprint for writer/illustrator/publisher David Hernandez's self-publishing endeavors, which absolutely includes Drayven. He managed to keep this book going to #3 (plus a "limited" -- it's not very rare -- variant cover to #1). The series is... well, I'm not going to say there aren't some interesting ideas there, but it is rather what you'd expect from an essentially self-published indie by a creator you've never heard of, if you know what I mean. Probably the most interesting thing out of Davdez Arts is that Hernandez did publish two issues of a spinoff of Barry Blair's controversial, cult-favorite Elflord (here titled Legends of the Elflord) in 1998, shortly before Davdez Arts slipped away into whatever darkness awaits failed indie publishers. Legends of the Elflord isn't as hard to find as what I consider "hard to find" stuff, but it does occasionally sell for higher-than-drek prices to fans of Blair's work.

I can't imagine this getting anything but an 0.5 due the full split, and the amount missing from the back cover.

I think the distinction is for dates that are, or at least appear to be, arrival dates because those were part of the typical distribution process for comics for a very long time. If you grab some current book off the shelf and pencil in today's date, I don't think you're getting a 9.6 out of it. Likewise with distributor spray. Recreate that now, and it's just a stain.

I can say with certainty that, since ceasing to be a teenager myself, I have never tried to flirt with a minor.