Qalyar

That one's tough! AND you found a copy where the cover was cut square and mostly aligned with the interior (looks a little high, I think I see pages peeking at the bottom, but that's way better than some of these). That's even tougher. I swear Marvel's printer must have done those JC Penney books under protest, or had the accounting intern run the presses for them, or something, because so many of them are just so incompetently assembled.

We'll need unbagged photos of both covers to evaluate it properly. For now, I'd say that's a pretty nice looking book.

Absolutely not. That is not what rarity means. The basic premise is wrong, too, because I guarantee you there are a surprising number of comics that are both very rare (like ... less than 100 extant copies), and effectively valueless. But since the conclusion is, as they say, not even wrong...

Pre-code is hard to beat for horror. Copper is probably the best for random main-title superhero books; as in, pick a random issue of a random major title in Copper and it's probably at least readable. Plus the highlight stories are industry defining, so that's always a good thing. Modern has been mostly terrible for main-title books (yeah, sure, with some exceptions), but has had a lot of phenomenal mini- and maxi-series, especially (but not exclusively) by publishers outside the Big Two and a Half.

I suspect that current-day distribution processes, with much more automation involved, are also a lot less forgiving for books with literally paper-thin cover stock.

Yep, swapping magenta for cyan. Great cover, makes it look like a bunch of Skrulls were practicing their Fantastic Four impersonation efforts. How the community handles very rare errors is ... not consistent. Some catch collectors' attention. Some do not. In general, the most consistently performing errors are those that are rare enough that demand outstrips supply but not so rare that collectors write them off as unobtainable. That one you posted? Well, I wish that guy luck with his sale. It's not worth that unless someone pays that price for it... And again, I need to stress this. The color variations you're seeing in copies of Devil Dinosaur #1 are not errors; they're either well within the normal range of production variation, or else are post-production damage, depending on which particular copy we're talking about from those you've posted. Virtually every book from that time period has similar inconsistencies in color. That's why I said those sorts of things don't matter on a "random '70s book", because you can pick any of them and find things like this. Heck, go look at copies of Werewolf By Night #32, which is a fairly significant key issue these days. There's a considerable range of color to the bluish background. Some of them have better eye appeal than others. None of them are errors. Neither are the Devil Dinosaurs.

There are a couple big things to keep in mind with this book, and, really, most comics. First, generally speaking, comics are not exactly the products of precision manufacturing. The color mix may vary during the print run, for example. That's especially the case for some of the cheap publishers in the GA and SA. I swear, it's tough to find two Fiction House books that have matching colors at all. But it's really still true for 1978 Marvel books, like Devil Dinosaur #1. Now, in the world of stamp collecting, that could sometimes be a thing. There were (and probably are) specialist collectors who care about subtle variations (US Scott 11, just for example, is recognized in dull red, orange red, rose red, brownish carmine, claret, deep claret, plum, and pinkish). But postage stamps are held to a higher quality standard, if for no other reason than as an anti-counterfeiting measure. For comics, I'm confident that no one cares that some Devil Dinosaur #1s started out redder and some oranger, except to the extent that brighter colors generally have been eye appeal. But the other thing to keep in mind is that some of the inks used on some books are really quite photosensitive. That's almost always the reds, although I want to say there are a few odd ducks early on that used different pigments. Regardless, in some cases, it really doesn't take very much sunlight exposure to begin to bleach a cover, or part of one. That's not a print variant; it's damage. If the color intensity on the front cover doesn't match the back cover, that's a clear tell that the book didn't start off looking that way. On the other hand, the interior pages are typically printed separately from the covers. So you can have a cover with some production-related color issues, or with sun fade, or both, but have the interior brightly colored. Or not. Or whatever combination floats your fancy. None of that rises to the level of a collectible print variant. Now, certainly, there are production errors that are recognized and valued. Spawn #1 with no black ink on cover. Avengers #10 where the yellow and magenta inks were applied to the wrong plates. Malibu Sun #13 with the yellow and black colors transposed for the back cover. And so forth. But some random '70s book being a little more or a little less red than another copy? There's no there there.

The CGC event waiver doesn't appear to exclude claims, including claims of negligence, against the actual signing artists, who are not "employees, agents, [or] representatives" of CGC. But you'd have to be both really litigious and really dumb to press such a claim outside of truly exceptional circumstances. It would also be a good way to ensure that you'd never get to do business with CGC, that artist, or ... anyone in this hobby, really, ever again.

This is exactly what I would expect that book to look like with severe sun fade. Different colors of ink absolutely have different degrees of photosensitivity; for most comics, the red ink is by far the fastest to sun bleach. So... you have a book with a badly sun-damaged front cover and no back cover. It is not a printer error. It is not an 8.0. It is, at best, an 0.5. Which is to say this is a reader copy with no collectible value. Sorry.

Well, that Tales from the Creep #2 is a fairly tough book to find. Second of two issues in Antarctic Press's effort to launch an EC-inspired horror anthology. IMO the story quality is a little meh, but they're pretty low print runs, and EC-esque horror is popular.

I can't help but feel this is an inherent problem with in-house signing, but people sure do like those yellow label slabs, I guess. Regardless, condolences for the damage, whether caused by CGC or the signer (or both).

Well, that's sad. Really was interested to see if the back cover had been replaced with a custom ad. It's possible that the only difference between this and the normal release is that line of text on the front, but looks like someone will have to find another copy for us to know.

Babylon 5 was a great show. In 2007, a direct-to-DVD spinoff anthology film released, called Babylon 5: The Lost Tales. It's ... okay. It's relevant here because a few copies -- sold exclusively at US Best Buy stores, and labeled with a little red "limited edition" sticker in the corner -- included a mini-comic (and, to my knowledge, no other differences from normal copies). You see, two of the show's key actors, Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin) and Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar) had passed away before the filming of The Lost Tales. So J. Michael Straczynski wrote an 8-page mini-comic as a tribute to them, and to give their characters a farewell story. This is that comic. It is absolutely elusive. There was never any public acknowledgement of how many "Best Buy Limited Edition" copies of the DVD were produced. There were perhaps another couple hundred copies given away at SDCC when the film was announced (most of which were signed by JMS on site), and a handful more that didn't get distributed at all but eventually found their way to fans. I expect that survival rates for this comic are higher than for most pack-ins because a lot of B5 fans realized this was a cool item worth keeping, and so, well, kept it. But even if we spitball that there are a couple thousand of these out there, the lion's share went into black hole collections. They show up for sale approximately never at this point. I'm really happy to have this one, and happy with the grade as well. Normally, a 9.4 on a modern book isn't actually very good. In this case, high grade copies are especially tough because the way it was distributed in the DVD case was... stuffed under those big plastic case clips on the inside front of the clamshell. Needless to say, creasing and surface abrasions are common. I'll shout out to @joeypost for his fine work here; I don't press all my books, but this sucker was a wavy, bendy mess when I got it. I knew there was nothing to do be done about that little chip near the bottom of the spine, a consequence of that distribution abuse, but everything else resolved beautifully. There probably are 9.8-candidate copies out there somewhere, potentially from the books handed out at SDCC or the couple dozen undistributed copies that made their way out. I'll keep watching for one, but for now, this has a happy home in my collections of JMS works and modern promotional rarities.

Just wanted to note that this has a newsstand-formatted ISBN, but to my knowledge is the only version of The Fourth Horseman 1 that exists. There's no separate direct market print. Same goes for #2, and... no, wait, that's all there are. This was supposed to be an ongoing series, but Fangoria bailed on its comic branch before producing anything past the first two issues of this, which are basically low-dialogue introductions to the first two Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It's impossible to know what they planned for the actual series. As it stands, I can't really say I'd recommend these. There's not much there there, as they say. But they're interesting curiosities at the least.

This hasn't shown up in the census yet (either as Batman or Batnan), and I'm very interested to see if the census entry for this book is spelled wrong too. I assume it will be, because I think the label should match the electronic record for the book (which the census queries). It's actually better if that's the case. Otherwise, it's another way the electronic record can be desynced from the physical book, and there are already too many of those. EDIT: Ah, but the cert lookup does have this book already. Batnan. So that's good, in a way, even though this never should have happened in the first place....

Agreed. I think any book that's indistinguishable from the outside is underrepresented. But I still doubt there are just tons of these, especially compared to the corrected version.

Now find four newsstand second printings just like them! ...I kid, I kid. Newsstand 000s aren't quasi-mythical, but I don't think I've ever seen a nice stack of them, in good grades, like that.

So, assuming FedEx shipper restrictions work like the UPS shipper restrictions I'm more familiar with, a shipper (here, CGC) can essentially request that their packages are locked out from delivery change requests. This is pretty common for businesses that deal in high value shipments (a lot of technology shippers) or that are unusually prone to fraud (also technology shippers, pharma fulfillment, etc). The shipper retains the ability to make changes. So, if that's what has been put in place here (and I certainly can't guarantee that, or even that FedEx does things that way), then, yes, to have a delivery address changed, you would have to get CGC to call FedEx on your behalf. At least for UPS, that doesn't necessarily.apply.to having a package held for pickup at a company will call desk, so you may still have options. I still wish that, if they had to go down to one standard shipper for operational purposes, that they'd opted for USPS Registered Mail here. I find UPS to be my preferred shipper for normal stuff (and not because they pay me), but Registered Mail exists to serve the needs of high-value, care-required shipments for a reason. FedEx, on the other hand, is, um, slightly cheaper? I guess? I've had more problems with them in the last decade than the other two logistics options combined.

So, it's always tough evaluating books from pictures of slabs, because we've got a fixed lighting angle and the case sometimes obscures features (and, especially in photos, adds reflections). In particular,y it's almost impossible to see bends or some creases in images like this. With all that out of the way: The spine problems were made worse, not better. Look where the outstretched wing of the second bat from the top left is pointing. There was a spine tick there in the 8.5 slab, but it didn't completely break the color of the black frame line; now, it does. The same thing is true of the spine tick below the last bat on the left. I don't see two other spine ticks -- one just below the fourth bat, and one just above the logo/UPC box -- in the image of the original, although there may be some lighting at work here. I suspect the "light staining to cover" is the discoloration at the top of the yellow field of the... erm, moon? Sun? Whatever, this is about Batman, not astronomy, right? Regardless, sure, this might be a camera trick or a case reflection, but I think that looks an awful lot like some grime got redistributed onto the cover, perhaps during the presser's cleaning process. I suppose the Devil's Advocate position is that these issues could have occurred at CGC rather than at your presser. Certainly, there have been more handling errors at CGC recently than there should ever have been. But in this case, where the issues appear to be an exacerbation of existing defects and/or the sort of new problems that I'd expect to be associated with... less-than-top-notch pressing? I don't think CGC is responsible. And I do think this book deserves a worse technical grade than it started with. My condolences. As a personal aside, the miscolored sections of the moon/sun/whatever have always bugged me to no end on this book. It wanted to be such a cool cover, but then that slipped through.

That'll make some Danzig fans happy!

I'm really interested in hearing back once you get this, to know if the back cover is different or if there any other advertising elements. Harvey made complimentary copies of a huge array of issues, often for military distribution. And Charlton did quite a few as charity promos for the Cerebral Palsy Association (and perhaps others). But I don't recall seeing one of these from Archie before, and it seems the major comic databases haven't either.

Couple of things I do want to note here. First, just because a defect isn't mentioned in the new/old notes, doesn't mean that defect isn't present. For example, non-restorative C&P isn't generally going to do anything about staple corrosion; just because they didn't mention it the second time, doesn't mean it magically went away. And second, regarding "light" stress lines that become "moderate" after a press, this can be a problem with pressing (especially mediocre pressers), where a color-breaking crease is pressed out such that the paper lays flat, but the color break is now ironically more clearly visible and is marked down more harshly.

That's a ... big stack of Megaton 3s you have there!

The rarest of the DCU books at least seem to be scarcer than the 30c books generally are; a full run of the 35s remains, um, daunting however.

I can't say whether any copies were ever packed in with that toy set, but I do know that mattycollector.com gave away at least some copies of this book as promotional items, probably around the same time the toy released. Its entirely possible that the books were delayed and the first tranche of toys didn't have them included, necessitating give-aways. Mattycollector had no shortage of production, shipping, and technical issues during it's 8ish year run (including being caught in Digital River's enormous security breach). So it certain seems plausible. Regardless, fantastic find in the wild. However they were distributed, those suckers are rare.