Qalyar

There are a handful of examples from the early 2000s (I'll add 2000's Midnight Nation #2 Pink Foil Edition to that list, as it was a Graham Cracker Comics exclusive in exactly the same sense as modern store exclusives, but these are sort of prototypes of what store exclusives have become. There's a credible case that IDW's 2011 Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1 really kicked the trend into high gear. Requirements for store exclusives were very low on this book (seriously, I think it was 500 copies), and they actually modified the cover art -- of Godzilla crushing a building -- to feature the individual stores getting crushed (which, let's be honest, is kind of awesome). There were about eleventy-seven zillion stores that bought in, and the whole thing got a lot of attention. Shortly after, the frequency of these store variant mass offerings really took off, including from the Big Two. Was G:KoM what sent us off to the races? Hard to say. I think industry trends were pointed in that direction regardless. But it sure helped push them along.

I don't know, I don't think "reverse Krang" seems very impressive...

Right. It's just weird that they opted to slot the "extra" step at 1.8; alternatively, they couple have kept the progression consistent: 0.5 per grade step up to 9.0 0.2 per grade step up to 9.6 0.1 per grade step thereafter. Same number of grading tiers, but no one-off exception to the scale. But obviously, there's no changing the scale after the fact

CGC doesn't do 0.3 or 0.1 unlike some other graders. CGC does do 1.8 for ... reasons. I don't know, I've never understood why that tier needed to exist.

It's impossible for a census like this to be accurate over the long term. Even when there was an incentive to send back labels from cracked books, many didn't go back. At no point should the exact numbers in the census be treated as flawless. But they're "directionally correct", as we say in the world of enterprise data analytics, and they are useful for comparing slabbing availability/interest broadly between books (as well as, to various extents, things like average condition or frequency of restoration). There's a lot of useful things to do with census data, but being assured that there are, say, 231 copies of some book in 9.2 just isn't one of them

So, with non-comic books, this is very much a real problem. Books stored spine-up place extra stress on adhesive that binds pages to the spine and over time can cause them to separate, sometimes resulting in additional damage due to the resulting stress to the rest of the binding. There's not really any debate about this; hardcovers have unquestionably had damage done to them this way. Do not store hardcover books spine-up. So the question is... could comics be damage the same way? For squarebound books, the book is assembled in a very similar manner to a normal book; the interior pages (which, here, are stapled) are glued into the cover. Although the weight of the interior pages of an 80-page giant is less than the weight of the interior pages of, say, a 500-page hardcover, physics says the difference is in the magnitude of the forces, not their presence or absence. So the damage may not happen as quickly, but there's still no reason to do that. Besides, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the adhesives used to bind squarebound comics are less robust than their bookbinding cousins. The comic's page weight may be lighter, but the force keeping things together is weaker. Why make life harder on your books? The open question, then, is whether this represents a danger to a saddle-stitched (that is, stapled together normally) comic. Physics says that the forces pulling down on those interior pages are still present if a book is stored spine-up. Reality says that staples are a lot more secure fastener than aging binding adhesive, so the potential point of failure is the paper at the binding points. Do I really think that the weight of a comic's interior pages is sufficient to widen the staple holes over time or to risk detachment of leaves? Over human-reasonable timeframes and for most books, honestly, no. It probably doesn't matter. But in books already prone to these problems, where the cover or centerfold is on its way to being detached already? I certainly would not put them in a position where physics says the forces are being borne by the weakest point. Same goes for books that are prone to inherent paper quality problems -- stuff like Negro Romance or the Canadian Whites, where many of the known copies have slightly brittle or brittle pages; a conservation ethos demands that we store those books in the way that's most likely to encourage their continued preservation regardless of the odds involved. There is a secondary reason not to store slabs spine-up. Many books have a small amount of cover overhang. Not all comics are slabbed extremely tightly against the wells (the alternative can cause the covers to bind against the well while the pages shift, resulting in more severe damage, which we have seen -- it's the cause of the worst examples of SCS). Especially for those books with a lot of play in their position and a bit of overhang at the reading edge, it's a bad idea to store them spine-up because that places the weight of the comic book against the edges of the cover. Again, is this likely to cause damage in and of itself in the short- to medium-term? Probably not, but why store valuable collectibles in an orientation with the potential for long-term stress when it's fairly trivial to turn them a different way?

Notwithstanding some terrible things he did to Spider-Man, I'm a fan of JMS. Rising Stars was a hot title for a minute years ago, but isn't now and won't ever be again. I've been slowly picking up high grade books when they come up for sale, including this 9.9 copy of one of the #1/2 variants. The old-style case bugs me a tad, but I probably won't reholder this because I assume they'd exercise their discretion to regrade it as a 9.8 or something.

Agreed. Beyond the green ink on that crease, the left side of the DC logo is a suspicious mess. I'm also uncertain about several spots of yellow, although those might just be artifacts of wear and lighting. Regardless, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be even a little happy with what would be left after CT removal here...

For slabs: Storing them spine-down (that is, with the reading edge up) places the least stress on the paper at the staples, from a physics standpoint. Arguably, that makes this the preferred orientation for long-term storage. Laying them flat on their back is likely to be fine as long as you do not do really stupid stacking things. Storing them vertically (that is the bottom of the book down, and the top of the book up, like in a newsstand) does place uneven stress on the stapled paper. But tightly slabbed books that have good paper (but in terms of non-brittle page quality and actually having decent paper to start with -- unlike, say, some recent Marvels!) are very unlikely to see actual damage develop this way in a reasonable time frame. Storing them spine-up, with the reading edge down, is an actively bad idea, because this basically causes the weight of the pages to hang from the staples and can lead to damage or even outright separation given enough time (especially if there's movement/vibration at times). Do not store books -- comics or otherwise -- this way. It is bad for them. For bagged and boarded books, the calculus is a little more complicated because the bagged book is thicker on the staple side than on the reading edge. Even with the board, this can create bends given time, which is why many people recommend front-to-back alternation or similar solutions. And of course, poorly stored books can develop bends in other directions despite the stiffness of boards -- I've seen boarded books with a curl at the bottom because they were permitted to slump in their box. The most important things for storing boarded books are to ensure that the books don't experience uneven pressure and that they aren't able to shift around.

Fantastic news, Mike. And thank you for the continued engagement.

Whew. I was afraid you found this as a self-contained pile of books, and I'm not sure I could handle that much raw envy.

Didn't realize these existed. Searching eBay reveals a small number of these, mostly in truly godawful conditions, like this misbegotten copy. So probably not super rare, but definitely not widely-recognized.

Did you cherry pick these from a bigger lot? Because half of this looks like what's already missing from collections I find...

6.5, might press to a 7.0 but most of these flaws aren't pressable. The front cover has some defects but they're not very intrusive; shame about that back cover though. I wouldn't grab this unless the price was a steal. There are just too many sexy copies of this book out there.

Obscure or under-rated doesn't mean it has to be both! To be fair, parts of this 1970's take (I can't really say "adaptation") on Beowulf aren't bad. The first half of #1 is pretty good. Grendel's appearance, later on, is solid. On the other hand, the female barbarian that Beowulf rescues (and becomes his combat partner) is gratuitously based on the writer's girlfriend. And then there's the whole Satan thing. Satan, obviously, played no part in the original Beowulf poem. Here, it's Satan everything. As one reviewer wrote, "Eventually you hear his name pronounced as if by Dana Carvey as the Church Lady." By the later issues, Beowulf faces Dracula, who becomes a recurring major villain. He travels on a time-traveling spaceship that accidentally destroys Atlantis. He chats with Ulysses. He travels to Crete and fights the Cretan Minotaur. I don't know, man, I didn't write this .

It's weird, because 90s Image. The "smoking gun" cover art is, itself, a variant cover. That variant cover art comes with three different logo colors: normal, platinum, ruby red.

I believe it was advertised as a limited edition of 400. Now, advertised print runs don't always strictly match reality because of how printing works, but I don't think there's any realistic way that there were 10K of them produced. I don't even think there were 10K copies of the non-red, non-platinum version of that cover.

8-9 months or thereabouts, although I know he believes he's over a hump and TATs will improve. Seriously, right now the pressing industry is backlogged pretty much anywhere you want to use. As far as CCS goes, I had them press some books that had really ugly bends due to distributor stupidity, and those came back happily 9.8 with no sign anything had ever been wrong. But I don't think I'd use them for anything really irreplaceable; I don't think they're a bad service by any means, but I want more individualized care for books that warrant it.

I have certainly seen more of the general sales version than the subscription version. A lot of the sub copies are pretty grim, too. That one on the right looks quite nice Now, my experiences with this book are anecdata and could just be sampling bias. In any case, I'm not sure there's an established value distinction between them.

That's certainly what I'd want to happen, but I figure with a book this obscure (which CGC has never seen either), it's wise to be prepared for anything

Also, most distributor spray is on the top or bottom edge of the book. Grading standards for this sort of things reflect common practice, and hosing down the spine with distributor's ink is not common practice. I think this is going to take a hit to the grade because of: 1) the position of the ink, 2) the fact they sprayed this book with a fire hose of it, and 3) the bleedthrough to interior pages Otherwise, nice book. UR corner obviously got a bit bent, and the LR corner is a teensy bit soft, but how they handle the spray will be the controlling defect. I'll go with 8.0 here, plus or minus one grade based on how exactly they adjudicate the nonstandard spray and its interior bleedthrough.

Yeah, those might be third party barcode stickers; it's sometimes hard to know. That said, it's the blank UPC boxes that make these super weird. These aren't either the standard 1st printings or 2nd prints, both of which have a back cover UPC. I wasn't aware of any pack-ins or packaged sets with Kingdom Come... and they still have a cover price anyway. What does the indicia say on these copies?

Basements are evil things. But at least these escaped! That's a pretty beautiful Dragon #1 especially.

Agreed. This is definitely a rare book, and it's almost certainly a valuable book, but that doesn't mean it's a $15000 book. I have actually quite a few books with print runs comparable to this one, and none of them are 5-digit items. And, I mean, I liked the Disney+ Moon Knight, but that doesn't make this sort of thing mystically worth a fortune, either.

There's been a lot of research effort put into figuring out exactly where this came from. The absolute madness of the recent ebay sale will encourage that sort of thing. Current consensus is that it was a bonus distributed to people who not only pre-ordered EQOA, but who placed that pre-order on the (still fairly new) online PlayStation Store. There may have been other requirements involved. Unquestionably, very few of these were produced and distributed.