Qalyar

I'm of the opinion that staple rust is a serious defect which should always be disclosed. Unlike a crease or a torn cover or a missing piece, staple rust has a tendency to worsen over time, to discolor surrounding paper through migration, and to catalyze some forms of paper degradation. It is, to my view, similar to why brittle pages are their own page quality regardless of the apparent color of paper. Staple rust is sometimes also hard to spot on an encapsulated book. The slabs are designed to highlight the covers, and don't always provide the best viewing angles of shenanigans along the spine.

There's not being perfect and then there's not being perfect, you know? @CGC Mike I know that "hey, let us know if you want a free label correction" is all CGC offers for this sort of thing, but there have been quite a few high profile slabbing errors lately, especially the UF4 mislabels. I don't know what I think you should do, but I think at the company level, there needs to be some consideration for dealing with third parties who, fundamentally, have been defrauded on the basis of incontrovertible CGC QA failures. There is no incentive (save morality) for current owners of these bad slabs to have them corrected, and a reholder doesn't make whole people who they mislead, potentially to the tune of hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

None of those are great rarities, but condition looks fantastic, especially for the engine. Pre-war locos, especially in this shape and with the original box, are consistently in demand.

I feel like this is less of a QA failure and more an unintended consequence (yet again) of CGC's weirdly stubborn determination to stick their fingers in their ears and chant LALALA DM AND NS BOOKS ARE IDENTICAL.

Half a dozen or so on the brief Marvel Music imprint. And of course, stuff like Marvel Super Special #1 (with KISS).

I doubt the submission was incorrect. One of the things I'm fairly certain of, from the way errors occur, is that CGC's intake process doesn't directly import anything from the submission invoice; instead, intake employees have to re-enter each book in a process that presumably looks like the submission form. And is exactly as prone to errors.

I knew Saga was just on hiatus. Did not expect more Fables, though!

There are a couple cover variants for this one, but no reprints.

The two issues of Short Order are also basically prototypes to Raw magazine, although of course #1 is way more important for the Maus bit. It's rarer, in my experience, than Funny Animals. The latter had over 30k copies printed (maybe a lot more!), so there are quite a few copies out there.

Read the first two issues of Snake Woman online, plus the #0 that's basically a prequel. It's... interesting. Kapur obviously has a really solid idea of a story here. The first two issues introduce a LOT of characters in a hurry (8? 10? Thereabouts, depending on how you count), plus a unique divinity, a weird cyclical generational curse, and a cult with complex internal structure. It's a lot, and although he's done really well with other books, Zeb Wells doesn't do a great job with it, I don't think. Also, he wrote "web sight" instead of "website" which the editors really should have caught. The art is by Michael Gaydos. I know he's done some Marvel stuff, but I wasn't real familiar with him. At first I was a little down on his style, which about a lot of shadowing and not a lot of clean lines, but I think it's a reasonable match for the book's tone. I still wish Mukesh Singh, who did the covers, had done the page work, too, but that's hardly an observation unique to this book. I'll probably pick the rest up to read. Either floppies or TPBs, whichever I get a good deal on first.

Nope, completely indistinguishable. For all practical purposes, pretend it just had one printing of 40k copies. It is a pretty cool book, and I think underappreciated in the market -- just don't pay for one as if it were a 1k or 5k print run rarity.

Correct. It is clear that there is no culture of reporting at CGC, and that's one of the most serious problems.

It's always harder to identify the root cause on these SS books. It's (increasingly) possible that CGC/CCS dropped the ball, but you never know what creators are going to do while signing books. Some of them obviously treat comics with respect and delicacy, but others seem to believe that their autograph is the only thing you'll care about. No way to know what happened here, sadly

Sad to hear this.

Couple others to do due diligence on: Mom's Homemade #1 1st print has a 49c cover price. Reprints are 50c and not distinguishable. For the record, I have always really liked this book. I think it's genuinely funny, unlike a lot of UGs which are creatures of their era (or just trying too hard). Fat Freddy's Cat: #1 1st prints do not credit Dave Sheridan on the FC. #2 first are halftone FC, later ones are line art and brighter; these are tough to tell apart without exemplars in hand sometimes. #3 first has a 75c cover price. #5 first has a $1 cover price. If the advertised 1sts are all 1sts, that's a tempting pick imo. Pork first prints are 75c, but priced on the inside front cover. I am not much fond of Wilson personally, and don't even think this one's his best, but YMMV. New Adventures of Jesus #1 1st is super easy. It's real. If it's red (or orange) it's not a 1st print. Unless high grade, don't overpay here. I've seen mid-grade copies of this one as cheap as $25 or 30. It is a cool book though! Color only had the one issue (and printing).

Only because he got lucky. Do that twisty thing a bunch of times and sooner or later you're gonna put a shard of plastic through the book.

AFAIK, these were the only two issues of the entire series that were actually directly sold -- all the rest, including other printings of these, were various mail-away, give-aways, and promotional. Okay, okay, or something a bit more serious?

I feel like someone inserted an object -- maybe even a screwdriver -- to pry that case open and instead slipped it against the cover. Inexcusable

So, it's tough to know without any idea about condition or (for most of these) asking price. Sure, all else being equal, I'd want Mr. Natural over Gjdrkzlxcbwq over Ghost Mother, and so forth. In general, I value legitimate 1st print undergrounds over later reprints. They were often low runs and survival rates are poor. That said, trust but verify printing determinations, especially on big books, especially since they have something else wrong. Tales of Toad #2 is not the first appearance of Zippy -- that would be Real Pulp Comics #1. Mr. Natural #1 1st print must say exactly "Printed by Apex Novelties and Published by the San Francisco Comic Book Company" on the inside front cover Zap #3 1st can only be distinguished from the 2nd by the thickness of the cover. 1st prints are 0.006 inches thick or more; 2nd prints are under 0.005. Either bring a micrometer or don't buy this book. Zap #1 3rd is a squinky book, but it was after undergrounds started to take off, so it is MUCH more common than 1st/2nd prints. Don't overpay. Bakersfield Kountry is a cool book, but the three printing were identical, so it's a bit less rare than you'd expect. Total print run was like 40k. Zippy #1 has a green background cover. First prints have a red and black interior (on some pages); second prints are monochrome black within. #2 has a city street cover. And so forth. But again, I don't think this is enough info for me to make recommendations. Ultimately, buy what you are happy with!

Fantastic set of books. Thanks! I don't think I realized Marvel did more than one series of Anita Blake adaptations. Bizarre. I actually liked the first couple of those novels, when I thought the series genre was going to be "urban dark fantasy" instead of "paranormal romance". I can't imagine the crossover market to comic readers was very robust.

I don't actually hate the OP's sketch cover. And that Deadpool: Bad Blood still has its share of flaws, but isn't obviously anatomy-defying like a lot of his work. Liefeld still draws really weird guns, but there's a visible foot, and his head's on straight, so there's that.

Well, having most of them presented by Deepak Chopra doesn't instill me with enthusiasm, but Snake Woman is apparently written by award-winning director Shekhar Kapur, with the idea that it's a "film" he would have wanted to direct but wouldn't have been able to produce in that medium. So that's promising...

You can always put in that you can't find a match and enter new information, which explicitly does not need to have all the fields completed. Indeed, for some books, all the fields can't be completed. I've got a book that'll be going to CGC post-press which has no listed publisher nor publication date. Or you can accidentally pick the wrong one. Regardless, CGC shouldn't be beholden to what people enter. Otherwise, well, there'll be a lot more UF4 reprints submitted as the real book. But it's also clear that the prepopulated list affects CGC internally. How do I know? I have a book back at CGC as a Mechanical Error. The title has never been graded before. I submitted it correctly, but it was mis-entered as an entirely different book with a similar-ish name at intake, and never corrected; not by grading, not be "QA". The only way that could happen is if the intake processor got that incorrect book title from a drop-down.

Okay, not gonna lie, this doesn't happen to me very often. You have successfully posted an indie book that I know absolutely nothing at all about...

I think I was actually thinking of Killer Croc, who -- as I recall -- is named and has a speaking part in... whatever book that is, I forget, but appears essentially as a black silhouette under a trenchcoat. I do not DC enough to keep track of what is "considered" his first appearance.