Qalyar

So, trying to organize this a bit. There are several "body plans" for snake-people, I'll use that to break these out. Arms + tail, no legs (many depictions of naga, lamia, were-snakes, and many of D&D's yuan-ti; upper body may be human-like or reptilian) Adventures into Terror #25 (Atlas, 1953): Males, humanoid upper body with reptilian features. Alien Legion: Male, humanoid alien upper body. Sarigar is one of the main characters in this mil sci-fi series Alien Legion (1st Series) #1-#20 (Marvel, 1984-1987). Sarigar is on many of the covers, and is the series logo on all of them! Alien Legion (2nd Series) #1, #2, #14 (Marvel, 1987-1990). Less cover time for Sarigar this time around. I think he's on #18, but his body shape isn't obvious there. Alien Legion Uncivil War #1-#4 (Titan, 2014). He's cover material for the entire revival mini-series. Conan the Barbarian #164 (Marvel, 1982): Female, human torso with medusa head. Hot Stuf' (Sal Q, 1978): Indeterminate gender, serpentine torso, neck, and head, but with arms. Magazine format. Psycho #4 (Skywald, 1971): Female, human upper body. Magazine format. Savage Sword of Conan #65 (Marvel, 1981): Female, human torso with serpentine head. Magazine format. Secrets of Haunted House #20 (DC, 1980): Female, human upper body. Skeleton Hand #2 (American Comics Group, 1952): Female, human upper body Unexpected #192 (DC, 1979): Male, reptilian upper body. Villains for Hire #1 (Marvel, 2012): Male, essentially human upper body. No arms or legs, humanoid head (this is D&D's version of naga, among others) Adventures into the Unknown #24 (ACG, 1952). Male, reptilian head. Teensy tiny little arms, but certainly not a humanoid torso. I stand by my arbitrary snake categorizations. Conan the Barbarian #7 (Marvel, 1971): Male, medusa head. Fantastic Fears #3 (Farrel, 1953): Male and female, human heads. Arms and legs, but clearly serpentine head (often difficult to distinguish from lizardmen, dragon-people, and other sundry reptiles) Avengers Annual #21 (Marvel, 1992): Male, snake-headed reptilian humanoid (headshot only) Justice League of America #116 (DC, 1975): Male, snake-headed human (a transformed Elongated Man) Masters of the Universe [#34, "King of the Snake Men"] (DC/Mattel, 1986). Male, snake-headed reptilian humanoid. Kull the Conqueror #2 (Marvel, 1971): Male, snake-headed humans. Uncertain-if-it-counts holding pen Eerie #3 (Warren, 1966). Canonically a sea monster, but it's fairly serpentine. Frazetta is always awesome, but not sure if this counts. Super Mystery Comics v2#5, v2#6 (Ace, 1942). Reptilian humanoid but not a serpentine head, despite being named The Cobra. Rawhide Kid #37 (Marvel, 1963). Well, it's a guy in a reptile costume, but he calls himself The Rattler. Warlord #3 (DC, 1976). Canonically, these are lizardmen, not snakes. A fantastic genre cover regardless. Zip Comics #13 (MLJ, 1941). Possibly category 3, but he's breathing fire like a dragon. OTOH, he's named The Rattler, so maybe...

Anything that even suggests physical violence seems to have been culled, and I suspect they had some sort of "maximum sexiness" level that they dared not cross. Also, for the record, I have absolutely no idea what the two unidentified stories are in I Dared Not Love. I haven't even been able to find likely candidates that aren't scanned online. "For Mother's Sake" from, well, For Mother's Sake, doesn't appear to be online in its original format either. Based on story titles, and ruling out stories where we know the contents don't match, my two best guesses right now are "I Sold My Soul" from My Story, True Romances in Pictures #8 (Fox, 1949) or "I Bartered With Marriage" from My Love Memoirs #11 (Fox, 1950). It might not be either of those, but that's where I'd start looking if, you know, it was actually possible to just grab raw copies of these Fox books and peek inside.

There's clearly some "both", because we've also seen reprinted pages with amended text or entirely expurgated panels.

I think that's pretty likely. These Streamline books have 27 pages of story available, because they use the inside front cover, inside back cover, and outside back cover (!!) for story pages. Most of the original Fox stories are 10 pages long, although there are some 8- and 9-pagers from time to time (for example, "Unfaithful Wife" was a 9 page story). Obviously, they have to make room somewhere to get that page count down to 27, so I assume that's why we're losing the splash page (and potentially an extra page here or there). Plus, Streamline really seemed to hate the original Fox story titles, and that's a convenient way to get rid of them!

This was originally published as "Unfaithful Wife" in Women in Love #3 (Fox, 1949). We've now seen reprints of all three stories from that issue!

There are lots of options, of course, if I don't restrict this to just covers, like the backup story in Detective Comics #514-517 featuring Batgirl versus Lady Viper. Which doesn't really go as planned for Batgirl for awhile; for example, this splash panel in #516. Nothing at all on the covers, of course, because Batman. As cool as this is, though, at least for now, I really am hoping for cover art.

To contribute to my own question, technically I suppose Avengers Annual #21 counts because Ssith over there in a box on the left is one of the Serpent-Men, like the ones on the cover of Kull #2. But... yeah. That's pretty weak tea.

Is that just OA or a splash panel or something?

I imagined there'd be a bunch of these in PCH. In addition, you know, to that Skeletal Hand #2 that there's no way I'm finding a copy of. That's pretty fantastic, there.

Well, I mean, I'm a person who likes snake covers, but that wasn't my exact goal this time!

That box... did not end strong. Triumphant did this with all their comics. Sadly, that gimmick didn't make anyone care about it.

Some of those are decidedly more "giant snake" than "snake people", but I see some real winners there!

Today's weird cover-hunting request! So, I'm aware of the existence of Skeleton Hand #2, although I don't own a copy. Getting a copy of that one is clearly non-trivial. Are there any other comics with naga / lamia / were-serpent / snake-people of this nature on the cover?

Quite frankly, with a lot of books left to sort, and only a short amount of time behind you, already recouping 1/3 the outlay on boxes of what are often described as "bulk" is really solid, and suggests you'll get out of this nicely ahead despite the fact that this lot wasn't ... well, exactly as advertised.

It's tough tell from the pictures at this size (and it's what the "Hey buddy can you spare a grade" forum is for), but in general your Black Holes look pretty good, and I'd think will do well. You should be happiest about your #6 (at bottom right, for those playing at home) because some percentage of the print run (it's not clear how many, but it's not a small number of books) on that issue had really defective spines where the layered cardstock essentially delaminated at the top and bottom. Yours doesn't seem to have that problem. And yeah, especially since you have exactly these five, its pretty safe that your #5 (top left) and #9 (at bottom left) are first printings, not the weirdo second printings. Although for anyone else with these books, those two printings are not cover-distinguishable. Unfortunately for me, your #5 appears to have a couple of color-breaking spines ticks, so not going to beat out my existing top copy. My quest continues...

It wasn't actually a Dark Horse setback. #backthecomback was a May 2020 advertising initiative trying to get people to support local comic and gaming stores as they attempted reopening after (the first wave of) COVID. Diamond, Dark Horse, Valiant, Boom!, and Oni were involved. I think some of the indie board game companies as well. Todd McFarlane and Kevin Smith as individuals, as well. There was also charity fundraising via a couple of orgs created to support comic and game retailers attempting to rebuild. Of course, it turned out in fairly short order that May 2020 wasn't going to be a clean break from the pandemic era, and #backthecomeback got memory binned pretty quickly. I'm don't know how many books, by what companies, actually went to print with the logo.

I honestly didn't know they were still dumping money into these WalMart endcaps. So, these are the creation of an indie company called Allegiance Arts & Entertainment. They launched in 2020, with four different titles -- Bass Reeves, Futurists, Norah's Saga, Red Rooster -- each with two issues apiece. At some point (2021?) they all got their 3rd issue. As far as I know they're essentially WalMart exclusives, although I think there may have been some direct sales as well. I can see Futurists #1 and 3, Red Rooster #1 and 2, and Bass Reeves #2 in that screenshot. The people behind Allegiance are a husband and wife team, Mitch and Elizabeth Breitweiser. Their stated goal was to attempt to recreate the newsstand rack in a new (that is to say, WalMart-y) form in an effort to get a new generation of kids interested in comics. Most industry analysts were... let's say dubious that a bunch of unknown titles at $5 a pop could ever possibly sell in enough volume to even pay for the likely costs of those WalMart endcaps (their 2020 rollout was in 3000 stores!). I was fairly sure this was a failed experiment that had quietly disappeared, but I guess they're still a going concern for now. As an aside, I will note that the Breitweisers are, erm, controversial figures for the same reasons that Ethan Van Sciver and Richard Meyer are. And that's all I have to say about that.

I wonder if some of the current floor staff will be attending as instructors, or as students.

I joked about that with a friend a number of years ago, and he decided to run with it. At one point he was about 75% done with assembling a (largely low-grade reader) collection consisting of: Krazylife #1, Nuttylife #2, Wotalife #3-12, My Love Secret #24-30, and Animal Crackers #31. I think he eventually concluded that there were too many books that were just too rare to actually finish it off. And they really are rare, too. For graded books, there's one copy of Wotalife 3 and one copy of Wotalife 5 and nothing else for the title. I wonder how much of it he still has. Bonus points for anyone getting the theme.

Bonus points if that makes you go look the missing issue up because you can't be sure whether that's just a book no one has sent in yet, or if it's more weird Golden Age numbering shenanigans!

My thought is that I would stab myself with a spork before I'd risk there-and-back shipping on that book over that tiny of a case scuff.

Curious whether you have all 10 issues. The whole series sometimes sells for okayish prices, I assume mostly as a curiosity. But the print run toward the end, especially for #9 and #10, had tapered off, and those issues are harder to find. Also, most of the series comes in direct market and newsstand editions. I'm not sure the newsstand prints sell for more, but, hey. This series actually has different art for the direct market and newsstand books. When in doubt on these, the DM books are $2.95 cover price, and the NSs are $2.50. But also check your copies of #1, because there's a second printing which is actually quite scarce . Technically, there's also a limited edition #1 with a sort of orange-ish cover, but that's much easier to notice. Both the 2nd printing and the "Amberchrome" version are really solid books. Innovation went out of business. #6 was never published. That's how to use one line of text to demonstrate how much this collection was cherry-picked before you got it, despite what you were told. Sorry about that, man... These do pretty well as a set if you have the full 1-13 run. #13 isn't a super common book. Also, there does exist a Quantum Leap Special Edition, with Sam reading a copy of Quantum Leap #1 on the cover; it's very scarce. Prices on this series have been volatile lately, some of which is... well, some of which is probably my fault. You should check #5 and #9 (but not the others) because there are weird, rather rare 2nd printings of those two specific issues. In general, condition is a big deal on these books and their dark, heavily-inked, semi-gloss cardstock covers get scuffed super easily. Also, their printer couldn't actually handle the thickness of cardstock they used very well, so most copies have what is called "bindery tearing" at the top and bottom -- basically, the cutting blades weren't sharp enough to make clean cuts, so there's a little tear or paper pull at the ends of the spine. High-grade copies without color rubs or spine ticks, and with minimal bindery tearing, demand a premium. Lastly, if your #5 is a first printing and seems to meet that condition description, PM me some pictures, because I'm not happy with any of my copies. There was a short period in time when these were strangely hot books. That's passed, but they still do okay. Full 12-issue sets, in particular, are annoying to assemble and may perform better than piecing it out, if you have them all. I don't know how well a really nice copy of this would do. As with most Caliber books, the majority have spine problems. Regardless, it's a really cool looking book, using Gustav Doré's 1875 woodblock illustrations of the poem in lieu of a modern comic artist's work.

But

I played an awful lot of L5R including a bit at the internationally competitive level. I was very, very sad to see it go. The FFG LCG successor was lackluster, and now is also gone. In any case, I'm not sure I'd submit any L5R stuff for encapsulation, but it's arguably a good target for it. Normal sized cards. A huge history with lots of cards. Some weird variants due to reprinting oddities. And some legitimately rare rarities

That's a really sharp copy of a really tough book. I'm guessing you also have the Hellboy: the Storm #1 BPRD Members Only exclusive (I think CGC just called it "Sketch Variant")?