Qalyar

Welp, I finally had a stack of books move to shipped today, but I can already tell that at least one of them is going to be turning around immediately on a mechanical error ticket, because it made it through the process with entirely the wrong title. Thanks, guys. I try really hard to defend this company and argue that a lot of the apparent problems are the consequence of selection bias and the law of large numbers, but... makes it really hard to do that when your entry staff ignores the title I submitted it under, substitute an incorrect one (because the real title wasn't in the database yet), and then the graders and "QA" fail to actually look at the cover to see that they don't match...

Cavewoman is sort of an indie success story. Basement Comics was literally Budd Root and his wife self-publishing. None of the Basement issues are real common, especially #1. The series attracted quite a bit if attention for him, though; later on, it spent time at both Caliber and Avatar. It's definitely a niche book, but it has a following. His good girl art style certainly helps.

People talk a lot about slow CGC turnaround times, but CCS has been really far behind. I have a shipment with a 5/24 received date that finally moved to "CCS in Process" about a week ago (and, no, that doesn't literally mean that it's in process). There's really not much to do. Demand vastly exceeded their processing capacity, and that's just sort of where things are. To be fair to CCS, though, third party pressers (well, competent third party pressers) aren't doing a whole lot better. Joey is a force of nature, and CFP outright shut down new submissions for a month, but they're still only now processing books received in early June.

Hmm, actually, that is interesting, now that you mention it. There are definitely at least some copies of the 1:5 variant on ebay that do not have the logo and price at the bottom left (they, for the record, have the $3.99 price on the back cover). Clearly, your book is not that book after all. Or... is it? Bleeding Cool reported on Behemoth's Nov 2020 solicitations, including the various variants of this book; the image they used for the 1:5 variant looks exactly like yours, with the logo and price. There are currently two listing on ebay that at least appear to match your book. However, these are both closely-cropped cover-only images, so there's a very real possibility that they are stock images and not legitimately pictures of the books physically being sold (although neither listing says they used stock photos). The big online stores and resources are pretty split over whether they think this book has the logo and price or not. ComicVine, CPG, KeyCollector, and Midtown have the logo and cover price; MCS and Atomic Avenue do not. But again, it's possible that some of these sites used stock images to fill out the catalog. Obviously, your copy isn't a stock photo, but neither are the CGC-graded no-logo ones. Which sort of raises the question as to why there are logo and no-logo copies of this book with the 1:5 variant cover. I think it's pretty clear that there were at least two printings (not "printings", in the technical sense) of this cover. The question is how they were distributed. I vaguely suspect that the logo/price ones were initially produced, because that matches the images provided to media organizations promoting the book. If that's the case, the logo copies might have been distributed as early look / advertising promotional copies. Then, the seemingly more-common no-logo books would have been printed once the incentive numbers were known, in an effort to avoid rampant overprinting and the problems that causes "limited" run books; DC and Marvel don't do their incentives that way, but the smaller indie publishers very well might. That's a pretty thin tapestry of assumptions at this point. But it's plausible, at least! Not all the online resources are really comprehensive about this book in general, which doesn't help. Many, many sites fail to list the Alan Quah variants (trade dress and virgin), which were Golden Apple exclusives. Were there other store exclusives? I don't think so, but who knows! I'll note one additional complication. This book is also available, for a steep price for a raw copy, from an Amazon retailer. Except the image provided there has a totally different RADCO logo centered at the bottom of the book... and no cover price. This matches the cover to the ComiXology digital version -- which really was published around 2014-2015. I won't dig into the Internet Archive links here, but it does appear that Radco offered physical copies of that book at the time, presumably print-on-demand via ComiXology. Doesn't explain your book though, which I still think is circa 2020 because I do not believe the circular Radco logo was in use for the earlier material.

I'm... pretty sure that's also from 2020. 2014 was the date of the film's release, and the comic is adapted from the film, in a reversal of modern trends! In any case, the RadCo thing is an imprint of sorts; the actual publisher is Behemoth Comics. This is the 1:5 incentive variant of #1. Not sure the actual print run or order run on this. For completion's sake, the normal cover is essentially a close-up of the character on this cover. There is also a 500 copy limited edition with a gray cover; obviously, that one sitting around everywhere either.

My opinions about this overall situation notwithstanding, I appreciate the rapid response and correction in this regard.

A Conserved grade is a good idea. The real problem is that CGC launched their Conserved grade before coming up with a solid set of criteria to which it applied. The longer it goes with no formal definition (even an internal one, as there obviously isn't one!), the worse the problem gets. Which is a shame. Because I strongly support the idea of a legitimate Conservation grade that stands separate from Restoration grades. That will only grow more important as GA books age.

NFL Superpro #1 is in dollar boxes everywhere. The last issue (#12), on the other hand, is fairly elusive drek, especially in newsstand. I have to assume that a really large percentage of those were returned unsold. That doesn't make it worth anything, of course, because no one wants it. Not even me. But it is hard to find...

@CGC Mike We're a couple days into the work week. Any word back on this? @Matt Nelson I'm sure you don't actually read the forums or check forum pings, but ... ping on this one all the same.

I'm not surprised by this per se, but I would have liked to have seem some positive development on the QA front first. However, I do have a non-customer-complaint question. @CGC Mike perhaps you can answer this one. The new return shipping rates include a "26-30" book line entry. Does this mean that CGC has changed the packaging for return shipping such that they are capable of shipping 30 slabs at a time? I was previously under the impression that 25 was the maximum and anything above that would be shipped separately (with separate charges). If 30-slab boxes are now happening, then in the $5,000-10,000 appraised value bucket, that's the difference between $3.96/book @ 25 books versus $3.23/book @ 30. But there's absolutely no way I'm sending a 30-book submission without explicit confirmation, because having those 5 extra books shipped back separately (in, say, the $501-1000 insurance tier) brings the overall return shipping cost to $4.30/book.

Yeah, the Star Trek/X Men crossover was a horribly stupid idea that Scott Lobdell clearly did his level best to -script into something readable

They will be shipped (and you will be billed for shipping) separately.

Sigh. The twee label text doesn't help, either.

I can't quite make out the numbers on the existing pics, but they're in the census, so seems likely.

This image makes it pretty clear that the "lower grade" slabs of this nonsense are not visibly defective; that is to say, the slabbed grade has no relationship to the condition of the acetate. CGC simply allowed Bad Idea to pay money for arbitrary, pre-determined grades on slabs. Sure, they're dumb slabs. But they still are CGC slabs. How the hell are we supposed to believe whether you'll allow this on a real book someday? Even PHX didn't make specific grades available for sale to third parties.

At least those had a unique label. And were 17 years ago, when CGC wasn't nearly so well established. And provided a made-up grade number that, well, being less than 9.6, isn't even really desirable on the random Moderns that got it. I'm not trying to give an apologia for the Wizard First slabs. They were a bad idea. But they weren't as bad an idea as the Bad Idea bad idea

Honestly, if all they had done was allow Bad Idea to slab some finite number of clear acetate covers... I still would have complained on principle, but the gimmick would have been harmless. The fact that they appear to have allowed Bad Idea to manipulate the grading process or outright purchase slabs in specific grades, on the other hand, reflects very, very badly on the independence and neutrality of CGC as a grading authority. And that's true regardless of the fact that these slabs contain "invisible" books. Because next time they might not. Heck, the Amphoman guy wants to offer $10k for his junk book in a CGC 10 slab...

Your response is appreciated. I don't expect the management to craft a reply on a holiday, but I am definitely very interested to see what explanation is provided once they return...

For that matter, grade aside, CGC is an authentication service. There are quite a few undergrounds, indies, APAs, fanzines, and even a few valuable rarities that CGC will not authenticate because they are deemed too easily reproduced. How was this eligible for authentication?? If I crack one of these out, can I resubmit it? Can I send it to CCS? If a case is damaged, is it eligible for reholdering? Even if it is damaged enough that case integrity is compromised, typically warranting a regrade? What happens if one of these is submitted for an in-house signing? And so on, turtles all the way down. What were you thinking allowing this??

I have two concerns here, neither of which is "Bad Idea is synonymous with stupid gimmicks," because that's self-evident at this point. The census report on this book is extremely, extremely concerning. Why was CGC willing to assign grades here at all? This is, all other nonsense aside,a published cover-only book. Yes, a blank acetate cover, but whatever, that's not the point. CGC has previous advised that the Sensational She-Hulk #14 Brian Bolland variant would only be eligible for slabbing with a CVR no-grade. For those who aren't familiar with this book, they originally printed Sensational She-Hulk #14 with the wrong cover. To "fix" the problem, Marvel printed the Bolland cover without any interior pages (but with interior cover text that is unique to this printing) as a sort of weird giveaway item. They're actually kind of hard to find in good condition, and I'm sure there are collectors of the title or of Bolland's work who would like to have copies graded. So why is a book intentionally produced as a cover-only item, but with legitimate unique cover and interior art work, not considered eligible to be assigned grades; but this book, intentionally produced as a cover-only item but with no art or text or any production elements at all except for staples, qualify for grading beyond the CVR no-grade label?? Perhaps more importantly, how is there the full spectrum of grades on these? I find it, shall we say, extremely unlikely that they submitted copies that just happened to result in 1 book scoring almost every possible non-9.8 grade from 0.5 to 10 (there is no copy in 1.8), with all the rest in 9.8. Which means that there was some arrangement between Bad Idea and CGC to issue labels to these books in those specific grades. There are two options there, and neither is very satisfying: Are the labels legitimate grades that reflect defects or the lack thereof in the slabbed acetate? If so, were there other copies of these acetate books submitted but not slabbed (not like we'd know, really)? In particular, pre-screening isn't even normally available for 9.9 and 10 grades, so how did unique, specific copies in these grades come to pass? As for the lower graded books, were books intentionally manipulated by adding defects to produce the requested grades? If so, did Bad Idea perform this manipulation, or did CGC? The alternative is that these aren't real grades, and CGC acceded to Bad Ideas gimmick and simply created slabs in each grade upon request. This is far more disturbing, but I suspect is what actually occurred. If so, what assurances do we have that publishers cannot do this in future with books that have actual content? Let's say that I self-publish a book tomorrow. Can I pay to ensure that copies exist in every specific grade? How much? What if -- instead of just a cover -- it's an 8-pager that's entirely blank acetate? What if its blank acetate except for a printed title? Is there some threshold of actual content above which CGC actually grades books versus handing out specifically-purchased grade labels? Or was this a service that was only available to Dinesh and Bad Idea? @CGC Mike I'm sorry to be a curmudgeon here in what was probably thought of as just a silly gimmick. But especially after a year with concerns about QA across the board and concerns about double standards as displayed by the Promise Collection books, this is not just a silly gimmick. Yes, I get it, that this is a dumb piece of acetate and not a "real" comic book, but CGC has given these slabs their imprimatur. As a customer of CGC, and on behalf of other customers of CGC, I'd really appreciate some explanation as to why this was allowed to take place ... and some assurance that it is not simply possible to buy grades from what was and ought to be this neutral authentication and grading company.

Trimming detection from photos is rarely possible, but I don't think this is trimmed. It is definitely badly miscut, but that's all on EC. This isn't even close to as bad a miscut as exists.

I have heard claims that people are paranoid that some third party will attempt to hijack the book number for use in the Registry, but such concerns have never held water for me. For one thing, CGC's Registry folks are, and as far as I know have always been, very friendly and approachable (if busy!). Such a ploy would not long endure... and is ridiculously petty besides. Any time I've been interested in a book with an obscured certification number, I ask for that number. If they won't provide it to me, I won't buy the book. Now that graders' notes are available to all members, that goes many, many times over.

Might not. The Dylan Special books generally show as restored in the cert lookup. This one's lookup record claims to be a 2.0 Universal. Grade date 03/04/2021, so, unfortunately, my first guess is that this is a QA . @CGC Mike, can we assume that all books with trimmed label notations are still intended to get purple grades?

Im planning a fairly low spend year, but we'll see how it goes. Some things I'd like to pick up assuming they present themselves: The two Labyrinth: Coronation #1 convention variants that I still haven't found. A copy of the Diablo: Tales of Sanctuary promotional variant that doesn't look like it was dragged behind a speeding car. A copy of Charles Burns's Drawn from Memory. If the comics genie is granting wishes, a copy of Burns's SSSSSSSS remains one of my all-time grail books. Depending on what else happens, and how much my wife and I blow on some international travel this summer (COVID willing), I might putting together a couple more conventionally desirable sets, too. We'll see.

I'm arguably being unfair to the first film, which was, to its credit, the highest grossing indie film until Blair Witch. On the other hand, the critics rightly savaged it for plotting, cinematography, some of the effects, and characterization. It was probably the best TMNT film that 1990 was capable of producing, but it doesn't hold up fantastically well in retrospect. And in the age of the MCU, audiences are going to demand higher quality comic book adaptations. 1990's TMNT would not do as well as it did, if it was releasing now.