Qalyar

Those are almost certainly fingerprints rather than ink rub. How likely a dry clean is to ameliorate them is in some part based on what substance was involved; I'll let one of the experts weigh in about your odds of that.

The (unnumbered) #1 (Wizard World giveaway) is by far the harder of these two books (this was a GamePro magazine giveaway), but neither are exactly frequently encountered. And wow, the eBay asking prices...

Yeah, the Neverwhere adaptation was Vertigo. Neverwhere, the book, is fantastic, but the comic adaptation just missed something. I guess I'd describe Carey's scripting as workmanlike; it's wholly competent, but lacks for a real flair or voice. I didn't think Fabry's art did it any favors, either. All in all, disappointing.

I can also note that a raw copy of this in probably ~3.0ish condition sold in a private sale around 2008 for $500. I know, because it was mine until I decided to bail on my quest for a variant-complete collection of Classics and cashed out what I'd put together. If you're tempted to take up that banner, don't be put off by the 1.8ness of this book; it is absolutely a quest to find this one in any condition

Gamut is pretty fantastic, and your copy looks to be exceptionally nice (plus, it's the cover error -- missing the red ink -- which is pretty striking). I agree with the article's author; in general, this series has been overlooked and dismissed as a college fanzine when it's actually an early showcase of important later talent (plus Eisner!). And like the author of that article, I've never seen copies of #3 or #4 live either. None of the Gamut issues are easy books, but those last two are tough.

There are certainly some misses. But most of those were either limited series from the start (Ghostdancing) or thankfully clipped short (The Minx), so the long-runners are usually pretty good. Sure, there's stuff like American Virgin that you're probably better off avoiding, but the overall quality of Vertigo was pretty high. Especially at a time when the overall overall quality was sometimes... not. That doesn't count the 2018 Vertigo "relaunch" titles, of course. That didn't go very well.

Great book even with the title color weirdness, and pretty much never available. There's also a #2, yes?

Is that a ripple or bend or such on the back cover, between center and bottom-left? Otherwise, I don't think that spine rub thing is going to get credited as a manufacturing defect. I agree that some copies look that way, but many don't. If I had to guess, I'd suspect shipping is at fault. Anyway, going to go with 9.2 here.

Although nothing's popped up that's on my hit list (yet, anyway), this has been a really fun collection of books to watch go up on the block.

Regarding the art for Black Orchid. The original 3 issue mini (written by Gaiman) had Dave McKean contribute some of the best interior art in comics. They're worth picking up (that, or the TPB) for McKean's art alone even if the story doesn't do it for you. The later series started with art by Jill Thompson. No offense to Ms. Thompson, but her work was not a good style for the book. She was quickly replaced with Rebecca Guay, who has a unique style you will either like or very much not. As for what it's about, um. The series in general is about science and nature and myth, about human trauma and abuse, and maybe something about what it means to be good (or, for that matter, to be human). It's... a very "early Vertigo" book, is what I'm getting at.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the OP here. CGC is willing to produce a label (albeit an AC label without a numeric grade) for these cards, but apparently not to encapsulate them with that label. For the comics folks, this is something like if NG books (coverless, for example) shipped back in a Mylar with the label inside instead of actually being slabbed.

Woah. I thought that thing was only distributed in a pack with the Mask of the Phantasm adaptation.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born is 7 issues, and not terrible if you're a fan of the novels. I'm pretty sure that a couple of DC's sundry crises are also 7 issues, but I lose track of their titles as well as which one is which (Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Quasipenultimate Crisis...).

Vertigo has an awful lot of great series, and quite a few that... didn't quite hit the mark, but don't deserve to be quite as forgotten as they sometimes are. Some of these aren't on your list, just sort of going through things I remember. The Books of Magic limited is the best Tim Hunter stuff, of course, and not just because I'm a shameless Neil Gaiman fanboy. I read much of the 1994 series, although clearly not the whole thing, since I don't think I knew it ran to #75! The early books have Charles Vess covers, and that's always good, too, because the world can often use more Charles Vess. Age of Magic isn't bad. Books of Faerie was pretty readable, too, but I couldn't get into Life During Wartime and never picked up the 2018-2020 run. Speaking of Gaiman minis that got turned into a longer run, I liked Black Orchid, although between the overall themes and Rebecca Guay's art style, it's probably not for everyone. I enjoyed Crossing Midnight, although I'll be the first to admit there are some pacing problems. I, too, read the first 4ish issues of DMZ and then didn't go back. I think Brian Wood is an excellent writer for the medium, but he writes stories that just don't have much thematic appeal for me personally. Which means I never picked up Northlanders at all, although I suspect that if there's any Wood title for me, it'd be that one. I liked the early Fables stuff when it set a firmly dark-fantasy tone. They didn't hold the series to that, though, and I understand that Jack of Fables discards it entirely. Never read Jack or the other spinoffs like Fairest, so no opinions. I really wanted to like FBP (originally, briefly, Collider), but I did not. I found the art sloppy and the POV character tiresome. Ran 24 issues, so someone liked it, I guess. On the other hand, I'm a fan of Unwritten. Vertigo does a lot of these weird meta-fictional explorations (heck, a lot of Sandman is that way), and I think this one works better than, say, House of Mystery or Testament.

Especially with something that isn't open-ended. I have some small sympathy for the idea that a buyer might not want -- or know what to do with -- a deep cut of Booster Gold issues. But cherry-picking #1 off a run of Watchmen? That just seems ignorant. Sure, #1 is a higher-dollar book, but the whole run moves well at decent prices, either individually or as a set.

I see pretty significant rust on the top staple in the centerfold. There are some wonderworker pressers out there, so I have no doubt you can remove the waviness, but I'm dubious that there won't be some physical evidence of this much water damage. And that rust. I expect this to get something like a 3.0 as is, and a 5.0-6.0 with a press.

BCS (cards): Beckett's card registry does not incorporate FMV at all. Scores are based exclusively on the grade and subgrades of each card, with a small point bonus for 10-graded cards that have a full set of 10 subgrades. This means that the maximum score for a set is a little higher than 10 times the number of cards in the set. A card worth thousands of dollars and a card worth a couple bucks, in the same grade, receive the same number of points. NGC (coins): NGC's scoring works more or less like CGC's does, which should surprise no one since they're another CCG company. Like with CGC's registry, points are attributed based on an estimate of absolute FMV, and so big rarities amidst a series of low-dollar items have an oversized impact on the set scoring. That's somewhat less obvious for coins than for comics, because there are relatively few short coin runs that have one really rare coin and a bunch of drek, as it were. PCGS (coins): PCGS incorporates FMV indirectly. When a set is created, each coin in the set is assigned a weight based on its FMV compared to other cards in the set. For most sets, this is on a scale of 1-5. For sets where there is an exceptionally large range in values between set members, the weighting can be on the scale of 1-10 instead. For example, for the Lincoln cents circulation strikes, common coins are a 1, the famously difficult 1909-S-VDB is a 7, and the 1914-D (unquestionably the hardest coin in the set) is an 8. Coins in a set are given a number of points equal to their rating times a fractional quality factor, between 0 and 1, based on their grade. This is somewhat more complicated than CGC grading because the numismatic grading scales are sometimes weird. Each coin can also earn 1 bonus point (for being tied for top of population) or 2 bonus points for being the unique top of pop. Some sets have additional bonus points available for non-numeric quality: for example, some copper coin sets give a 1 point bonus to red-brown coins and a 2 point bonus to red coins. This is roughly the equivalent of giving bonus points for off-white or white page quality. PSA (cards): PSA is very similar to PCGS, which makes sense because they are both Collectors Universe subsidiaries. The quality factor is a lot easier to manage here because card grading works like comic grading and not the crazytown world of numismatic grades. Each card in the registry is worth it's weight value time (it's grade divided by 10). So, in a Magic: the Gathering set, a Beta Ancestral Recall (weighting factor 9) in 8.5 is worth (9 * 8.5 / 10 = 7.65 points). PSA also includes the top-of-pop bonuses in the same manner as PCGS. Other collectibles grading companies, including CBCS (comics), ICG (coins), PGX (comics), and WATA (video games) do not appear to have registry systems at this time. Honestly, my opinion is that the Collectors Universe (PCGS/PSA) system is probably the best of them. CGC/NGC's benchmarking of points to absolute market value means that many sets are fundamentally referendums on owning the handful of key chase items, rather than actually collecting the "set". BCS's absolutely flat point system swings the pendulum too far the other way. I don't know what options the CGC registry has for significant revision. A lot depends on how the database was initially structured. As a professional data analyst, I'd be happy to consult!

I'll admit that one of my strip-less books, I actually bought that way. It's no great rarity, and certainly nothing like a DD #1, but it probably has a legitimate FMV of 150-175ish. I paid 50 bucks for it because of that missing top strip; I figured that since I have other books that need reholdering eventually (to mitigate shipping costs somewhat), I'll still finish way ahead even after reholdering costs, haha! ...doesn't mean it doesn't bug me a little in the meantime, though.

I like the current one, but don't dislike the appearance of the first label. My problem with the old slabs is that the labels are on the exterior of the slab. It's especially a problem for the thin label strip on the top of the case. Because it overlays the seam between the two halves if the clamshell, it's prone to coming loose or falling off entirely. I store my books spine-down, which means that strip is sort of important for letting me see what each book on my shelf actually is! Someday, if TATs ever calm down, I'm probably going to pay to reholder a half dozen books just because they've lost or are losing that little strip and it vexes me.

Reboots always give me mixed opinions. But that doesn't mean I'm not excited for this!

It's not new. There have always been books that have problems in slabbing. Now, recently, the rate of submissions to CGC has reached ludicrous speed and gone plaid. There's some reason to believe that the rate of errors (either label errors or physical damage to books) has increased; it's possible that CGC's processing isn't dealing with this volume crest very well (besides just the TATs). It's also possible that we're just seeing more problem slabs on the forums because they occur at a fairly consistent rate, and there are a lot more submissions overall. I don't really know which of those is the correct assessment of the situation, but I know that going off gut instinct based on forum posts isn't exactly a statistically rigorous analysis, as it were. Regardless, the Blackstone acquisition has had approximately no impact; if there has been a real problem lately, it definitely dates to the tide of submissions since last year's lockdowns began, and not to any sort of top-level corporate change.

For what it's worth... I haven't really kept count of how many books I've had slabbed, either for my personal collection or via my involvement in the business side of the hobby, but it's probably north of five hundred at this point, dating all the way back to the red-label Modern days. In all that time, I've had one-ish* book that had to go back for a label correction, one book that had a hair in the slab, and no books significantly damaged by the grading process. A lot of books get slabbed, and relatively few have problems. We see the vast majority of those problems here, so confirmation bias is a legitimate concern. That's not to excuse some of the damage or the label problems (especially the multi-book label swapfests; seriously, people...), but most books are not damaged by CGC's handling and encapsulation. I still think the OP's images are more consistent with reflection from a very bright scanner (look at the difference in color saturation between the scanner image and the unslabbed photograph!) rather than actual damage, but I'd need the book in hand (or other images) to really know for certain. * Technically, I've had two mechanical error returns, but the other one involved some debate with CGC over how they were labeling a low-value somewhat obscure book, and ultimately resulted in a change the labeling policy for it; I don't really consider that to be an error per se. The second printing they recently slabbed without notation, that one was on them.

Really? It's under 750 words. Because sometimes topics like the intersection between linguistics and gender inclusiveness in popular media... deserve a bit more than a tweet worth.

Adam and human aren't quite that directly connected; they're parallel descendants of the Proto-Indo-European root word. So more like word-cousins. As for Eve, that name is basically just a form of the classical Hebrew verb meaning "to live".

Let me go etymology pedant here for a moment. It's a common misconception that the word human is constructed from a prefix hu- attached to -man, in the same way that we get male profession words like fireman or chairman. However, there is no such prefix, and it's more or less just a coincidence of language that the two English words are so similar. Human, and its predecessors in other languages, has essentially always been a gender-neutral way to refer to the sort of creature that we are. English adopted it from Old French, which adopted it from Latin (this is why the scientific name for our species is sapiens). Latin's also the origin of the related word humane, because the Romans believed that courtesy and civility were qualities uniquely befitting human beings (optimists, the Romans, I suppose). In any case, the word is far older than Latin, and goes all the way to a Proto-Indo-European root believed to mean, basically "earth people" -- as opposed to "sky people" (that is, gods). Man, on the other hand, comes to us via Old English and then Proto-Germanic, and back to Proto-Indo-European too, but with an entirely different origin than human (the exact sense of the PIE root is a matter of some debate outside the scope of this post). In any case, man has certainly had stretches of time where it was widely used in a gender-neutral capacity. That's where we get words like mankind and, well, manslaughter. But even when man was being used for everyone, it was being used in other contexts that were male-only. If we go back to, say, the 8th century or thereabouts, man covered both genders in Old English... but it was also used for something like modern servant or vassal, but in an explicitly male-only sense. And since around the late 1200s, man has been the go-to word in English for a male human. Prior to that, Old English used wer and wif as the words for male and female people, respectively (and yes, that wer survives in werewolf). For unclear reasons, wer dropped out of popular use and was replaced by gender-restricted use of man and it's been off to the races ever since. As an aside, wif didn't disappear like its male counterpart. Obviously, it survives as wife in the more restricted sense of a married woman, but also in woman itself; when man started to edge out wer as a male-only term, wif got prepended to the more inclusive sense of the man for... reasons, producing wifman, which became woman a couple of pronunciation shifts later. English has always been weird. All of that aside, I don't think there's anything wrong with talking about ways to make the comics industry (and by extension its giant adaptation empire) more generally inclusive. At this point, we've had films (Dark Phoenix, Men in Black International) lampshading the gendered language of comic and comic-adjacent works. Now, yes, Dark Phoenix was an execrable excuse for a film, with a -script that deserved to star in "Will it Blend?" and performances that couldn't have been more phoned-in if they'd actually been done over the phone. The "X-Women" line -- and to some extent the all-female team-up scene in Avengers: Endgame -- are a bit cringe because they don't seem to evolve naturally from the plot, stories, and characters; that feels like pandering, not inclusion. Acknowledging that comics writ large can do a better job addressing women (which shouldn't really be controversial because a lot of the history has Not Been Good), and pretty much any category other than "straight white males" frankly, doesn't mean we shouldn't also acknowledge that Dark Phoenix's attempt at addressing the issue was as awkward and tone-deaf as the rest of the film. Does that mean we should rename the X-Men? Personally, I'm of mixed opinions. The name certainly has a lot of brand recognition, but that alone isn't always a good reason to keep a name around (Washington Football Team, that meant you). I think the weight of history makes it tough to change things in comics themselves at this point, but since they've yet to be introduced to the MCU, there's something to be said for starting Professor X and his ilk off differently in adaptation.