Qalyar

Correct. The original original Blue Beetle was a Fox Feature Syndicate character that debuted in Mystery Men Comics #1 (1939). It was created as an expy of Green Hornet (pretty much all Fox characters were at least semi-plagiarized from better publishers' works). When Fox started having significant financial problems and entered bankruptcy (the first time,) Blue Beetle (along with most of Fox's assets) wound up in the hands of Holyoke Publishing in what is now largely thought to be accounting shenanigans on the part of Victor Fox. Two years later, Fox would get their properties back from Holyoke, but the increasing push to "clean up" the comics industry landscape hit Fox really hard. Also, Victor Fox's shady financial constructions were eventually called due. Fox went bankrupt, again, in 1950, this time for good. I'm not sure exactly where the Blue Beetle property went in the immediate aftermath. Fox material was broken up among a bunch of companies. Many of those (Ajax, for example), were run by Robert Farrell, a friend and business partner of Victor Fox, and may have been an attempt to replay the Holyoke shuffle, had Fox re-recovered from bankruptcy. Charlton bought out pretty much all those successor companies (whatever intermediary might have briefly owned the character didn't publish him in anything). Charlton dropped its "Action Heroes" in 1968 to focus on licensed properties, and eventually sold the entire lineup to DC in 1983, including the Blue Beetle.

I can confirm that this is usually indexed as Mr Steel #3. No idea if that implies the existence of a #1 or #2, however; this is only one I've ever seen. I do know that Alain Pilon also had Mr Steel content in Casual Casual Graphix Magazine #17, in case someone were to care about that, for some reason.

Presents a lot less shabbily encased in the slab that it did otherwise. On one hand, didn't squeeze out that 1.8; on the other hand, no staple status notation on the label. Bottom of census books are always a little funny, but I'd take 35 cent price variants all day, every day for what you paid for this one -- especially ones like Star Wars books with appeal to slightly broader collectors. And while there might be nearly 100 copies on the census, this is still a tough book.

I stand corrected. Apparently Crossover has expired. You can still submit CBCS slabs, though.

Star*Reach is actually a pretty good indie series with a surprisingly large collection of big names contributing art or story content. Like this issue, with the Barry Windsor-Smith cover and contributions from Dave Sim and Steve Englehart (among others). By the way, this book went to a 2nd printing. First printing has an introduction from Mike Friedrich on the inside front cover; second printing has a list of credits.

CGC hits staining really, really hard. Also, they penalize staining in terms of area, sometimes more heavily than they do in terms of intensity. That's a pretty large stain, although not a very dark one, but the size of the defect is really what killed you here, I think. Doesn't make the number feel any better, though.

Yes. Edit: NOPE! Ignore the rest of this. In fact, they offer a "Crossover" service that gives you a discount on grading fees for doing just that -- but you probably only want to Crossover if you're not sending in a bunch of other books at the same time. It's considered a different service level, and so Crossover books will be sent back separately (doubling up on shipping if you had sent the CBCS slab in along with raws).

That seller is Mike Kaye, the book's creator. The frog costume is new, though. He's apparently dropped the million-dollar BIN listings in favor of this new gimmick. The staging for this picture (which almost has to be intentional, right?) is a succinct summary of my opinions of the book.

So Much Fun was a short lived psedo-distributor that cut a deal with several publishers to have a small private print run of (fairly random) books created, to be assembled into multipacks and sold in non-conventional establishments (mostly greeting card shops, but I've heard there were a few other types of stores considered) that didn't have first-run distribution contracts for comics. They were based in Massachusetts but I think some of their packs went further afield. They were, apparently, not successful. It doesn't help that they just went with whatever books got selected, without regard to the start of story arcs or anything, really. Print run figures between 5000 and 7000 have been circulated for years, and I think they're probably pretty realistic. Survival rates are quite a bit lower, and very high grade copies are vanishingly scarce. This is probably the highest grade So Much Fun book I've seen (I'll go 8.5 here). I think that list of 12 books is comprehensive. It would be a monument to patience to put the set together in anything better than reader grades. The DC books are probably marginally more common than the Marvels. Good luck on the two Archie's, I've never seen either.

As it is now, I see a lot of non breaking bends and creases. There's a long one at FC UL, running from just left of the Bongo seal, through the F in Futurama, and into the cloud below it; plus a second in the cloud to the left of that. All the way near the right edge, there's what looks like an impact crease in the cloud there. And a long vertical crease on the back cover at left. Maybe some waviness right above Fry, too. Im pretty sure all of that could press out, but submitted as it stands, I bet this comes back 8.5 - 9.0. The length of a couple of those defects will earn steeper penalties.

My books definitely don't come back 9.6 if they have a corner like that! I would have expected a 9.4 here assuming there really is nothing else amiss. No amount of squishing this book will make it a 9.8, and cracking it out has much higher odds of dropping a grade than usual.

99% sure that reholders are only done with current slabs and current labels.

The (estimated) 3k+ copies with clipped coupons certainly cut -- pun intended -- into supply.

That 7.0 Ghoul Eye in your set is a really sweet copy of an really tough book.

Even if I concede Immortal Hulk, and even if I concede Wendigo (being more monstrous to fit with the original cannibal spirit mythology, maybe)... whyyyy is Sasquatch sculpted out of mashed potatoes?

No. Just... no.

In. Doomed, but in.

That would have been a fairly solid horror cover, especially for Charlton. All they had to do was NOT add the cartoony speech balloon...

The 64 version is quite a bit harder to find. So, obviously, are the 1960 and 1959 editions. There are also (at least) 1989 and 1991 reprints. The 1989 ones are surprisingly elusive. In addition, at least the 1989 books have a Spanish-language version (that was still distributed in the US, just for Spanish speakers; who knows how CGC would label that!). I have long suspected that 1991 Spanish copies may exist, but I've never seen one.

I'm curious, which reprint edition (last year in the indicia) is that Smokey Bear? The 1969 edition was kept in print approximately forever (and there was a warehouse find), so it's by a large margin the most common,but there are several others.

Who cares about shading when... those legs! That's not how anatomy or perspective or anything works, and doesn't match the reflection either.

I can't imagine that I would pick the same list of just five if I was asked this on a different day. But off the top of my head, today, presented alphabetically: Charles Burns Jack Kirby Alex Ross Fiona Staples Charles Vess I tried to intentionally provide a broad range of artists. Did it feel dirty leaving Ditko out? Yup. But I picked Kirby over Ditko for his era and style. And now I'm second guessing this list, because I ruled out a bunch of artists for relatively limited comic book portfolios, but snuck Vess on here when he doesn't really have that deep a run either. Ah, well, is what it is.

Playing devil's advocate here, completion bonuses would be... erm, challenging to maintain for some of the broadly inclusive categories, and would make adding oddball books a lot more contentious than it already is.

Some folks may have noticed this from my PGM post for this book, but thanks to the power of this forum, I'm now a proud owner of EverQuest Online Adventures: The Quest for Darkpaw (2002). This is a really odd, really obscure book. It was a promotional giveaway associated with EverQuest Online Adventures, the relatively short-lived PS2 exclusive spinoff of the EverQuest franchise. Contrary to expectations, this book wasn't included with the game. In fact, it's quite unclear exactly how this was distributed. There's definitely no indication that it was sent in bulk to game stores to be given out with game copies (as many later DC video game promotionals were, including Aion and DC Universe Online). It's also fairly well-established that it wasn't a comic book convention giveaway (like End of Nations or the extremely rare panel giveaway Teeny Titans). The publication timing might suggest it was a pre-order bonus for the game, but ... it wasn't that, either. My best guess is that it may have been part of a press kit or something along those lines. Rarity is tough to judge because demand has been pretty low, but there are not many of these in circulation. Two copies were in a collection sold to a comic store in Utah a number of years ago. However, that trail is cold; they no longer have the books, and suspect they disposed of them to a third party who bought a large amount of their bulk backstock. I was able to contact him, but he wasn't familiar with this title. So those two are likely languishing in storage... A third copy has been owned by another member of these boards, but they have not been active in awhile. I hope they are well. In any case, that copy doubtless remains with their collection. This book, from North Carolina, is unlikely to be any of those three, and so is the fourth confirmed copy. I suspect there are actually a lot more of these out there. Somewhere. I think what surprises me most about this book is the caliber of talent DC/Wildstorm hired for a book that was never put through any sort of regular distribution. Lan Medina did the art here, years and years before his Eisner Award-winning contribution to Fables. Writer Scott Ciencin, who unfortunately passed away in 2014, is probably best known to the comic book community for his work on IDW's Silent Hill line (although he did work for Crossgen, DC, and Marvel as well). However, he was also a prolific novelist, especially for adaptations of franchise work, from Dinotopia to Godzilla to Jurassic Park and the Buffyverse. All for a book that was never sold, and that almost no one has ever seen.

Because, really, I needed to be able to string more letters together in the subject line. Anyway, this is EverQuest Online Adventures: The Quest for Darkpaw, an obscure promo comic that I've been hunting for awhile, and finally was able to locate via another forum member. The quality of the team that worked on this is surprising for what was essentially just a one-shot advertising giveaway. Lan Medina's art is probably best known from Fables, and Scott Ciencin was a writer for a huge number of novels set in various franchises (Forgotten Realms, Dinotopia, WildC.A.T.S, Jurassic Park, and so forth) plus a handful of comic miniseries for DC, Marvel, Crossgen, and IDW. This copy is not without faults. There are a couple of slight creases along the spine, mostly near the top staple. The most significant is visible in the FC UL closeup. The others are effectively impossible to see against the marbled background. There's a little bit of corner blunting/softness, especially at FC LR, plus a corner-tip crease at BC LL. The most significant defect is color-breaking impact creasing along the back cover spine. I'm inclined to think this book won't get much out of a press, either. The hairline creases near the top staple are non-color-breaking, but a press can't correct that impact defect to the back cover or the corner tip crease, and I think those are what's going to define the grade here. But I'm happy to hear others' thoughts.