Qalyar

Link. I think that's much more aspirational than reasonable, to be honest, but if they get it, good on 'em, I suppose. Anyway, no, these aren't the Aircel series. The Aircel books were printed in much larger volumes and were sort of "indie comic spec books" for a hot minute ... but there's way, way too many of them for that to have been realistic. It didn't help that Blair's later career wasn't particularly impactful (and of course, his tragic death in 2010 probably bookends any chance of his series being seriously revived). However, the Nightwynd stuff is actually quite scarce, especially in high grade. Are they $1200 scarce? Ehhhh....

Some pack-ins are, well, packed in much better than others. Those GI Joe 25th anniversary toy comics were packaged in a way that (mostly) makes them capable of surviving shipping and storage and unboxing in pretty great shape. The opposite end of the spectrum is probably the Alien pack-ins with the Kenner toy line. They weren't literally wadded into a ball and dropped in the box, but they might as well have been.

For my part, I think he belongs join the HoS even if he's been permanently banned. The latter is a measure of CGC's forum moderation team's lack of further patience for his antics; the former is the community's. Besides, there's no way to be certain that, down the road, he won't come hat-in-hand to CGC, craft some vague apology for being a ban-evading shill, promise he learned the mistakes of his childlike ways, and get that ban lifted. But if that happens, he should still be on the Hall of Shame, because he still would not have the community's trust.

Congrats, man. That's a beautiful copy of what is without question a legendary rarity.

Most, but not all, are trimmed. And that makes sense, really, because the bulk of the bound volumes were produced from relatively early books (GA/SA, certainly). Go look at those books. It's sometimes a challenge to find two of them that have matching production cuts, to say nothing of the weird dimension copies or trapezoid cuts when the blades got out of alignment.

Conan is slow right now because the media focus is on contemporary superhero and action. Sword and sandals / sword and sorcery has been out of favor since some point in the '80s, I think. But that will change eventually; it always does. It's a genre that has gone in and out of favor essentially since the beginning of cinema. And Conan is probably the single biggest name-drop character for when it returns.

Trimming is really tough to call without the book in hand, but this doesn't raise red flags for me. There are several imperfection patterns that look to be carried through multiple pages, or through multiple pages and a cover. My initial impression is that this was a fairly miswrapped book, and that the cutting blades also could have done with a sharpening (from this period? shocking!). It is possible to fake that sort of micro-deckled look to the pages, but the vast majority of chop shops wouldn't bother, and I don't really suspect foul play here either.

Digital art creation still very much requires talent. I know how to use the software. I've done some internal-use commercial graphic design. If you spotted me ten years to work on it, I still don't think I could produce even that Venom cover up there, and that Venom cover is a terrible, ugly example of the medium. The digital tools are just different tools. Computer art design does not consist of telling the computer, Star Trek-style, to "paint Batman", or anything like that. It still requires a skilled artist to produce good art. So, yes, some people use digital art tools and create things that aren't appealing. Plenty of people do that with traditional media, too; no computer is to blame for Rob Liefeld.

Yeah, I had a set at one point, years ago, but they were total dogs. Looked like an actual xenomorph had played with them. Interesting read though.

That's the portfolio mini, right? And not the weird alternate storyline mini books from the toy packages?

Huge respect for this. I'm a big believer in chasing the Nth prints of whatever stuff I collect, and a LOT of them are hard, hard pieces to find. One of my pet series is Charles Burns' Black Hole -- someday this thing will get an tv/film adaptation and people will rue the day they mocked my taking it seriously, mwahaha! -- and a big ongoing question for me is whether a 2nd printing of #4 exists. There are quite a few places that reported it does, but I've never seen one and neither has anyone I know. If it's out there, it's a tiny print run and I want one badly. The world may never know. Aliens #6 2nd sounds exactly the same way.

This distribution experiment seemed from the start like it would go bad (for individual stores, or in general) pretty rapidly if/when something went wrong in the process...

The line is often color touch central. I know this particular issue seems to have a periodic problem with wear and scuffs near the Aquaman logo, so those are the places I'd start looking.

That's just a huge, ugly water stain that goes front-to-back, huh? Plus what I suspect is mouse chew. Rusty staple with migration. Binding separation at the bottom third of the book. The rest of the faults aren't really relevant in this grade band, so the big question is just how bad that water damage is going to be scored. I'm going to go with the current majority vote and say 1.5 here. But that's mostly because this book just doesn't feel as totally wrecked to me as most 1.0 books tend to. However, if this came back 1.0, I wouldn't feel like you'd gotten an unfair grade.

If anything, they seem to be tossing in the towel on that, since the standalone Batman film in the pipeline is apparently explicitly not a DCEU films. On the other hand, the Flash movie is apparently "inspired by" Flashpoint, and is going to jump us into the deep end of DC multiverse potential, perhaps in the same mold as Into the Spider-Verse did, so perhaps at the end of this, everything will be a DCEU film? I really feel like DC doesn't know what its doing right now... More than anything else, that's what is hurting them.

I find if you get both hands under the comic, sort of thumbs up underneath the spine, you can get enough momentum to flip the comic. Still, you hardly ever get enough rotation, and people always complain that you should have just used a coin instead, and .... Wait. Not that kind of comic flipping either, huh? More seriously, the most important thing to remember about turning a comic over is to make sure you turn it over while keeping the spine straight. For example, it's fine to hold the book by the outside edge of the pages and lift it that way (holding it spine-down as you bring it back to rest). You can also do it the other way, holding the spine side of the book (especially for stiffer books). It's a bad idea to flip the book over its short dimension though, because that makes it much easier to kink the spine. Regardless, you of course need to hold the book with an appropriate amount of care; the easiest way to tick a spine is to allow the book to flop over, but you can make them yourself by holding too tightly or placing too much stress at specific points on the spine while turning.

I think many of us maintain our own naughty lists. Dylan's just special because he evidently wants to get on everyone's naughty list.

I don't expect much "defense". Dylan's strategy tends toward all attack, all the time. If he engages in the discussion at all, I expect it will be to simultaneously attack the process and declare that he has so much business and such good books that no one will stop buying from him because of a stupid list. Honestly, I can't imagine that Dylan won't eventually end up forum-banned by CGC's moderation team. They've stated that they are following a point-escalation system and that he hasn't hit the hard-ban level yet... which in my mind means they must have one heck of a shallow slope on that escalation system. The primary advantage of electing him to the Hall of Shame is, frankly, to formalize the community's disdain for his ethics and methods.

Comic grading may be more subjective than we wish it was, but the fundamental idea holds water. "How is this comic's condition not the way it was supposed to be?" Signature verification... isn't like that. Signature verification experts present themselves as engaging in some sort of forensic science, but that's rarely if ever the case. The big names in the industry use known-good examples of signatures as "exemplars" and more or less try to make sure submitted signatures are plausible equivalents. And they still get played, as sports memorabilia scandal after sports memorabilia scandal indicates. "Stare and compare" with an exemplar only works if you 1) have a good exemplar, 2) are dealing with a person whose signature did not vary substantively over time -- so, you know, not Stan Lee, and 3) don't have really skilled forgers in the field. And that's the best signature verification options. I don't think certain other comic grading companies necessarily keep a deep library of authentic signatures for comparison. I don't know, maybe they do. But regardless, witnessed signatures can be known to be authentic because they have an established chain of custody. Unwitnessed signatures can never be authenticated beyond just someone's best guess, no matter what the authentication services market. CGC doesn't offer after-the-fact signature authentication because there's not really such a thing, not to the level of certainty that it would really require. So, for the OP, as noted, you can send in a DF signed comic. It will come back with a green label. I don't think there's much collector interest in most of those DF signature issues when the book is just a 100% normal production copy that DF had signed and then packaged in a DF sleeve. But, to the extent that I'm wrong about that, you may be better off keeping it unslabbed and in the original, sticker-sealed DF sleeve with COA. I feel that's likely to be more marketable than a random book in a green label. YMMV.

I'm gonna throw a dart and hit 9.4 here, because I think there are some problems with the bottom left corner. But, honestly, it's going to be impossible to estimate a grade on this, especially with any accuracy in the 9.0+ range, while it's in that mylar because that just does not allow it to be photographed cleanly enough. Just as an example, in several pictures, I thought there was a bit of color rub in Reed Richard's black ink at the spine. But... I don't think that's real; I think that's an imaging artifact caused by reflections from the mylar. Similarly, is there a color breaking tick near the bottom of the UPC? I sure think so, but you could probably argue either way in a couple of these photos. So, basically, I'm saying this book is "nice" but that's about all I can commit to with what I've got to work with here.

From what we can see of these two copies, I don't have any reason to necessarily suspect trimming in either of them. Although, of course, trimming is hard to diagnose, especially with no book in hand. That said, the Heritage copy has Ben's head well clear of the spine in the logo box. Meanwhile, the metallic debris above and to the right of Ben shows four circles and only the barest hint of a fifth. The OP's cover shows logo-Ben wrapped into the spine, but almost half of a fifth circle visible at right. Take a look at "Marvel" to see just how far to the left the OP's copy is shifted compared to the Heritage book. Miswraps, miscuts, and sizing inconsistencies are de rigeur for this period of books, but I don't see anything here that I'd consider a red-flag for trimming (although of course that doesn't preclude the possibility of other forms of restoration).

#1s are almost always going to command higher prices than #2s, even when rarity suggests otherwise. People just like that #1 on the cover. As a more modern example, Walking Dead #2 had fewer copies ordered than #1. In addition, there are 914 9.8 Universal slabs of #1 on the census (plus another 22 9.9s!), while Walking Dead #2 only has 205 copies at 9.8 Universal. Yet no one -- no one -- is going to pay more for #2 than for #1. Value doesn't always track with rarity.

Ah, okay. That means it's very much not like Bizarre Sex #4. If it doesn't come attached, CGC won't grade it ... or at least, won't grade it with the book. The rule is usually pretty distinct: if it came attached, it has to be there; if it didn't come attached, it won't be included in the slab. I suppose they might grade it separately, but that's definitely something I'd contact them about before paying for shipping.

142 copies in 9.6 blue. 47 copies in 9.8 blue. And 85 in 9.4 blue. High-grade copies of Aliens #1 aren't exactly rare, but the 9.8s are pretty tough to chase down. To some extent the whole series is like that, although the ratios get a little better after #2 (which has 23 in 9.6 but only 7 in 9.8). The only thing harder than putting the full series together in 9.8 would be doing the same thing for the reprints. Some of the issues went to five printings. some of which I strongly suspect would be quite a challenge to locate in grade.

This is on Non-Stop Spider Man #1, yes? I'm curious what CGC's philosophy is going to be with this book and its myriad cover layers (traditional cover inside die-cut cover inside "no-cover"). I know Marvel's thinking here is that die-cut covers have historically not done well in shipping, and this is an effort to ensure they arrive in collectors'/readers' hands undamaged. I haven't actually held one of these myself. The no-cover is attached to the book, yes? If so, I view this like Bizarre Sex #4, where the white retailer protection cover is considered a mandatory part of the book for grading purposes.