Qalyar

Here's today's question that no one has likely ever asked before. Can anyone who -- for some reason -- has a run of the 1994 issues of Direct Currents flip through them to see if there is any preview content or other mention of DC's Babylon 5 comic adaptation? It's greatly appreciated!

That's just ridiculous.

I guess this isn't a pedigree collection because they're not original owner books? Regardless, ugly label is ugly. Sorry, guys. Really nice book, though.

This is a particularly cynical, victim-blaming take. First, there is zero chance this book was swapped. This isn't IH181 or something like that where there are, price notwithstanding, a virtually unlimited number of interchangeable copies. There are two other copies known in equivalent condition, and I'm pretty sure they're still accounted for. Second, we all agree that CPR, especially on big books, is a gamble. If this book had been damaged while being cracked out, or damaged by pressing, or mutilated in transit, we would be mourning the loss of a GA historical treasure and shaking our heads at the person responsible. But to use the gambling analogy, the problem here isn't that someone gambled with this book and lost; the problem is that they gambled with this book only to discover they were playing at a rigged game The reality is that CGC made a mistake. Mistakes will happen, no matter how much we want otherwise Now, I think CGC makes too many mistakes and doesn't catch as many of the mistakes as they should before they get out the door. In this case, it is 100% on the graders, not QA, because the mistake was not obvious until the book was cracked. But otherwise, this is the same sort of situation as when CGC slabs a reprint book with an original printing label. They failed to perform their fundamental service to their customer. They lacked duty of care in servicing exactly the sort of book that we expect -- and their pricing tiers imply -- will receive their most professional service. And it's not like this should have been easy to miss. Now, legally speaking, CGC's terms don't usually give much recourse for anything they do. Ethically, that's maybe another story. I'm not sure I think they should make any party here whole necessarily, because CGC is not responsible for catering to the vagaries of market sales even when books need replaced entirely, but this is a pretty unique case. Not unique in that they don't make errors otherwise, but (hopefully) unique because they oughtn't screw up this badly on a Walkthrough-tier book of this profile!

Historically, I would have said that CGC would discard the envelope as it is not affixed to the comic in any way. However, there's some recent precedent indicating that they're willing to reinsert books into DC's new envelopes and slab them thusly. That's expressly not the case for traditional polybags. As for how the market wants these things handled? Who knows, too new for long-term anything to be determined yet. How CGC approaches these as more are produced going forward may have an impact, but who knows.

No accounting for taste. The good news is this is fully reversible, and if you can afford to buy an 8.0 Batman 1, you can afford a Walkthrough reholder to get that off your slab's label.

That coloring job is ... not good, but it's made a lot worse by laughably incompetent color registration. It might have looked okayish if the plates had been aligned properly. Maybe.

I do perhaps stand corrected then. However, since the two marks not only do not match in terms of position, but also shape and orientation, I don't think this can possibly be any sort of consistent "error". Random bits and bobs of ink misbehaving are pretty common and not generally of significant collector interest.

Searching Ebay, I can find exactly zero copies with a similar mark. Honestly, I don't think this is a production error. I think that's a mark from a bright pink marker or highlighter or something along those lines.

Just wanted to follow up on this thread. Port City Auctions never pulled this listing. But despite adding some weak disclaimers about how it "might" be a reprint, it ultimately sold for... $1300. On the other hand, GoCollect believes that even very low grade copies of the GRR reprint have a FMV north of $1500. So I guess if you believe that, you might think this fraudulently altered copy might be a deal at that price... I sure don't, though. MCS has an 8.5 CGC slab up for $850, and that's an infinitely better deal, and a book that wasn't mutilated.

I used to have a longer list of these problems. It does appear that there's been an effort to clean up census duplication; as of 2021, there were duplicate entries for Amazing Spider-Man #299 and Flaming Carrot #28 with different date formats. Amazing Spider-Man #234 has separate entries for "Canadian Edition" (the original terminology) and "Canadian Price Variant" (current practice). I happen to know that the first CPV copy of this book was slabbed in October 2021, so the other CPV-sorted copies are more recent. But that orphans the 4 earlier labels and duplicates the book entries. Because this is probably the case for a lot of books (anything with a CPV slabbed before... whenever they started being called CPVs), this may not be an easily corrected problem.

3.5. Fantastic show, and not surprised it made it to comic form. It has sort of that feel about it. Didn't fare too well as a modern film reboot though; that one probably would have been better with fewer (as in, zero) giant steampunk spiders.

CGC's Census is not an extremely sophisticated creature. If books have the same name and the same publisher, they're going to be appear listed together. In part that's because CGC doesn't (generally) invent distinguishing clauses (like [2nd series], [5th series], whatever) when they're not actually part of the book's publication title. Most of the time, that's fine. It's not ideal, but it's fine. Books like that one you pictured are, of course, glorious failures of QA.

This one is not actually an error, because title shenanigans. Katy Keene (Archie Publications) ran from 1949 until its final issue, #62, in 1961. Archie Publications began printing a revival title -- Katy Keene Special -- in the 1980s. The first such book is Katy Keene Special #2 in 1983. That run has all been slabbed: If you're wondering where Katy Keene Special #1 is (because let's face it, I know everyone is very concerned), it's listed separately because it was published under the Red Circle Comics Group imprint. So that takes care Katy Keene Special, right? Of course not. Starting with #7, Archie decided that Katy Keene wasn't really that Special after all and dropped the final word from the title but retained the numbering. Katy Keene then ran from #7 (in late 1984) allll the way to #33 in 1990. MCS lists all the 1980s issues under the Katy Keene Special title despite the change. I've seen other sites index it as Katy Keene (2nd series), a title that simply begins with #7; this is essentially what CGC has opted to do. Your mileage may vary.

I'm gonna go with a 4.5 here, although I bet the margin of error on grade predictions will be higher than normal for this book. Any time you have a copy whose defects don't follow the traditional damage patterns, it makes it a lot harder to predict how the graders will suss things out. Relevant defects: the omnomnom'ed spine (obviously), slight spine roll, piece out of UL BC, that book-length "reader's crease"-like fold to the BC, that tear/missing chunk (it's hard to tell) near the UL FC, and a few minor other hits (FC LR corner trauma, BC bottom, etc.). The writing imprint at UR is utterly irrelevant at this grade (and GA books rarely take a meaningful hit for such markings anyway). I would absolutely not get this pressed, at least in the conventional manner, because you do not want to correct this book's spine roll. Doing so will move that chew damage to be more clearly visible from the front, and that would be terrible. As it stands, this book is going to present way better than it's structural grade will suggest.

Does anyone have an example of this? A book that had trimming "reversed" and received a gray label? I'd like to see how they notated such a book.

Here's the deal though. That's not a comic adaptation of the film. In fact, the studio responsible for the film is not in any way involved with this book. In all those company labels on the back, do you see Jagged Edge Productions, the people who actually made the film? No. You do not. Note CGC's wording there. "'Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey' movie poster cover homage" (emphasis mine). Counterpoint just claims parody fair use and slaps whatever cover they want on their same small catalogue of poorly-written books. As an aside, I think their usual fair use claim is weaker than normal here, because this swipe is less adaptive, less clearly parody, and is likely to cause confusion with the original (as it has here). Not that anything is going to happen because of that. The only connection between the film and this book is that Blood and Honey provided Counterpoint another cynical method to cash in on the same title they've now reprinted hundreds of times with different covers. Unrelated, but I have no idea why Javan Jordan signed this. He has done covers for Counterpoint, but this doesn't seem to be one of his... I don't honestly know what relationship he has to this book. But yellow labels are cool, I guess.

I had a friend chase some of these for the early Byrne work. CPL 7 is technically the first time Byrne's ROG-2000 appears, but merely as an unnamed character in a panel image. CPL 11 was supposed to be the first actual story appearance of the character, but the CPL Gang had some production delays, so the back-up feature in E-Man #6 (Charlton) actually appeared first (although it literally follows after the one in CPL 11 in continuity). I was able to find cover images back to 5. Before that, I think it was less fanzine and more just "Layton's store catalog". Note that MCS attributes CPL 6 with a Neal Adams cover, but that appears to be in error. Adams did the cover for #5. I believe the cover artist on #6 is Joe Sinnott. Regardless, yours is a fantastic copy (I'd go 9.2 here) of 9/10, and one of the best copies I've ever seen from the series at all.

This is the earliest semi-pro piece Layton did. This is technically a double issue (#9 and #10) of Contemporary Pictorial Literature, a fanzine produced by Layton and Roger Stern. This issue is "semi-pro" because it was actually produced with permission from Charlton (which is why that Ditko piece is there) as something a test to see whether Layton and Stern would be suitable for creating a more official house publication/fanzine hybrid (it was, and that later work is the five issues of Charlton Bullseye). But Contemporary Pictorial Literature existed as a self-published fanzine before this issue (and after it, up to #12). The first couple of issues are, apparently, more or less just Layton's catalogue (he was a mail-order comic dealer for a bit) with a bit of his line art for flavor, although it gradually became a pretty impressive collection of talent. I don't think I've ever seen a copy of any issue before... oh, #6 or so. They're all quite scarce.

This is extremely disappointing and feel contrary to the original announcement on the issue.

No, they really aren't. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is not, in any way, related to Counterpoint's Do You Pooh or any of their other nonsense. Blood and Honey is the creation of Rhys Frake-Waterfield and his tiny British indie film studio. The film is frankly awful, but it also made better than $3M on a budget of less than $100,000, so Frake-Waterfield plans to make not only a sequel, but similar horror film adaptations of other properties whose original works are in or entering the public domain. Expect slasher-film treatments of Bambi and Peter Pan. Hopefully with some money behind them, they'll be better. None of this is related to Counterpoint Comics or its principle figure, Marat Mychaels. Blood and Honey is not a film adaptation of Do You Pooh. And there are quite a few reasons to expect that Counterpoint material cannot and will not see film adaptations. Most importantly, Counterpoint isn't selling a story; they're selling cover variants, and you can't put out hundreds of different versions of a film and have people buy them like they -- for some reason -- seem to do for their "comics". If anyone tells you that Hardlee Thinn, Do You Pooh, or any of Counterpoint's other titles is going to become a film... they are probably trying to sell you Counterpoint products.

A trimmed book is trimmed forever. You may improve appearance by leaf casting material onto the existing paper stock, but what was trimmed away is gone forever; no matter what you do, this will be a purple label. That said, because it is a purple label no matter what, I guess there's no harm in making it look prettier if you want to spend the money into it. Regardless, what I would not do is just leaf cast the cover and not the interior pages (assuming you're intending to resubmit to CGC) because that will be rejected from encapsulation due to overhang. Of course, if this is just going in a Mylar, do whatever Spider-floats your Spider-boat.

One of the more random things I collect are comics spun-off from the Labyrinth film. Boom has done quite a few of them, and many of their variant covers are essentially virgin covers. Sometimes it works for me, but not always. There's definitely a problem where there's no real way to know what book you're looking at without any front cover trade dress! These are all cool enough covers, but there's no way you'd know that they're also from three different books (Labyrinth: Coronation #1, Labyrinth: Masquerade, and the 2007 Special). I don't think any of these would have been hurt by retaining trade dress (and, indeed, the rather pink one -- from Labyrinth: Masquerade -- also comes in a version that does have trade dress). That said, I love this Joelle Jones "coloring book" cover -- from yet a fourth different book, the 30th Anniversary Special -- and it just wouldn't have worked out as well if there was full trade dress (heck, I wish they'd pushed the Fried Pie logo to the back cover, too).

Port City Auctions is stridently uninterested in pulling this listing, which means I'm definitely never bidding on anything they auction. On the other hand, even after adding some half-assed disclaimers, there's a new high bid at $1100. So there's either some hardcore shilling action here, or Port City is sort of right and insufficiently_thoughtful_persons will throw money around regardless of a book's authenticity.