bluechip

It's more to do with rarity. Cap 1 is a fantastic book and much more key and I would guess desired by more people than the tec 31 -- but the tec 31 seems to be far more rare, so the number of existing copies of Cap 1 impact its relative value due to differing supply v demand.

Marvel (and Evans) have accomplished something really remarkable with the MCU Cap. He is beloved by people who don't like America all that much because Cap is, to them, what America should be (and/or was at one time)

The Marvel comics from Stan's heyday in the 60s up until today were, by Stan's account and nearly everyone else's, a group effort, and more akin to the way serialized TV shows and studio franchises are created today. But while most people who hear that Stan didn't do 100% without thinking less of him, there are some who just can't think of it as anything but 100% one way (Stan did it all!) or the other (Stan did nothing!). And with the rarest exceptions that is not how it is now or how it's ever been within professional creative rooms in any medium. Like the guys here who take every quote about Stan delegating something to the extreme that Kirby did "100%" of everything, not only slamming Stan Lee but Heck, Buscema, Colan, Ayers, Thomas and every single other person from Marvel except Ditko (on two titles, with Kirby getting credit for 100% on all the others). Basically, dissing not Stan Lee but every other artist or writer except the two who also dissed Stan Lee to a large enough extent.

Examples disproving that are legion. For years, DC comics' execs shook their heads unable to grasp why the Marvel comics with art they considered ugly was pulling readers away from their books, which had art they considered much better (and the vast majority of people would have agreed). I could name a few movies wherein the DP was an absolute genius and every shot was a masterpiece of imagery but the film cannot be appreciated on any level but as a series of beautiful images.

Lemme fix the punctuation for you Logical fallacy: The sale of this book has nothing to do with Golden Age

The first paragraph misuses the word "restoration" but at least it follows a sort of logic that people can follow as it's applied in home restoration. The second takes it a step further and defines removal as "repair" which is not how anybody defines repair anywhere else except where the portion removed is than also replaced with something else. But even we accept the contrary-to-dictionary definitions applied in both paragraphs, it still wouldn't support the idea that trimming is restoration when it hasn't been done to remove defects or create the appearance of unworn edges. Doing that makes sense only if restoration is further redefined to include "anything that shouldn't have been done to a book". Logic and proper word usage is not the enemy, but some fear them, nonetheless.

I've been a fan of alternate reality Spider-man books since I began picking them up in my travels, so thought I'd share a couple favorites from foreign Spider-verses where the webslinger is a gunslinging cop killer and a vaguely motived murderous psychopath.

I bought a copy of this because I figure it'll be worth a lot more after the planet actually dies.

MMC (made me chuckle), though I ruined it for myself moments afterward by analyzing it and realizing that if a guy disliked ample bosoms he would not use the word "ample". But then to sub a word like "excessive" would probably kill the joke.

Depends on what the unremovable resto is. What if it's a 7.0 that's technically restored but only because it has a blot of ink that cannot be removed but the ink is smaller in size than other bits of ink on books which are also graded 7.0 and the only real difference is that the unrestored book acquired the large amount of ink accidentally or even with the intent of defacing the book? And what if the technically restored 7.0 presents better and has better page quality and even though it's priced at a million, that's far below, or even half, the going price for the unrestored 7.0, meaning it's an extra million not for the damage done to the book but for what presumably was going through the mind of the person who damaged it?

"No wrong way" is right.

Depends on the comic and cover. Some comics had stories I loved with moments I remembered but the covers were not appealing to me, featured the villain or the hero just in shadow, etc. and so I would want the cover only because I know people put more value on it and I could use the proceeds from selling it to get pages within. I would also prefer to have a really great unused version of a cover if it was in some way more cool than the published version. And there are prelims I've seen to ultra classic covers which I would much prefer aesthetically over the published versions of lesser images on covers from the same title and vintage.

At those grade levels the effects of slight to moderate restoration may well be such that the grade would not change even if the restoration were simply considered additional damage, such as: Like when a tear has been sealed, but it would get the same grade if the tear was still there and the added sealant was graded the same way as an accidental contamination of glue. Or, when minor color touch fills in a crease but the grade would be the same even if the crease were still obvious and the ink from the color touch was on some other part of the book where it doesn't match the background printed ink.

If you're a nonagenarian Granny selling off your late husband's original owner collection along with his stamps and old matchbooks, you are very likely to think the prices are correct because they come from a very proper looking book of long standing. You might even agree, if a buyer tells you that standard "wholesale" prices are half of "retail" and that the word "Good" in "Good condition" means the same thing it does in the rest of the world, so that all she will expect the nice young man to pay her for the departed hubby;s old but nice looking Action 1 is half of the "Good" price in that authoritative looking guide book...

Generation Ecch

There were so many High Concept ideas in the early FF and so many of them sounded like they made sense scientifically that I gave them a pass for the ones that sounded really stupid. But even among those I have some fond memories and genuine affection. My favorite in the so-stupid-you-gotta-love-it-anyway category was that Reed Richards had actually created a device called, iirc, the encephalo-gun, which enabled two guys to go brain-to-brain in a contest in which the bigger brain would supposedly destroy the other guy, but actually (SPOILER ALERT) enabled the bigger brain to create an illusion in the mind of the guy with the weaker brain. When I read that as a kid in the single digits I knew even then it was a really strange thing for Reed to have built and absurdly convenient that it was laying around when he needed it. But I still loved watching it happen.

This is true. I came to Marvel comics via Spider-man, like most kids, but soon became fascinated by the FF. Great big space and science fiction operatic concepts being constantly introduced month after month. The personal stories never felt as real or compelling as they did in Spider-man or in frankly most of the other titles, but the big ideas few fast and furious.

I definitely believe there are AF15 copies out there which most people would look at raw and feel they're identical in condition to other books which graded 9.8 (and most of them would probably also those effectively identical to the 9.6s.

Spidey 68 was published in October 1968

I did business with Dave and way back in the day when he got a big collection which had a lot of things I wanted I thought about flying over to do a deal in person but then got caught up in other things. Several times I thought about flying to this place or that for big book(s) and looking back wish I had cause it would probably have been fun and there's a few things I probably should've bought that I probably would've had I seen them in the pulp.

I love the AF15 for many reasons but as far back as I can remember I have seen what appeared to me to be perfect newsstand copies of AF15. But I never saw such a thing in Action 1 until I saw the recently sold 9.0 copies (although in fairness I probably could have taken a pilgrimage to look at the Mile High copy). It seems to me, based on what I know of collecting habits and how many thousands of AF15s are likely out there, that there may well be more copies out there as yet undiscovered which look precisely to me and to virtually everybody else as identical in condition. But that there may well not be such things out there in re Action 1 (or even one such thing). I do not mean to attempt to diminish the desirability of a super minty AF 15 but whenever I see proclamations that the latest 9.6 AF15 or similarly graded silver age book should be "worth more" than the top known copies of Action 1, I get the sense that the people doing the excessive comparison are doing so not because the 9.6-9.8ish silver age keys are actually more rare the top graded Action 1s but because they are less so, meaning they feel it is much more likely they may one day be in a position to sell the former, rather than the latter.

You got me thinking of a great way to avoid work this morning by looking at an online gallery of Fury covers which reaffirmed by belief that they were not as memorable as the stories themselves. The most memorable being 8, 18, 43, 59 and 64) either because of what was promised within (Nazis with laser guns! Someone dies! Fury's eye!) or the eye-catching cover image itself (43, 64). Runners up being 38, 50, 65, 66, 69, 74, 75. Women appeared on barely a handful of covers and maybe once or twice the cover implied they were integral to the story. But never did they imply any steamy sex could be found within. The Mexican publishers apparently saw this as a shortcoming and sought to remedy it. Okay, unless somebody's going to pay me for critiquing Fury covers, I need to get back to work...

Good point. Much as I love the Howlers their covers were often like posters for WW II movies -- without the sex.

That's a fantastic page. A reprint of ASM #18 was one of the first 5 or 6 Spidey stories I ever read. I missed the next month's reprint of #19 and didn't find out what happened until much later when I bought an original copy. The 18 was so different from what you would see in most any other comics. When a page from 18 came up for sale years ago with Spidey literally calling the cops for help instead of fighting himself I fully intended to buy it but that was pre-internet bidding and I missed the phone call when it came up.

It's a Dotless wonder!