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Skwerl

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About Skwerl

  • Birthday 10/08/1980

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    Golden Age
    Silver Age
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    Copper Age
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  1. Yup!! Those are really hard to find!! Great book, hold onto that!! But yeah, I'm annoyed that CGC calls these "Multi-Pack Editions." Back in the day, we'd all call them Whitmans, casually, because most of the copies we found/had came out of Whitman bags, but we* knew they weren't ONLY found in Whitman bags. Somewhere over the years, that truth was lost and even hardcore/respected collectors (and now CGC) often mislabel them. What that is is a first print direct variant. When Marvel direct variant print runs were at their lowest, near day one. Edit: In this case, by "we," I really mean the old heads at my local comic store in Philly who knew their stuff, and my contacts in print/distro. Most collectors I'd meet outside of that world (and since) generally considered all "diamond box" Marvels reprints/"Whitmans," as I alluded to earlier. And when I first saw that going on, that's when I decided to start investigating/researching/collecting them. It seems as time has gone on, the misconception has actually spread faster and wider than the truth. Probably because of the internet.
  2. I suppose anything is possible, but from what I was told, I don't think a comp copy is likely. There certainly could be some out there (and I'll be sure and ask if I ever run into anyone who worked on the book), but this was found in a long box of modern comics filled by a particular local collector that I know of, who sold it to my buddy for next to nothing. My buddy didn't want to alert the collector and so I'm respecting that decision and not outing him or approaching him. But if that collector bought this comic individually, I can't imagine that not he nor the seller would call out its significance and keep it out of a long box of junk. I feel like it's far more likely he bought a bunch of Wal-Mart packs or something, and didn't realize that it was anything special as he flipped through looking for known ratios or whatever. I could be totally wrong, but that's my instinct.
  3. Hah. Oh, right. I took the pic in my house, which is basically a 1977 bachelor pad decorated by me & my flaming lesbian bff.
  4. Yup! Never made it to any distributors as far as I know. Didn't think it was even printed until today. My best guess is that some got thrown into Wal-Mart packs or something? Can't imagine any other way someone could have it and not know what they had.
  5. So, this is interesting. Not my copy, but it's my photo. A friend of mine bought a long box of random modern comics and found this in it. Of course I told him to get it graded; regardless of the grade, it would be presumably authenticated, and the only one on the census. Anyone ever hear of this issue popping up anywhere?
  6. Oh, quick note on this: There definitely were mutlipacks with newsstand editions, as Whitman wasn't the only multipack game in town. Marvel had their own multipacks too distributed through Curtis and/or the ID network. On the other thread, someone posted a Marvel multipack containing a newsstand edition of ASM #186, side by side with a Whitman multipack with a direct edition of the same issue.
  7. It's been awhile since I checked this thread, but someone pointed me to it in a discussion about "mutlipack editions" in the "Ask CGC" thread and urged me to post my knowledge here to contribute to the discussion. I grew up in print shops and comic book stores, so the ins & outs of printing and distribution of comics has always fascinated me, and I've sort of majored in 1977 specifically (mostly because I'm also a Star Wars fan), and I've been obsessing over some of these topics for decades. I'm in my 40s now, so I wasn't there in the late 70s, but in the 80s I talked to people who were. Here's the Ask CGC thread: Whitman's parent company Western printed a lot of comics, but they did not print Marvel comics. They did not have a license to. All Marvel comics were printed on the same printing presses, which I believe were always at World Color Press. In a sec, I'll post an editorial printed by Marvel in the early 80s that stated they all came from the same printing presses. There is not really any such thing as a "multipack variant." This statement has been a little controversial, and I've got no ego here and would happy to be proven wrong (okay, it would be really embarrassing, but I would try and take the L with grace). But I would simply challenge anyone to show three versions of a particular Marvel comic that had a third version besides newsstand (Curtis insignia), and direct (no Curtis insignia). There would have been no reason to print a third version specifically for multipacks which were just a way to dump excess (as in already printed) inventory at a discount. Important things to note, which has made this challenge tricky: The presence of the barcode is not really the defining characteristic of a newsstand edition, but rather it's the Curtis insignia. Curtis distributed to newsstands, and they put some numbers and their mark on the books they distributed. Direct editions went out through other means (I believe this was typically Sea Gate distribution, as World Color did not distribute), and those did not have the Curtis insignia. I think it's common knowledge at this point why bar codes started going away on direct editions: Retailers were returning unsold direct editions for the higher newsstand wholesale prices, and also some retailers were trying to scan the barcodes on the comics in the multipacks rather than the ones on the multipacks themselves. But that's a rabbit hole in and of itself. For now suffice to say that transition didn't happen overnight at once across all titles. Okay, so this is from Marvel Team-Up #108 (1981), but I've seen it in other issues from around that time, when collectors first started asking what was up with the diamond boxes: Note that Marvel confirms that there were just two versions, and that they were printed "on the same presses." Which further proves that Western/Whitman didn't print Marvel comics (they never had a license to and you won't actually find a Whitman logo on any Marvel books besides a few oddball examples such as the treasury editions and Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali, etc.). And now, the debate that is opened up on the "Ask CGC" thread was whether or not the smaller diamond box shown here is different than the larger diamond boxes on the so-called "multipack variants." My position is that they're the same thing; the design just evolved in 1978/1979 for aesthetic reasons. But that's an open debate, I'll admit. Now, on that other thread, as we got into questions of who exactly got what versions, many pointed out examples of mistakes. There was the design of things, the intent, and then you had the reality of a lot of cokeheads working on tight deadlines, and there were lots of anomalies, and "bugs" in 1977, which was sort of the 1.0 release of Marvel direct editions. There were some direct editions printed with the Curtis insignia accidentally. Newsstand editions popped up in comic book shops (this happened even into the 80s). I would not be at all shocked to find multipacks with newsstand editions post-1977. It's sort of the same as finding retailer variants in Wal-Mart packs today. Anything lying around could go into them. This is a big reason why I try to focus my "arguments" on the things that couldn't have been occasionally messed up: That a) there was simply never a third version printed of a Marvel comic for multipacks; If comic stores existed in 1977-1979 (they did of course), and any of them got Marvel comics through a distributor other than Curtis/ID, then they got Marvel comics without the Curtis symbol on them. There was only ever newsstand, and direct edition, and "multipack edition" is a misnomer. And 2) Whitman didn't print Marvels, they only got their hands on Marvel inventory that was printed not by their parent company Western, who printed the DC and Dell/GK stuff. Which was confirmed by Marvel who literally said they came from the same presses in that Marvel editorial I posted. So "whitman reprint / whitman edition" is a misnomer as well. So that's the hill I'm on: No such thing as Marvel "Whitman reprints" or "Whitman editions," and no such thing as "multipack edition;" Those were all just early direct editions, printed by Marvel, on the same presses that printed the newsstand inventory that went to Curtis/ID. But I'm not posting this to "be right on the internet," I'm just a nerd who loves this stuff and would love to learn more if I'm off on anything. Hope something here is helpful for anyone else on that same journey.
  8. I mean, I know they're direct editions. Marvel has said they're direct editions. (I suppose the debate is whether the "big diamonds" are something different than the "smaller diamonds" that Marvel was using by the time they answered the question, but I say they're not.) I'm just using that as evidence that direct editions went out through means other than multipacks. As for reprints going out via subscription, I can only guess when the original recipient signed up, but if it was after the movie came out, issues #1 and #2 would have been 2nd or 3rd printings. Movie came out right after the #2 first printing hit streets. Yup, heartbreaking, but I heard of this sort of thing happening awhile back when I was collecting every single variant of the early Star Wars run (partly to confirm some of the things I've claimed here which were theories at the time); First print direct editions of Star Wars #2-4 are really rare, especially in high grade. They were treated as reprints but they weren't. Lots of people just took it for granted that the diamond meant Whitman reprint. For years. Mostly because every reprint of Star Wars issues they ever saw had the big weird diamond box. What's really interesting (and proves how messy things were), is that your LCS got their hands on newsstands. I can only imagine who would have went around who for that. Yup! There were definitely tons of examples of mistakes which makes it hard to definitively prove some things, such as who got what. This is a big reason why I try to focus my "argument" on the things that couldn't have been occasionally messed up: That a) there was simply never a third version printed of a Marvel comic for multipacks; If comic stores existed in 1977-1979 (they did of course), and any of them got Marvel comics through a distributor other than Curtis, then they got Marvel comics without the Curtis symbol on them. There was only ever newsstand, and direct edition, and "multipack edition" is a misnomer. And 2) Whitman didn't print Marvels, they only got their hands on Marvel inventory that was printed not by their parent company Western, who printed the DC and Dell/GK stuff. Which was confirmed by Marvel who literally said they came from the same presses in that Marvel editorial I posted. So "whitman reprint / whitman edition" is a misnomer as well.
  9. Oh, I didn't get that's what you were doing, haha. Whoops.
  10. One other little thing that has chewed at my brain for decades... I have newsstand issues that I bought off comic book stores' shelves as late as the mid-1980s that got there via direct distribution. This is a bit outside of the focus of this thread that I've already shamelessly hijacked, but I'm pretty sure that if someone in a warehouse was short on direct inventory but had an excess of newsstand inventory, or vice versa... they probably wouldn't have been fired for sliding a pallet across an invisible line to get through the day. For whatever that's worth.
  11. These are very good questions! I had shot my hands/keyboard off on a response full of theories at first, but then I took a step back to check some facts, and here's an edited version with as much speculation filtered out as I can manage... I'll think on your question(s) here and see what I can remember and/or dig up, but my gut instict is that there was more than one reason and more than a few factors behind these inconsistencies. And a big reason I say that is that when I've talked to people that were there, they describe a pretty hectic scenario involving lots of cokeheads working on tight deadlines. The transition didn't happen overnight, mistakes were made (there are direct versions that accidentally ran with the Curtis insignia for example), and not every title followed suit right away or across the board. Some titles just didn't get direct versions for "reasons." For example, Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu, Curtis distributed exclusively. It's almost unthinkable now, but X-Men actually sold pretty terribly until the very late 1970s. Many issues that were put out in the 1970s were reprints of previous stories thrown together at literally the last hour (the #1 reason for this being that someone in the supply chain missed a deadline, so a substitution had to be made). Another thing that was happening then is that some of the first speciality comic book shops wouldn't necessarily sell the titles they got right away. So they'd report low sales when in reality the comics simply hadn't gone up on the shelf in the first place, until after their sales were reported; this happened most notoriously with Howard the Duck. Also, 1977 of all years was by far the most hectic. Think of 1977 as direct versions 1.0; there were a lot of bugs. It's pretty common knowledge now and has been already pointed out in this thread that retailers were scanning the wrong barcodes in the multipacks, others were returning unsold direct inventory for the higher newsstand wholesale rate, and all of the other things that had to be learned the hard way in a turbulent summer (throw the release of frickin' Star Wars into it just for fun) leading ultimately to no UPCs, Spidey heads, etc. What I admit I'm a little unclear on still is the nitty gritty details of the arrangements between Marvel, Whitman, and Western. Whitman was a subsidiary of Western. Whitman accounted for less than half of Western's revenue, as Western also did lots of commercial printing and had its own board game operation that was much bigger than comics in and of itself. I've read and I've been told that Whitman didn't have a license to print Marvel titles; I believe all Marvel titles were printed by World Color Press while Western printed DC and Dell / Gold Key. But they obviously distributed Marvel titles too through Whitman, and I'm not sure how exactly that inventory would have (at least in Marvel's case) flowed from World Color to Whitman under the roof of Western, a direct competitor. To ask it more directly, "direct" circulation was from who to who? World Color to Whitman? World Color to another distributor (such as Sea Gate) that stores could order from? Both? That front is where I'm still seeking some answers. But to speak to your theory a bit, I'm all but certain that it wasn't Western/Whitman that was printing or not printing Marvel titles based on sales. Those calls would have logically come from Marvel, though obviously informed a great deal by what Whitman was selling or not selling, but presumably also based on what was happening through third-party distrubutors, since World Color didn't distribute and Western didn't print Marvel. Complicated stuff, ha. I'm loving this dicussion, though, and happy to be challenged on what I'm pretty darn sure I know, but not necessarily 100.0% right on. I'll take a big fat L as graciously as I possibly can the day someone shows me a third version of a Marvel comic that was for direct distribution either specifically for multipacks or specifically not for multipacks, or if someone can absolutely confirm that Whitman was the only multipack game in town (that appears to be debunked pretty definitively by your post above), or if someone can absolutely confirm that multipacks were the only form of direct distribution in 1977-1979 (I mean, we know there were comic book stores, but it doesn't break spacetime to imagine them all ordering newsstand copies through Curtis for the first few years; extremely unlikely but theoretically in the ballpark of plausible). But I grew up in print shops and comic book stores and I've been obsessing over this stuff since 1988 or so. And hey, it's still fascinating.
  12. Haha, yeah, thanks, I have seen that. I'm a pretty big Whitman enthusiast, and also a big fan of early direct versions. Everything I've said in this thread applies only to Marvel stuff, because that was a much more self-contained situation as Marvel didn't allow Whitman to print any Marvel titles (aside from stuff like treasury editions, Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali, etc.). When you get into Whitman printings of DC and Gold Key stuff, you're talking about multiple companies all doing whatever the heck they wanted to do, haha. That's a much bigger mess that I applaud others for trying to untangle, but my hill is just that Marvel "multipack / whitman" variants are nothing more than Marvel direct editions between 1977-1979 before they simply made the diamond smaller.
  13. Actually, I need to add a little nitpicky thing; it will eat at me if I don't. I used some terms a little too casually. It wasn't just that Marvel had newsstand copies for "their" bags per se. It was that those bags (the "Marvel" ones on the left) were presumably distributed through Curtis rather than Western. Multipacks were a way to dump excess inventory at a combo discount. So what I should have said earlier to be more accurate is that Whitman (through Western Distro) multipacks only had direct. But any multipacks distributed by Curtis would have had newsstand copies.
  14. Both from Marvel Team-Up #108, 1981 Ahh!! Okay, fair play! I actually have seen these, these were from 1978. So I'll concede that newsstand editions did occasionally show up in multipacks! Something to point out here: The first one came from Marvel, who would have had newsstand inventory on hand. The one on the right came from Whitman, who only had direct inventory. Whitman bags existed, yes, no one disputes that. But the Marvel comics inside were all published by Marvel, and indistinguishable from the versions that appeared outside of packs. Some people look at these images and think that the diamond box versions were made specifically for Whitman multipacks since that's what they have while the Marvel ones are "normal." But it was just direct inventory put into the packs. There would have never been any point to printing a third variant of any Marvel issue just to put into multipacks. Incidentally, just to defend the hill I'm on here a little further: You won't find any other versions of ASM #186 than these two. You won't find a direct version that looks different from the one in the multipack. There was only direct and newsstand, and to call the one on the right a "multipack variant" implies that there was something else on direct racks. There wasn't.