o/t...science fair project ideas

[adamstrange]

I'm a white paged fanatic and pedigree collector, having seen thousands of the best peds. There is no difference in the v that I can detect, whether we are discussing books from the 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s.

 

+1. I agree with every part of this post.

 

I am specifically talking about Marvel comics from about mid 1962 to 1965 or so.

 

If I remember your collecting interests, they are thin on this era. Not that you don't have any expertise in them, I know you're much more knowledgeable than me but I am 100% sure I've seen the difference that I am talking about so there must be some explanation for it.

 

My experience is not thin at all. I've been collecting for 25 years and my collection used to be 90% SA superhero.

[G.A.tor]

so my daughter alyssa read the thread through last night and asked me if I wanted her to do a project on comic books she didn't have a clue what that was about...

 

but my buddy primetime did call her and give her some great ideas!...thanks ben!

[VintageComics]

I'm a white paged fanatic and pedigree collector, having seen thousands of the best peds. There is no difference in the v that I can detect, whether we are discussing books from the 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s.

 

+1. I agree with every part of this post.

 

I am specifically talking about Marvel comics from about mid 1962 to 1965 or so.

 

If I remember your collecting interests, they are thin on this era. Not that you don't have any expertise in them, I know you're much more knowledgeable than me but I am 100% sure I've seen the difference that I am talking about so there must be some explanation for it.

 

My experience is not thin at all. I've been collecting for 25 years and my collection used to be 90% SA superhero.

 

Gotcha. I was going by all the great books I've seen in your collection. I was under the impression that you avoided the Superhero stuff.

 

[adamstrange]

I'm a white paged fanatic and pedigree collector, having seen thousands of the best peds. There is no difference in the v that I can detect, whether we are discussing books from the 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s.

 

+1. I agree with every part of this post.

 

I am specifically talking about Marvel comics from about mid 1962 to 1965 or so.

 

If I remember your collecting interests, they are thin on this era. Not that you don't have any expertise in them, I know you're much more knowledgeable than me but I am 100% sure I've seen the difference that I am talking about so there must be some explanation for it.

 

My experience is not thin at all. I've been collecting for 25 years and my collection used to be 90% SA superhero.

 

Gotcha. I was going by all the great books I've seen in your collection. I was under the impression that you avoided the Superhero stuff.

 

I have very limited number of SA supers still in the collection.

 

I even have Bronze Age!

 

As my friend Weird Paper likes to say, my collection is like an iceberg. Most of it is not visible.

[adamstrange]

Good comments, Kenny.

 

I agree with your pointing out that that interior pages are narrower at the bottom than the top. I will respond more this evening. I still believe this to be a mechanical effect of production, not shrinkage.

[tb]

I even have Bronze Age!

 

[Ted Knight]

I have very limited number of incredibly awesome SA supers still in the collection.

 

Fixed that for you.

[adamstrange]

I even have Bronze Age!

 

 

Invoice sent.

[adamstrange]

The v-shape is easy to explain and can be proven by simply grabbing 30 sheets of typing paper, folder them in half as a group and seeing the v-form on the edge opposite to the fold.

 

 

Well, yes and no.

 

Unlike when you take 30 sheets of paper and fold them, a SA Marvel never has a consistent V effect running along the entire outer edge. It always becomes more pronounced the closer it gets to the top.

 

If you grab a stack of random SA Marvels, and look at the outer edges on all of them, you will see the "V-Effect" does not follow the same constant that your folded 30 sheets of paper displays.

 

But with SA Marvels, it's never present on the bottom outer edge like it is at the top. It always starts around the middle of the outer edge, and gets progressively worse as it nears the top.

 

Most SA comics that I know of were cut/trimmed after the parts were assembled and stapled. You can often see identical landmarks the cutting blade left behind on both the interior and cover alike, and why a cover will have the same terrible miscut as the interior.

 

So the interior did not start out with a pronounced V effect, it happened(somehow) over time. How much time, or why I don't know. Nor why it is consistently selective in forming on only the top half of the outer edge. Is it as was suggested earlier?, residual moisture inherit from the printing process drying at different rates with the properties and makeup of newsprint itself magnifying this phenomenon?

 

After countless hours of conversation with Dice, we were left with the idea that somehow, over the decades of comics being stored in long boxes the top of the books aged dramatically faster then the bottom half. Making overhang and V effect more pronounced then the bottom half due to covers aging differently vs interior, and the outer wraps aging more then the centerfold.

 

Leaving those books stored under ideal conditions with less of a V effect, or overhang, if any.

 

We were not happy with this overly simplified rational, but could not come up with a much better hypothesis that would explain it away.

 

And don't get me started on GA books, my head already hurts revisiting this topic.

 

 

 

Edit: I forgot to add that we often discussed when the books were chop cut. After the pressure was released by the trimming plate, did the comics puff back out creating a new V effect? But if so, again. Why is it only present on the top half half of the book? And not really present at all on some uber HG examples?

 

It baffles me

Excellent post, Kenny.

 

I admit that I cannot explain what occurred mechanically on the press to produce the v effect, if that is indeed the root cause. As I've examined the shrinkage argument I don't find it compelling and, after ruling it out, am left with a mechanical origin. This is not proof of the mechanical origin and the discussion in the thread is interesting. Perhaps someone that can help provide a more thorough and definitive explanation will run across it and contribute to the discussion.

 

One difficulty we all encounter when examining the finished product is that the comics were sloppily produced and stored, resulting in deviations and spine rolls making it even harder to compare.

 

I don't see any viability in the long box theory of why the top of the book has a more extended v than the bottom half of the book. Most of the pedigrees were not stored at all in long boxes, yet exhibit the same v shape profile. It's possible that the shrinkage (or extension, if the book was truly cut to size with the cover) occurred at the plant -- but then wouldn't Dice be aware of that happening?

 

The decline in page quality occurs, in my experience, all around the edges with seemingly equal intensity. Why is that the v forms only on one side?

 

If environment were such an important factor producing the v, then I would expect far more variation in it than what I've seen occur.

 

We could do an experiment to confirm/refute Roy's thought that the better preserved copies have less of the v. I've not sat down and measured books so it's possible that this pattern slipped by me.

[adamstrange]

so my daughter alyssa read the thread through last night and asked me if I wanted her to do a project on comic books she didn't have a clue what that was about...

 

but my buddy primetime did call her and give her some great ideas!...thanks ben!

 

 

 

 

 

I would have posted your request in General or the WC. I'm sure there are more folks on the Boards that would have been able to provide ideas.

[Ted Knight]

Keep in mind that in this discussion, I am primarily talking about SA Marvels from the early 1960's where Marvel chipping and over hang are common. I understand the references to pulps, Charlton's etc for supporting evidence though.

 

Anyway, in regards to those early 60's Marvels, somewhere around the mid 1960's something changed, greatly reducing the incidence of Marvel chipping and also the formation of that overhang at the top and bottom edges.

 

I'll add the one main reason why I think that the comics were trimmed after they were folded over and why I believed that the interiors shrink through the years:

 

There is a direct correlation between the freshness of the book and how pronounced that "V" is at the right edge as well as the overhang at the top edge.

 

That freshness seems to be the one common denominator.

 

The more "fresh" a book is (ie. the whiter the pages, the more moist and supple the newsprint) the less pronounced the "V" is on the right edge and the smaller the overhang at the top edge.

 

In fact, some fresh copies have such a small "v" formation and so little overhang that the book looks as though it was trimmed post production. Perfectly square, sharp edges with little to no "V" formation.

 

Now let's hear the rebuttals.

 

 

I think Roy has some excellent points in here. And it could be explained by the quality of newsprint varying greatly between books. We all agree that the newsprint used in pulps was of very low quality (broadly speaking, but not always the case, I recently picked up a Shadow pulp that has beautiful pages and no overhang, could be that there were issues of paper availability and a better newsprint had to be substituted, I don't know). It stands to reason that lower quality pulp would respond more poorly to the factors that contribute to deterioration, one of which, we all know is humidity or moisture.

 

Also, it is certainly possible, if not very likely, that not all books in a given print run experience the same amount of wetting, thus exhibiting less shrinkage relative to the cover stock, decreased shrinkage parallel to the grain and thus little or no "V", and incidentally, leading to greater longevity and long term stability (hence Roy's white-paged observation). Variation in wetting at the time of printing would explain all of those things.

 

Still can't explain why the cover doesn't overhang the "v" in some circumstances, though.

[adamstrange]

I recently picked up a Shadow pulp that has beautiful pages and no overhang

What date? Street & Smith pulps switched to a different approach to printing their pulps around 1940 resulting in only tiny overhang. A few years later and the cover & interior are almost always in beautiful alignment. There's at least 4 different ways that Shadow pulps were produced over the years.

 

Still can't explain why the cover doesn't overhang the "v" in some circumstances, though.

I have hundreds of books across the decades that the have the v extend beyond the cover. Kenny noted that as well in his post with regards to Marvels. No one thinks the cover stock shrinks so how did the interior pages extend?

[G.A.tor]

so my daughter alyssa read the thread through last night and asked me if I wanted her to do a project on comic books she didn't have a clue what that was about...

 

but my buddy primetime did call her and give her some great ideas!...thanks ben!

 

 

 

 

 

I would have posted your request in General or the WC. I'm sure there are more folks on the Boards that would have been able to provide ideas.

yeah, but I rarely venture ouf of gold, so figured I would just stay at home

[comicdonna]

so my daughter alyssa read the thread through last night and asked me if I wanted her to do a project on comic books she didn't have a clue what that was about...

 

but my buddy primetime did call her and give her some great ideas!...thanks ben!

 

 

 

 

 

I would have posted your request in General or the WC. I'm sure there are more folks on the Boards that would have been able to provide ideas.

yeah, but I rarely venture ouf of gold, so figured I would just stay at home

It's really not safe outside of Gold. Especially at night.

 

I probably should have asked my daughter, Alyssa for advice on your daughter's science project.

[Ze-man]

fwiw,. I had these uploaded from a thread years ago, they really show how a cover and interior "can" display identical landmarks from the cutting blade.

 

Doesn't prove, or disprove anything, but makes me wonder exactly how comics were cut during production.

 

Top down, guillotine style? Or did separate blades come from above, and below at the same time?

 

 

 

And just to clarify what you are looking at. This is a TOS 58 that I fanned out to show how the interior and cover displayed similar landmarks.

 

[VintageComics]

I thought it was an absolute given that SA Marvels were trimmed after folding, especially based on all the edges i specifically looked at for those tell tale landmarks.

 

I'll have to go and look at a few more books now to see if I remember it correctly.

 

 

[Ze-man]

I thought it was an absolute given that SA Marvels were trimmed after folding, especially based on all the edges i specifically looked at for those tell tale landmarks.

 

I'll have to go and look at a few more books now to see if I remember it correctly.

 

 

I would agree with that sentiment Roy, but until I see an old press release movie from Sparta on how SA books were trimmed, I realize we are just making "reasonably" educated guesses based on what we have in front of us, and cross linking that with stories from pressman, and vintage collectors alike.

 

And am open to hearing anyone else's hypothesis, no matter how much it might debunk what I take as gospel.

 

I honestly just want to know more about it.

 

Paper nerd that I am.

 

 

 

 

[jpepx78]

i've posted a few pictures in the 1939 newsstand thread here.

do they help in answering some questions?

 

[adamstrange]

I honestly just want to know more about it.

+1 An admirable sentiment.

 

If the shrinkage hypothesis is correct, then it would have implications regarding health and longevity of the comics.

[Tatooine-migration]

a great start to your daughters experiment would be a discussion of the second law of thermodynamics and explain as to why for all irreversible processes delta(S) > 0 and every reaction in an open system on planet earth precedes in a direction towards increasing disorder and spontaneity. follow this abstract with a discussion as to why any work done on a system no matter isolated or closed can only proceed with -delta(G) = -*work_system. then on ebay or through sigma aldrich buy some potassium tricholide (PCl3). next fill up a bucket of water. it doesn't have to be distilled just make sure there is nothing else in there besides H20. next put on some safety googles on and open the can of PCl3 and pour it into the water (if you can). Then see what happens. In conclusion to this experiment you will prove (that is, if you aren't in intensive recovery) that reactions can only occur ONLY if delta(S) of the surroundings is greater than delta(S)_system and that no reaction can proceed unless delta(G) < 0.

 

ok everyone, this is way off topic, but I was wondering if anyone out there with an 8th grader has any really good science fair project ideas?...for the past 5 years, I have come up with some good ones, but I am just out of ideas outside of the "regulars"...

 

can anyone give my 8th grade daughter some direction (besides her parents)