Acid Anyone?

[The Kaptain]

I was just re-bagging a book I picked up at a flea market recently.

 

Do you think the backing board is still acid-free after all these years???

 

[topofthetotem]

 

Ohh wrong kind of acid....

[crnbrd]

Wow! Kind of a noob question but how does that happen?

[Indrid_Cold]

Is the image transfer a sign of acidity or a sign of humidity/moisture?

Or maybe both?

[slym2none]

A lot of time, and probably the pressure of being in a packed box helped.

 

What sucks is when you have to literally peel the comic off of the board...

 

 

 

 

-slym

[The Kaptain]

Luckily the book appeared unharmed and was not stuck to the board.

 

I would assume that either acid in the book or acid in the backing board caused the transfer.

 

I don't know the scientific explanation though...

[darkstar]

was expecting something else

[ChrisInBaltimore]

was expecting something else

 

[Icculus308win]

You'd be trippin ballz for fortnight taking that hit

[dupont2005]

I've seen them yellow but never with an image transfer like that. Was it a foil enhanced cover?

[Indrid_Cold]

I remember seeing several threads about this over the years. I believe the general consensus is that this is the result of the comic book pages/inks off-gasing as they age, leaving a negative image of the back cover on the backing board.

 

[Arkham]

You'd be trippin ballz for fortnight taking that hit

 

[The Kaptain]

I've seen them yellow but never with an image transfer like that. Was it a foil enhanced cover?

 

Nope. I believe it was a copy of Superman: The Man of Steel #18.

 

I bought a large lot of Supermans from this era and most of the backing boards were discolored, but only this one had the image transfer to the board.

[Indrid_Cold]

The link below is another example of a backing board with that image transfer occuring.

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1390515&fpart=1

 

here is an excerpt from the link above

 

I posted this about two years ago regarding a fairly modern book.

Does this effect look similar to what you are seeing?

 

Not so much a question as an observation. I was reboarding/bagging today and came across my two copies of Marvel's Robocop # 1 from 1990.

 

 

I know this topic has been discussed before but I thought this was a prime example of acid absorption. Take a look at the backing board. Funny thing is, is that just these two issues out of a longbox of comics bagged and boarded from the same time period stained the backing boards. Could this issue just have a very high concentration of acid?

 

 

Image enhanced with levels and converted to B/W.

 

 

Here are the back covers inside and out to see how the images are "burned" in.

Inside back cover.

 

 

Back cover.

 

 

As you can see images from both sides have been absorbed by the backing board. A good reason to inspect those comics from time to time!

 

 

 

 

If a group of comics from the same publisher are bagged and boarded around the same time , with bags and boards from same source, then stored for years in the same environment, why do some of the backing boards have a more significant negative image transfer onto the backing boards than others? That's the odd part. Maybe a few of the backing boards didnt quite have as much of the "ph buffer " painted onto them? Or maybe it was significantly more humid the month a particular comic was released and it was left out a little longer before bagging and boarding? Or maybe some issues are just gassy-er than others

[Define999]

Personally I think its a combination of factors... but one thing I have noticed.... notice when you buy a high quality board from say EGerber. Notice the board has a rougher texture to it? Some boards with that glossy untextured, smooth finish I believe create almost a vacuum-like seal on the damn back if enough pressure is applied! If off-gassing is part of the problem the gas has nowhere to go but into the boards fibers? Lesson.... stay away form the smooth finished boards. The rougher texture of higher quality boards allows some... however small channels for gas to escape without being stuck like a condom on your junk! This is just a theory but if anyone has an example of a higher quality rough textured board with imprinting like this id love to see it....

[universal soldier]

I had this happen to me when I bought some cheaper backing boards. If I recall correctly it was around 1996 or 97.I come across them randomly when going through my books. If I find another I'll post a picture.

[lizards2]

Personally I think its a combination of factors... but one thing I have noticed.... notice when you buy a high quality board from say EGerber. Notice the board has a rougher texture to it? Some boards with that glossy untextured, smooth finish I believe create almost a vacuum-like seal on the damn back if enough pressure is applied! If off-gassing is part of the problem the gas has nowhere to go but into the boards fibers? Lesson.... stay away form the smooth finished boards. The rougher texture of higher quality boards allows some... however small channels for gas to escape without being stuck like a condom on your junk! This is just a theory but if anyone has an example of a higher quality rough textured board with imprinting like this id love to see it....

 

Interesting. There is a lot going on here, and you may be on to a component of the equation. I think most deterioration is environmental and storage factors - heat, humidity, pollution, radical changes in temperature, etc. I do know that comics deteriorate cheap bags - if you store polyethylene bags in their original state, they pretty much stay like new. If you put comics in them, then they start to change over the years.

 

I think it is the same with the boards as well, and degradation is dependent on the composition of the original boards used in conjunction with the deterioration of the particular book. I've stored books with cheap boards for at least 20 years, and even though some of them "oil out", I've never had impressions left from the comic, or those streaky off-gas rings. So I'm thinking those effects are probably due to poor storage conditions.

 

I agree that packing books too tight in boxes or excessive stacking can create problems. Improperly tucked flaps leave pressure dents in the books, mini-spine rolls occur, etc. And probably some of the stuff you are seeing

 

One weird thing I just noticed when I was rebagging some freshly purchased Harvey file copies I purchased from JSComics was that the bags and boards (polyethylene and cheap boards) they came in were pretty pristine, but the black cover inks left clear images/impressions on the bags. Weird - I don't know if that is a chemical function of the black ink or if it is an actual thickness difference in the layer of ink (like the blacks are applied to the cover last), or both.

[Indrid_Cold]

Yeah I agree. I think people only find this occuring on "acid free at the time of manufacture" boards. I haven't seen any reports of this occurring on the "ph buffered throughout" boards from Bill Cole or EGerber.

 

One time I saw this type of image transfer on a piece of paper that was inside the front cover of a Wolverine comic from the 80's. I would assume that piece of paper was supposed to be a microchamber sheet, but the sheet looked rather different than what I expect microchamber paper to look like, it was glossy and slightly more rigid. So either the person who placed that sheet into the comic only THOUGHT it was a microchamber paper and it actually wasnt, or there is some microchamber paper out there that has a slick texture to it. The microchamber paper that I am used to seeing is the stuff I buy from Conservation Resources. The only 2 CGC slabs I have ever cracked out, their watermark was also from Conservation Resources.

[The Kaptain]

I'm going with a combination of environmental factors and a low quality backing board.

 

I bought the book in question at a flea market in September. The flea market was a full week long and the seller is a professional flea marketer. Therefore, the book was probably being stored outside for considerable amounts of time, often in high heat and high humidity conditions. The books appeared to have been bagged and boarded around the time when they were new, so they had probably been in the same bags for about 20 years. Also, the boards were the cheap-o slick on one side boards.