E.C. Fan Addict THREAD 27 27

[OtherEric]

The 2nd is Impact #1.  The White Logo variant was printed by Charlton, and Gaines was so unhappy with the printing he reprinted it with the Yellow Logo instead.  I have not seen much difference in value between the two.  The yellow logo is the reprint and more common... but a lot of people prefer the better printing version, so as near as I can tell the two are about equal.  Genuinely curious what others think, though.  My copy is the Yellow logo version, the scans (in all these posts) are from the GCD edited to show the books together.

[OtherEric]

And me and @EC ed are just tripping over each other explaining it.  I love the enthusiasm all of us in this thread have for EC's!  Ed has better images, but I figure the comparison pictures I threw together are worth showing anyway...

The three versions of Mad #28, as Ed described above.  When we were talking about this issue over on the Mad thread in the Magazine forums, there was some agreement that this issue was the hardest of the early magazine issues to find in any version.  And the Guided Missiles version seems to be the most common.  (It's the one I have.)

A very late thought:  I wonder if the order on the versions was Useful Tax Guide- Useless Tax Guide- Guided Missiles.  The Useful would be when they assumed the issue would come out before tax day, the useless would be when they figured it wouldn't, and the guided missiles would be saying "to heck with it".  For whatever it's worth, the Tax Guide and the Guided Missiles articles are both actual features in the book, not them making something weird up for the cover.

Edited July 16, 2020 by OtherEric

[Hap Hazard]

53 minutes ago, OtherEric said:

That is truly a thing of beauty.

If I might ask, how did you pick Mad #30 as your cut-off?  I considered 23 (last comic issue), 26 (last issue with EC logo), and 28 (last Kurtzman edited issue) before settling on 31 (last Kurtzman inventory stories).  Not sure where #30 came from, other than "Iconic cover"... which could be plenty of reason on its own.  Also, do you have the variant issues?  As far as I know, Impact 1, Mad 28, and Frontline Combat 9 all have variants (none of which I have yet...).

Actually my Mad's go much further than 30 but first Alfred full cover seemed like a good place to stop for a EC collection. Have  both issues of Impact one Charlton and EC published issue. I've never picked up any other issues of Mad 28 aways see the Guided Missiles / ANC version. Frontline Combat 9 font color variant on the cover also not something I'm actively looking for. I do have Shock Illustrated 3, surprised no one has asked about it.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Hap Hazard

[OtherEric]

Just now, Hap Hazard said:

Actually my Mad's go much further than 30 but first Alfred full cover seemed like a good place to stop for a EC collection. Have  both issues of Impact one Charlton and EC published issue. I've never picked up any other issues of Mad 28 aways see the Guided Missiles / ANC version. Frontline Combat 9 font color variant on the cover also not something I'm actively looking for. I do have Shock Illustrated 3, surprise no one has asked about it.

You said "all", and I took you at your word.

[Raze]

29 minutes ago, EC ed said:

I don't want to pre-empt @OtherEric, but if I may...I have a couple of photos already queued up in my repository...

Frontline Combat #9 has an orange and yellow "Civil War" variant...here they are together:

I was just asking Eric because he brought it up, but of course you (the god of EC books) can enlighten me (us) anytime!!

Thanks for this one, now I have to see which one I have! But which one is considered the variant?

[OtherEric]

7 hours ago, Robot Man said:

The guy I bought this from had a lower grade MAD #12 for $125. I believe. (it has since sold) A real reasonable price I thought but the cover is rather boring in a slab and I much prefered this one so I paid up a little more and took it. Since it appeared he might of been the one who bought the lot, I sent him a DM and asked if he had any other specific issues I wanted. Still waiting to hear back from him.

If you can find one, there were a few of these floating around at pretty cheap prices. Hey, it's a Gaines file copy...

It turns out Metro has a few file copy Mad's cheap; I just grabbed #246.  So I can at least say I have a Gaines File Copy, I'll show it when it gets here.

[Raze]

12 minutes ago, Hap Hazard said:

Actually my Mad's go much further than 30 but first Alfred full cover seemed like a good place to stop for a EC collection. Have  both issues of Impact one Charlton and EC published issue. I've never picked up any other issues of Mad 28 aways see the Guided Missiles / ANC version. Frontline Combat 9 font color variant on the cover also not something I'm actively looking for. I do have Shock Illustrated 3, surprised no one has asked about it.

Ill bite, whats up with Shock 3?

[Raze]

And for the record I love the boards, but this is my favorite part of it!

[OtherEric]

3 minutes ago, Raze said:

I was just asking Eric because he brought it up, but of course you (the god of EC books) can enlighten me (us) anytime!!

Thanks for this one, now I have to see which one I have! But which one is considered the variant?

I've never seen any discussion on which is the main version and which is the variant on this one; I've seen very little discussion at all other than noting it exists.  They don't seem to differ too much in how common they are.

If I had to pick one, I would say Orange is the main version and Yellow the variant, as most if not all the reprints went with the Orange.  But that's just me.

[Hap Hazard]

6 minutes ago, Raze said:

I was just asking Eric because he brought it up, but of course you (the god of EC books) can enlighten me (us) anytime!!

Thanks for this one, now I have to see which one I have! But which one is considered the variant?

I'll assume mines the common one.

[OtherEric]

Just now, Raze said:

Ill bite, whats up with Shock 3?

It was being printed right when EC shut down everything but MAD.  The copies that exist were bound by hand at the EC office; I've heard both 100 or 200 copies exist.  It may not be the rarest EC, given how tricky some of the giveaways are, but it's close if it's not.

[OtherEric]

3 minutes ago, Hap Hazard said:

I'll assume mines the common one.

And I'll assume mine is!

[Raze]

2 minutes ago, OtherEric said:

It was being printed right when EC shut down everything but MAD.  The copies that exist were bound by hand at the EC office; I've heard both 100 or 200 copies exist.  It may not be the rarest EC, given how tricky some of the giveaways are, but it's close if it's not.

Ok thats what I had heard/read just wanted clarification! Thanks 

[Hap Hazard]

40 minutes ago, OtherEric said:

The 2nd is Impact #1.  The White Logo variant was printed by Charlton, and Gaines was so unhappy with the printing he reprinted it with the Yellow Logo instead.  I have not seen much difference in value between the two.  The yellow logo is the reprint and more common... but a lot of people prefer the better printing version, so as near as I can tell the two are about equal.  Genuinely curious what others think, though.  My copy is the Yellow logo version, the scans (in all these posts) are from the GCD edited to show the books together.

I believe I found the Charlton version first and then found a copy of EC published version.

[Robot Man]

2 hours ago, OtherEric said:

That is truly a thing of beauty.

If I might ask, how did you pick Mad #30 as your cut-off?  I considered 23 (last comic issue), 26 (last issue with EC logo), and 28 (last Kurtzman edited issue) before settling on 31 (last Kurtzman inventory stories).  Not sure where #30 came from, other than "Iconic cover"... which could be plenty of reason on its own.  Also, do you have the variant issues?  As far as I know, Impact 1, Mad 28, and Frontline Combat 9 all have variants (none of which I have yet...).

I never quit MAD. Looks like my last issue will be 512 though.

[EC ed]

1 hour ago, OtherEric said:

If I had to pick one, I would say Orange is the main version and Yellow the variant, as most if not all the reprints went with the Orange.  But that's just me.

+1

All of the Gaines Files Copies are orange, as is the color guide...so, then, I interpret "orange" to be the originally intended color...i.e., the "main" version.

[EC ed]

1 minute ago, EC ed said:

+1

All of the Gaines Files Copies are orange, as is the color guide...so, then, I interpret "orange" to be the originally intended color...i.e., the "main" version.

This Frontline Combat #9 variant situation is a bit different from the others, in that it's not clear whether Gaines intended some of the FC #9s to be printed in yellow (which I doubt), or whether there was just an error in the coloration in a significant portion of the print run (i.e., an  "unintended" variant...which I think is more likely). The only reason that this has legitimacy as a "variant" is that a guy (a great collector...who I know) thought that there were enough of each of the different colors out there that they warranted separate entries in the Grand Comics Database...so he input the entries there himself, and this "variant" was officially born. Of course, just to be on the safe side as a completist, I got a copy of each one 

[OtherEric]

3 minutes ago, EC ed said:

This Frontline Combat #9 variant situation is a bit different from the others, in that it's not clear whether Gaines intended some of the FC #9s to be printed in yellow (which I doubt), or whether there was just an error in the coloration in a significant portion of the print run (i.e., an  "unintended" variant...which I think is more likely). The only reason that this has legitimacy as a "variant" is that a guy (a great collector...who I know) thought that there were enough of each of the different colors out there that they warranted separate entries in the Grand Comics Database...so he input the entries there himself, and this "variant" was officially born. Of course, just to be on the safe side as a completist, I got a copy of each one 

They do seem about equal in number, and the variation is clearly marked... it doesn't look like, for instance, a plate got swapped or was running out of ink there.  It's just the two words, fairly clearly

GCD will generally take any variant where you can clearly show that a) it's not just a printing error and b) you can define the error clearly.  I've added at least 3 previously undocumented variants there myself.  (Looney Tunes #4, World's Finest #96, and the third version of Help! #12.)  It's amazing how much we still have to discover about older comics despite decades of fans tracking and documenting them.

[Silver]

I bought these from the same person I recently got the CSS 22 from. I bought them on behalf of my brother who is really not a comic collector but has told me he would love to buy some EC horror books. A nice bunch of great books. I looked through the CSS 27 and thought the inside front cover text was cool (EC throwing in the towel on crime and horror comics). 

[Dave Henson]

Today is a vacation day for me, so I decided to read through some of the horror and EC threads while drinking my coffees (always more than one cup lol). One of the items discussed was the River City pedigree. Most of the books pictured had an S followed by a date. I really thought the penmanship of the S looked familiar, so I did a search on Heritage’s sold books for River City and came across this copy they sold of Crypt of Terror (not my book):

The S-8 almost exactly matches the mark on my Haunt of Fear 15 (this one IS my book):

It looks like I may have had a River City in my collection for 25 years and didn’t even know. 

HOF 15 was my first EC. I bought it from a dealer in Tennessee. It was $800 and he had the audacity to charge sales tax making it $866 🤨. Over the next 5-6 years I added a few more ECs to my collection. Within the next few days I should get my Shock Illustrated 3 back from CGC, so expect another proud post  soon! I may hand out cigars!!

Edited July 16, 2020 by Dave Henson
Added full pic