Strange adventures 54

[Sqeggs]

Blissard's inventory comes almost exclusively from Heritage Sunday auctions and not from his father.

 

You mean he buys their raw lots, breaks them up and resells them? Although he may do some of that, I think it's inaccurate to say that his stock is "almost exclusively" form that source. I know he has consignment books listed and he has listed books I haven't seen in the HA auctions and I follow those auctions pretty closely.

[jimjum12]

...bottom line, he puts up some very cool and tightly graded books.... one of my favorite eBay sellers GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

[Sqeggs]

...bottom line, he puts up some very cool and tightly graded books.... one of my favorite eBay sellers GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

 

Absolutely. I agree that his grading is great. His VGs are actual VGs, not cover detached, pieces missing from the cover, stained up the wazoo "VGs"

[jimjum12]

Got a Speed Carter 3 from him....among other things..... one of my favorite books in my stack.... and it was a VG.....a REAL VG GOD BLESS....

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

[Dr. Love]

Blissard's inventory comes almost exclusively from Heritage Sunday auctions and not from his father.

 

You mean he buys their raw lots, breaks them up and resells them? Although he may do some of that, I think it's inaccurate to say that his stock is "almost exclusively" form that source. I know he has consignment books listed and he has listed books I haven't seen in the HA auctions and I follow those auctions pretty closely.

 

He does do some of that. But obviously the almost exclusively HA claim is nonsense. I did notice he bought about 60 early Marvel teen slabs in a CL auction last year and put them up on his site a few months later. Fail, but not an epic fail, maybe a 25% loss. Gutsy play, maybe a little premature. The kid's got moxie.

[Sqeggs]

Blissard's inventory comes almost exclusively from Heritage Sunday auctions and not from his father.

 

You mean he buys their raw lots, breaks them up and resells them? Although he may do some of that, I think it's inaccurate to say that his stock is "almost exclusively" form that source. I know he has consignment books listed and he has listed books I haven't seen in the HA auctions and I follow those auctions pretty closely.

 

He does do some of that. But obviously the almost exclusively HA claim is nonsense. I did notice he bought about 60 early Marvel teen slabs in a CL auction last year and put them up on his site a few months later. Fail, but not an epic fail, maybe a 25% loss. Gutsy play, maybe a little premature. The kid's got moxie.

 

My impression is that Marvel 1960s and 1970s romance hasn't yet experienced the updraft that's been wafting through other corners of romance land. Is that true?

[jimbo_707]

Blissard's inventory comes almost exclusively from Heritage Sunday auctions and not from his father.

 

You mean he buys their raw lots, breaks them up and resells them? Although he may do some of that, I think it's inaccurate to say that his stock is "almost exclusively" form that source. I know he has consignment books listed and he has listed books I haven't seen in the HA auctions and I follow those auctions pretty closely.

 

He does do some of that. But obviously the almost exclusively HA claim is nonsense. I did notice he bought about 60 early Marvel teen slabs in a CL auction last year and put them up on his site a few months later. Fail, but not an epic fail, maybe a 25% loss. Gutsy play, maybe a little premature. The kid's got moxie.

 

My impression is that Marvel 1960s and 1970s romance hasn't yet experienced the updraft that's been wafting through other corners of romance land. Is that true?

I don't know much about the genre, but it's hard to imagine any romance books from the CCA era being very titillating.

[markseifert]

I don't know much about the genre, but it's hard to imagine any romance books from the CCA era being very titillating.

 

I don't collect romance from that era either, but I always get the impression that the interest is more about mod / hippie / flower child culture than anything.

[Sqeggs]

I don't know much about the genre, but it's hard to imagine any romance books from the CCA era being very titillating.

 

I don't collect romance from that era either, but I always get the impression that the interest is more about mod / hippie / flower child culture than anything.

 

I think that's right. The risqué covers and stories from pre-1954 were long gone. My impression is that high-grade copies are fairly plentiful since just about everything was being stored away by then.

[rjpb]

I don't know much about the genre, but it's hard to imagine any romance books from the CCA era being very titillating.

 

I don't collect romance from that era either, but I always get the impression that the interest is more about mod / hippie / flower child culture than anything.

 

For the most part even pre-code romance was far less lurid than the titles sometimes implied. There are plenty of post code books, especially Atlas and DC, with beautifully drawn covers, and some of the post code "teen books" have GGA covers that seem to have slipped past the code due to a "humorous" style. And of course, the overblown drama on romance covers in general can be fun, especially when mixed with the mod/hippie clothing and art styles of the late 60s and early 70s.

 

And you also sometimes get unintentionally bizarre panels like this:

 

[Dr. Love]

Well said RJ.

 

I gave the wrong impression about Blissard's teen play. I meant Marvel as in Timely/Marvel. I meant teen as in Georgie, Patsy, Nellie, Oscar, Tessie, Willie. 46 books. Lost about $1,500 in the flip.

 

 

[Sqeggs]

Well said RJ.

 

I gave the wrong impression about Blissard's teen play. I meant Marvel as in Timely/Marvel. I meant teen as in Georgie, Patsy, Nellie, Oscar, Tessie, Willie. 46 books. Lost about $1,500 in the flip.

 

 

Whoa! That's surprising given how much prices on those books have been going up.

[fifties]

...bottom line, he puts up some very cool and tightly graded books.... one of my favorite eBay sellers GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

 

Absolutely. I agree that his grading is great. His VGs are actual VGs, not cover detached, pieces missing from the cover, stained up the wazoo "VGs"

I'm glad to hear this. I usually get outbid on his auctions, tightwad that I am, but I'm awaiting the arrival of three pre-code crime books that I won from him last week, none of which appear on The Bay very often.

[eman13]

I always like watching his storefront because sometimes I can get a deal on some good books. I picked up two Harvey File Copies of Flash Gordon; and when he grades NM, it is truly NM!

[Dr. Love]

yeh, I'd say 60-70% of the loss was due to transaction costs. Since then he's been doing good with those titles (depending on his basis of course).

 

 

 

[Sqeggs]

I always like watching his storefront because sometimes I can get a deal on some good books. I picked up two Harvey File Copies of Flash Gordon; and when he grades NM, it is truly NM!

 

What is the story with the Harvey file copies? During a certain period did Harvey routinely print too many copies because they were overly optimistic on sales? (You would think they would eventually have figured that out! )

 

Or was there some business purpose? Seems to have gone on for quite a while -- decades even. HA has unopened paper-wrapped bundles of Harvey books in what seems like the majority of its Sunday auctions.

 

There aren't comparable DC or Marvel file copies from the 1950s and 1960s, at least so far as I know. There was Chuck's Mile High 2 find, but that was a different animal.

[Dr. Love]

I don't know much about the genre, but it's hard to imagine any romance books from the CCA era being very titillating.

 

I don't collect romance from that era either, but I always get the impression that the interest is more about mod / hippie / flower child culture than anything.

 

Maybe a tad. Michel Quarez, artist. Wraparound cover on this Magazine, I guess it would classify as. Western, 1967.

 

The painter and poster-maker Michel Quarez was born in Damascus and lives and works in Saint-Denis (France). He studied fine art in Bordeaux and decorative arts in Paris, spent time in Warsaw (in the studio of the graphic artist Henryk Tomaszewsky) and New York, worked in an advertising agency and a comic book publishing house and began to do illustration and create posters in 1980.

 

 

 

 

 

[rjpb]

I don't know much about the genre, but it's hard to imagine any romance books from the CCA era being very titillating.

 

I don't collect romance from that era either, but I always get the impression that the interest is more about mod / hippie / flower child culture than anything.

 

Maybe a tad. Michel Quarez, artist. Wraparound cover on this Magazine, I guess it would classify as. Western, 1967.

 

The painter and poster-maker Michel Quarez was born in Damascus and lives and works in Saint-Denis (France). He studied fine art in Bordeaux and decorative arts in Paris, spent time in Warsaw (in the studio of the graphic artist Henryk Tomaszewsky) and New York, worked in an advertising agency and a comic book publishing house and began to do illustration and create posters in 1980.

 

 

 

 

 

Groovy, man, that's outasight!

[Dr. Love]

I don't know much about the genre, but it's hard to imagine any romance books from the CCA era being very titillating.

 

I don't collect romance from that era either, but I always get the impression that the interest is more about mod / hippie / flower child culture than anything.

You are both right. There was a creative range that was present in GA romance that didn't move forward into SA/BA. Whatever titillating there was didn't survive the code and the collapse of the publishers from 40+ down to 3. And to stay current the milieu eventually had to reflect the times, the culture.

 

But the thrust was the same as it ever was. Romantic love, captured in images, would celebrate the extremes of both the ecstatic heights and the lowly depths In GA the mix was about 75:25, sorrow to joy. Moving into SA, over at Atlas, Colletta evened that up some. But DC had their own approach, and they were nothing if not consistent, summed up by Mr. T in Rocky 3:

 

Interviewer: What's your prediction for the fight?

Clubber Lang: My prediction?

Interviewer: Yes, your prediction.

Clubber Lang: Pain!

 

It seems that as concerns this basic element of human relationship, romance comics were not very different than the other modes of artistic expression. The challenge was how to capture our shared universal experience in a visual, small format medium. In that respect, DC did a masterful job.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Inaflash]

I don't know much about the genre, but it's hard to imagine any romance books from the CCA era being very titillating.

 

I don't collect romance from that era either, but I always get the impression that the interest is more about mod / hippie / flower child culture than anything.

You are both right. There was a creative range that was present in GA romance that didn't move forward into SA/BA. Whatever titillating there was didn't survive the code and the collapse of the publishers from 40+ down to 3. And to stay current the milieu eventually had to reflect the times, the culture.

 

But the thrust was the same as it ever was. Romantic love, captured in images, would celebrate the extremes of both the ecstatic heights and the lowly depths In GA the mix was about 75:25, sorrow to joy. Moving into SA, over at Atlas, Colletta evened that up some. But DC had their own approach, and they were nothing if not consistent, summed up by Mr. T in Rocky 3:

 

Interviewer: What's your prediction for the fight?

Clubber Lang: My prediction?

Interviewer: Yes, your prediction.

Clubber Lang: Pain!

 

It seems that as concerns this basic element of human relationship, romance comics were not very different than the other modes of artistic expression. The challenge was how to capture our shared universal experience in a visual, small format medium. In that respect, DC did a masterful job.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two great covers there Andy.

 

Ken