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Why is CGC so confused about 1st Aliens?
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85 posts in this topic

3 hours ago, valiantman said:

Very similar to the situation with Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8 being repeatedly referenced (by sellers to unsuspecting buyers) as "first black costume". rantrant

I think most notes on CGC labels state "Origin of the alien symbiote that eventually becomes Venom" ...thankfully. But yeah, most sellers usually put "1st appearance of Black Costume" in their heading, when it technically is NOT! :ohnoez:

Sticking to the thread, is there a way for your 9.8 to have it annotated like your 9.4 to read " 1st appearance of 'Aliens' in comics"?

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CGC really isn't interested in maintaining accuracy when it comes to first appearances and such. They should be but they're not. There have been many inconsistencies over the years with their labels.

Edited by Jerkfro
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In fairness to CGC, if this is correct and Aliens #1 was the first appearance, they may have just been going by accepted knowledge previously until someone pointed it out as an error.  I'm baffled, though. Back when Aliens was hot, DHP #24 was, from what I remember, regarded as the first appearance and was a pricey book. Doesn't seem possible that Aliens #1 would've come first and somehow the hobby misjudged their chronology so soon after the release -- could we have been misinformed that quickly (6 months is a big difference) or was there a delay in release from the published dates that put DHP ahead of Aliens #1? I pulled my copies of each (I have DHP 24 first in the box, because, again, I've always believed this was the first app) just to confirm the dates on the CGC label match the issues. I also pulled two monthly price guides to see the notations: Overstreet monthly just has "Aliens appearance" by DHP 24, but also only notes Aliens #1 as a new story based on the movie, while Wizard does have DHP #24 as the 1st appearance. I know what I'm remembering predates Wizard as I bought my issues while the series was still being published (toward the end), so it's not just "ah, it's Wizard, they were a bunch o' screwballs". If Aliens #1 is first, I don't know how I'm going to convince my brain to relearn something after 30 years.

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13 hours ago, DjMartini said:

is there a way for your 9.8 to have it annotated like your 9.4 to read " 1st appearance of 'Aliens' in comics"?

I think you can request a reholder (with an updated label) for a lower cost than a re-grading, but there isn't a clear error on CGC's part (such as if they had said it was an Aliens #2 when it was really an Aliens #1) where CGC would reholder for free, so I think it would be a shipping cost and the reholder cost.  https://www.cgccomics.com/submit/services-fees/

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Interesting, DH has DHP #24 listed as a "side bar" story to the ongoing Aliens miniseries.

DARK HORSE PRESENTS #24

Writer Mark Verheiden and artist Mark A. Nelson present an all-new "side bar" story to Dark Horse's ongoing Aliens miniseries as they take us inside the mind of an Alien Queen! Plus-Just in time for Halloween, Kull writer John Arcudi and The American artist Grant Miehm team up on a tale of murder and...cannibalism in the wilds of New York. And Leopoldo Duranona continues his exciting five-part science fiction epic Race of Scorpions.
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I used to firmly believe that DHP 24 was 1st Aliens. I had remembered reading it, and it never made sense that they would have serialized something after a miniseries. Usually the success of the serialized story led to the ongoing or the mini. But it was before I had a driver's license and i could only get to the comic shop on occasion, so I was basically demonstrating why it is never good to rely solely upon memory . . .

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9 hours ago, Martin Sinescu said:

In fairness to CGC, if this is correct and Aliens #1 was the first appearance, they may have just been going by accepted knowledge previously until someone pointed it out as an error.  I'm baffled, though. Back when Aliens was hot, DHP #24 was, from what I remember, regarded as the first appearance and was a pricey book. Doesn't seem possible that Aliens #1 would've come first and somehow the hobby misjudged their chronology so soon after the release -- could we have been misinformed that quickly (6 months is a big difference) or was there a delay in release from the published dates that put DHP ahead of Aliens #1? I pulled my copies of each (I have DHP 24 first in the box, because, again, I've always believed this was the first app) just to confirm the dates on the CGC label match the issues. I also pulled two monthly price guides to see the notations: Overstreet monthly just has "Aliens appearance" by DHP 24, but also only notes Aliens #1 as a new story based on the movie, while Wizard does have DHP #24 as the 1st appearance. I know what I'm remembering predates Wizard as I bought my issues while the series was still being published (toward the end), so it's not just "ah, it's Wizard, they were a bunch o' screwballs". If Aliens #1 is first, I don't know how I'm going to convince my brain to relearn something after 30 years.

Absolutely this. I only found out it wasnt the 1st appearance a few years ago when I researched the dates. Every catalog Ive seen back then touted it as 1st appearance

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1 hour ago, Aweandlorder said:

Absolutely this. I only found out it wasnt the 1st appearance a few years ago when I researched the dates. Every catalog Ive seen back then touted it as 1st appearance

Is DHP24 actually the first Aliens origin story?   What about first appearance in color vs B&W?

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I was in the same boat as y'all wondering how that info could have been propagated for so long without any reason for it being true. I thought maybe an X-Men 266/Annual 14 issue could be taking place here too.

For the record, those aren't my books, just images I chose to show my point.

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3 hours ago, Warlord said:

Is DHP24 actually the first Aliens origin story?   What about first appearance in color vs B&W?

I think the first color appearance would've been the followup series with the Beauvais art. His stuff was outstanding.

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9 minutes ago, Martin Sinescu said:

I think the first color appearance would've been the followup series with the Beauvais art. His stuff was outstanding.

Looks like that series started in August 1989.   GCD also lists an Aliens 2 issue mini but it's also from 1989.  (shrug)

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5 minutes ago, Warlord said:

Looks like that series started in August 1989.   GCD also lists an Aliens 2 issue mini but it's also from 1989.  (shrug)

Yeah, this one....

aliens.jpg.919c19cc5a6e8e9f4e0abe948a043e54.jpg

...but my guess is it's the same series, they just called it Aliens 2 to avoid confusion with the first mini. Seems like Earth War was the next one that came out and that was in 1990.

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The reason is fairly straightforward.

Dark Horse Presents was an anthology title that showcased new characters...like Concrete, Black Cross, Masque/Mask, etc.

The first Aliens mini-series was bi-monthly...and late. Very, very late. So, the story in DHP #24 saw the light of day in between issues #2 and #3. And, the first two issues came in quite a bit under the radar, so a lot of people missed them. And, of course, DHP #24 was a fairly radical departure from the stuff DHP was known for at the time.

And, DHP #36 does feature the "first appearance" of Aliens vs. Predator. Because Dark Horse didn't publish cover dates, the idea that DHP #24 was the first appearance just stuck.

By the way....I love DHP #24. Love it. I will buy any copy of it, as many as I can get, for $5-$10, depending on condition. I so desperately want a 9.8 SS copy, but will have to settle for a plain 9.8. It was such a smoking hot book when I first started collecting, with AVP #1 due any day. I would happily own 100 copies of DHP #24 if I could. 

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I always thought DHP 24 was the 1st, because that's what I was told. But I remember buying Aliens 1 off of the stands before I ever saw DHP 24. Just checked my Aliens 1 9.8, and it doesn't have any notation at all. That's very curious, do we know how recently they started adding the notation?

 

2520301_Full_Obv.jpg

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6 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

The reason is fairly straightforward.

Dark Horse Presents was an anthology title that showcased new characters...like Concrete, Black Cross, Masque/Mask, etc.

The first Aliens mini-series was bi-monthly...and late. Very, very late. So, the story in DHP #24 saw the light of day in between issues #2 and #3. And, the first two issues came in quite a bit under the radar, so a lot of people missed them. And, of course, DHP #24 was a fairly radical departure from the stuff DHP was known for at the time.

And, DHP #36 does feature the "first appearance" of Aliens vs. Predator. Because Dark Horse didn't publish cover dates, the idea that DHP #24 was the first appearance just stuck.

By the way....I love DHP #24. Love it. I will buy any copy of it, as many as I can get, for $5-$10, depending on condition. I so desperately want a 9.8 SS copy, but will have to settle for a plain 9.8. It was such a smoking hot book when I first started collecting, with AVP #1 due any day. I would happily own 100 copies of DHP #24 if I could. 

I appreciate that you've tried to connect the dots, but it just doesn't seem like a straightforward explanation to me. You're presenting a scenario where there's some inexplicable jumble in the collective comic consciousness that happened between issues 2 and 3 which caused people to think DHP 24 came before issue 1? ??? I guess I'm just not seeing the bridge in logic that covers that gap. Admittedly, neither one of us were collecting these issues at the time they were released. I got in on the original series at the tail-end of publication (5 and 6, I think) and I remember Aliens 1 and DHP 24 taunting me with their already-lofty price tags, so 24 was already a big book before the series had wrapped. Each issue also had a level of scarcity adding to the luster and I guess at some point logic took a vacation and when it got back DHP 24 came first (shrug)

I agree that DHP being an anthology almost definitely plays into the confusion -- and maybe it's as simple as that. I had assumed it was a try-out issue for the property that was ultimately a springboard for the mini. I'm guessing that's what most people figured as well. I just don't understand how dealers and collectors, heck, even the publisher, that were around from the beginning weren't pointing out that the stand-alone in 24 came out well after the first issue of the mini. As far as the much later AvP first appearance in DHP 36 muddying the waters....eh, it's unlikely to have mattered as the misconception was already alive and actively influencing the hobby well before this issue came out.

I think I'm just a little frustrated that I've been living under the incorrect notion that this was the first Aliens appearance for so long and I'm just hoping for a more plausible explanation. I'm at least glad to see there were plenty of others that were under the same false impression. I hold the book in the same regard as you, Rocky. I still have each of my original copies that have survived two major collection purges and I don't think I'll ever not have a fondness for DHP 24 even though it's been discredited as the first Aliens' appearance.

1 hour ago, F For Fake said:

I always thought DHP 24 was the 1st, because that's what I was told. But I remember buying Aliens 1 off of the stands before I ever saw DHP 24. Just checked my Aliens 1 9.8, and it doesn't have any notation at all. That's very curious, do we know how recently they started adding the notation?

Who told you? That might be the culprit behind the whole thing! :idea:

 It's interesting that the Overstreet Monthly I have from 1991 doesn't note the 1st appearance of Aliens or Predator in either series. I feel like that way of thinking, to a degree, wasn't really engrained in the hobby back then since "we all knew" their first appearances were in the movies, but this way of thinking really got challenged hard when BA 12 started to take off. Now we've seen that fervor over the original Star Wars issues with the "first appearance" of Boba, Han, etc. Yes, I get that it's ironic pointing this out in a "first appearance of Aliens" thread, but it still seems a bit weak to me that a movie property's first appearance in a comic could be worth so much.

Edit: Ah, I realize you may have been asking when was the notation transferred from DHP to Aliens 1, not "when did they acknowledge the first Aliens appearance", so that part of my post is probably irrelevant.

Edited by Martin Sinescu
just 'cause
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1 hour ago, Martin Sinescu said:

 It's interesting that the Overstreet Monthly I have from 1991 doesn't note the 1st appearance of Aliens or Predator in either series. I feel like that way of thinking, to a degree, wasn't really engrained in the hobby back then since "we all knew" their first appearances were in the movies, but this way of thinking really got challenged hard when BA 12 started to take off. Now we've seen that fervor over the original Star Wars issues with the "first appearance" of Boba, Han, etc. Yes, I get that it's ironic pointing this out in a "first appearance of Aliens" thread, but it still seems a bit weak to me that a movie property's first appearance in a comic could be worth so much.

I agree that we didn't have this mindset in the past, but I don't think it's a bad mindset for the industry to adopt. 

Books like Scooby Doo #1 (Gold Key, 1970) are probably helping bring attention to "first comic appearance" by skyrocketing in value despite arriving after the 1969 television series.

If you collect comics and love Star Wars, there probably should be a distinction in your collection for "first comic appearance of" major Star Wars characters... even if they were "after the movies" (only weeks after, in some cases). It has been 40+ years and several of those characters have had comic-only stories outside of the movies, their own series, etc.  We still have a bit of a "problem" with magazine-sized first appearances that pre-date the "comic-sized" appearances, since Star Wars #42 has Boba Fett months later than Marvel Super Special #16... which was probably a month after a paperback-novel-sized Empire Strikes Back illustrated book.  First appearance of Star-Lord seems to have corrected a portion of the problem, but generally a magazine-sized bias remains.

 

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3 hours ago, Martin Sinescu said:

I appreciate that you've tried to connect the dots, but it just doesn't seem like a straightforward explanation to me. You're presenting a scenario where there's some inexplicable jumble in the collective comic consciousness that happened between issues 2 and 3 which caused people to think DHP 24 came before issue 1? ??? I guess I'm just not seeing the bridge in logic that covers that gap. Admittedly, neither one of us were collecting these issues at the time they were released. I got in on the original series at the tail-end of publication (5 and 6, I think) and I remember Aliens 1 and DHP 24 taunting me with their already-lofty price tags, so 24 was already a big book before the series had wrapped. Each issue also had a level of scarcity adding to the luster and I guess at some point logic took a vacation and when it got back DHP 24 came first (shrug)

I agree that DHP being an anthology almost definitely plays into the confusion -- and maybe it's as simple as that. I had assumed it was a try-out issue for the property that was ultimately a springboard for the mini. I'm guessing that's what most people figured as well. I just don't understand how dealers and collectors, heck, even the publisher, that were around from the beginning weren't pointing out that the stand-alone in 24 came out well after the first issue of the mini. As far as the much later AvP first appearance in DHP 36 muddying the waters....eh, it's unlikely to have mattered as the misconception was already alive and actively influencing the hobby well before this issue came out.

I think I'm just a little frustrated that I've been living under the incorrect notion that this was the first Aliens appearance for so long and I'm just hoping for a more plausible explanation. I'm at least glad to see there were plenty of others that were under the same false impression. I hold the book in the same regard as you, Rocky. I still have each of my original copies that have survived two major collection purges and I don't think I'll ever not have a fondness for DHP 24 even though it's been discredited as the first Aliens' appearance.

Who told you? That might be the culprit behind the whole thing! :idea:

 It's interesting that the Overstreet Monthly I have from 1991 doesn't note the 1st appearance of Aliens or Predator in either series. I feel like that way of thinking, to a degree, wasn't really engrained in the hobby back then since "we all knew" their first appearances were in the movies, but this way of thinking really got challenged hard when BA 12 started to take off. Now we've seen that fervor over the original Star Wars issues with the "first appearance" of Boba, Han, etc. Yes, I get that it's ironic pointing this out in a "first appearance of Aliens" thread, but it still seems a bit weak to me that a movie property's first appearance in a comic could be worth so much.

Edit: Ah, I realize you may have been asking when was the notation transferred from DHP to Aliens 1, not "when did they acknowledge the first Aliens appearance", so that part of my post is probably irrelevant.

Gonna have to go look at Chuck's catalogs tonight :-D

Not that he is the tale teller of them all but just curious to see how he dubbed it.

If Im not mistaken the notation on catalogs/buyer guides were always "Aliens appearance" but the price was always jacked up.

But yes, I too was a victim of this misconception

#metoo

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