What's New In Your Copper Age Collection This Week? 13 13

[mec3437]

Any monkey can be trained to buy a key.  It takes a man to go drek diving

I'm slightly surprised that I picked a lot of these up but shorter run series and anthology series are becoming more of my jam.

Edited April 10, 2022 by mec3437
Removed duplicate

[Browns81]

No finer head of hair in comic history than Nomad’s!

[rakehell]

On 4/9/2022 at 4:35 PM, Toz said:

This is a great little set to chase.Got some classics in there most people forgot about.Elric features some sweet P. Craig Russell art * their horror finally getting some love.

I love the Elric series. Got a very nice #1 a few weeks back. Twisted Tales & Alien Worlds were my favorites when I was a kid. Still on the lookout for a VF/NM copy of Vanguard Illustrated #7. Very tough with that black cover.

On 4/9/2022 at 4:35 PM, Toz said:

Don't forget some of the stuff they were going to do when the bottom fell out went to Eclipse and I included in my set.Somerset Holmes & Groo are 2 examples.

Got all of the PC Somerset Holmes, but none of the Eclipse, yet. Groo is not easy to find in the UK, for some reason. I tend to grab whatever I see regardless of which series it's from.

On 4/9/2022 at 4:35 PM, Toz said:

Keep us posted on your progress.

Will do. 

[APDallas]

Got this out of a 50 cents bin. 

Yes, Virigina, there was a comic about JELL-O! Believe it or not back in 1991 the Jell-O corporation thought it a good idea to create a character that would attract the young-uns to eat more Jell-o snacks. So they created this comic called JELL-O MAN and WOBBLY, The first issue has the origin story where an experiment using a Secret Laser Activated Hologram Printer (this was before 3-d printing mind you) goes wrong and creates a new hero out of Jello. I kid you not. This really happens. He goes about fighting evil doers and handing out Jello snacks to grateful boys and girls.

What is surprising is one of the stories is written by Kurt Busiek.

[APDallas]

A recent 50 cents pick up at a local garage sale.

[MAR1979]

On 4/11/2022 at 9:37 AM, APDallas said:

A recent 50 cents pick up at a local garage sale.

 

That book has balls

[Mr.Fantastic]

Just these so far this week.....

 

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

On 4/11/2022 at 5:41 PM, MAR1979 said:

On 4/11/2022 at 8:37 AM, APDallas said:

 

Expand  

That book has balls

Mad Balls.. 

[littledoom]

Highlights from a recent mega collection purchase 

[Jesse-Lee]

$30 "graphic novel lot" win from eBay:

[APDallas]

Picked this up this past weekend for 50¢. A very underrated series!

[SuperBird]

Been wanting a copy for 30 years, finally pushed the button.

Edited April 28, 2022 by SuperBird

[Qalyar]

On 4/11/2022 at 8:37 AM, APDallas said:

That Adventures of Kool-Aid Man is weird stuff even for promotional comics, by the way. It started at Marvel, amazingly, for the first three "issues", then got picked up by Archie for issues 4-9. Most of the issues were freebie and/or mail-away promos, plus some newspaper-partnership giveaways. However, Archie actually sold some copies of (at least) 4 and 5, bizarrely enough.

All in all, the series has a bewildering number of variants for this sort of thing. There are at least 3 versions apiece of #2, 4, 5, and 6. Somewhere around here I have a list of the ones I know to exist. I spent awhile trying to determine if there was a for-sale variant of #6 also, but never found one.

[Qalyar]

On 5/2/2022 at 1:15 PM, Qalyar said:

That Adventures of Kool-Aid Man is weird stuff even for promotional comics, by the way. It started at Marvel, amazingly, for the first three "issues", then got picked up by Archie for issues 4-9. Most of the issues were freebie and/or mail-away promos, plus some newspaper-partnership giveaways. However, Archie actually sold some copies of (at least) 4 and 5, bizarrely enough.

All in all, the series has a bewildering number of variants for this sort of thing. There are at least 3 versions apiece of #2, 4, 5, and 6. Somewhere around here I have a list of the ones I know to exist. I spent awhile trying to determine if there was a for-sale variant of #6 also, but never found one.

So, actually picked up a couple of these to go with ones I already had. Let's take a peek into (some of) the weird world of Kool-Aid Man comics. OH YEAH!

The first three issues were published by Marvel, mostly for use as mail-away promotionals from General Foods. None were ever directly available for retail purchase. #1 has 100% the best cover of the entire series, with Kool-Aid Man OH YEAH!ing through the hull of a spaceship. Insert memes here. The normal printings of these books are not hard to find, although as you might expect, kid-targeted mail away advertising ephemera is, shall we say, challenging in high grade. There were also a couple of unique versions given away in newspaper advertising supplements. The Dallas Times Herald and Denver Post got printings of #2; Houston Chronicle had a #3. All of them can be identified by text above the Marvel Comics Group banner indicating which paper distributed them (and a blank price bubble). They're more elusive. Are there other newspaper editions? Not that I've ever seen, but that doesn't mean they don't exist! It is known that the San Antonio Express-News did at least some partnership books with Marvel, so that would be one of the first places I'd look. I think one of the Austin papers did as well. Around the same time as the Kool-Aid books, Marvel also published a similar The Adventures of Quik Bunny; that ended up a one-shot with no known variants, so it's not nearly as much fun.

After that, Marvel dropped their partnership with General Foods, and the series moved to Archie Comics. And that's where it got weird. For starters, although they changed the entire plotline (such as it is), they kept the numbering from the Marvel books; evidently someone thought kids would want to be full-run collectors. There are three versions of #4. The "normal" one was a mail-order promotional, and has a cover price of "A 75c value". There was also a version with no cover price but a banner announcing it was FREE (with purchase of enough Kool-Aid products for the redemption offer). It's not real clear what the difference in distribution methods were here, since both were apparently obtained as mail-aways. I swear that I own both of these, but they don't seem to have been filed correctly, so... yeah. However, the third variant is the really unexpected one:

Yeah, that's a barcode and an actual cover price, not the silly "value" business. Archie apparently felt strongly enough about Kool-Aid Man that they actually made copies available for retail sale. Why? Why? The world will likely never know. As a final note, #4 has a pull-out Kool-Aid poster stapled into the centerfold on all three versions, although -- as you might expect -- a lot of otherwise-attractive copies are missing the poster. It's the Tattooz of the Kool-Aid Man collection. Moving on.

For #5, we have three variants again. The "75c value" cover is the normal mail-away. Meanwhile, the "50c value" book (with no issue number on cover, oddly enough) was apparently given away as a freebie (rather than a mail-away or redemption), and is super cheap. The normal issue has two stories; the "50c value" version has a third as many pages, with only one story and essentially none of the activity extras. Also, it's printed on the flimsiest newsprint stock Archie could find, including the cover. And then we have... wait, really? OH YEAH! Archie apparently sold enough copies of #4 that they made a retail version of #5 as well! I've never been able to identify the logo on the cover at upper-left, which might tell us more about how this was distributed and why anyone would bother.

For #6, once again, there are three. This time, there's a "50c value" ultra-cheapo newsprint book (and unlike with #5, this one is also tiny). the "75c value" normal mail-away, and... a "Dollar value" edition. The first two are pretty common books, but I actually have a dollar value copy arriving later this week. Hopefully, I'll be able to figure out what made it different. I've never seen a retail copy of #6 (that is, with a barcode and a real cover price), and no such book is listed by the GCD, MCS, or even Mile High. However, I wouldn't be surprised if a very small number were produced. Someday, maybe we'll see.

A lot of indexes claim the series ended there. A few manage to mention #7 -- I think probably because its cover, with Kool-Aid Man riding a pink, sunglasses-wearing shark is so bizarre. But, in fact, Archie ran this series all the way to #9. It's pretty clear, though, that interest was waning. As far as anyone has ever seen, there's only one version of each of the final three books. They're all cheapo newsprint with cheapo newsprint covers and the extra-short length, despite a cover still claiming "a 75c value". Not even Kool-Aid Man could escape the rising costs of publication, I guess, and the whole "mail-away redemption" industry was dying as the calendar ticked its way into the '90s. In any case, here's #8, which was issued after a couple of year delay following #7. I don't own #9 at all, and wouldn't mind picking up a sound, presentable (or better!) copy.

As a closing note, the legendary Archie artist Dan DeCarlo did most of the artwork for the entire series, including the Marvel issues (although there's some debate about who did the Marvel-era covers), and his son Jim was the series' consistent inker.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Qalyar
adding #6 50c value

[mec3437]

[Parabellum]

I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of this book for a couple of years.

[Parabellum]

Thank you!!! @Dmac538

[Jesse-Lee]

[ADAMANTIUM]

[littledoom]

Already had a lower condition copy but this was ridiculously too high grade to pass