A Discussion About How CGC Label Non-US Publications Which Reprint / Reproduce Original US Comic Content 10 10

[rakehell]

4 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Is that a cog or a dat?

I just got that. 

[Qalyar]

This is a little long. Sorry for TLDR lovers.

I have a lot of problems with the "label foreign slabs with the US comic title/issue". Let's look at a key book to see why: The Incredible Hulk 181. The US version of IH181 has the iconic "and now the Wolverine" cover with Wolverine battling the Hulk. It contains an 18 page story,  plus some ads, a publisher's promo advertisement for The Defenders, a letters page, and the in-house column Bullpen Bulletins. No foreign editions cotnain this content precisely. Letters pages, advertising, and so forth are not translated for international publications. But let's set that aside and follow just the 18-page IH181 story.

• L'Incroyable Hulk #40 (Editions Héritage, 1974) contains the French Canadian version of the IH181 story. However, it has a new cover (with Hulk getting punched in the face by a blond-haired shirtless white guy who is maybe supposed to be Wolverine, but has no claws, so...). However, this is a 36 page book. In addition to the IH181 story, it contains three additional comic stories. The first originally appears in Astonishing #56 (1956) and was previously reprinted in Beware #2 (1973); the second, originally from Menace #1 (1953), then again in Crypt of Shadows #2 (1973); and the last, originally from Adventures into Terror #17 (1953), reprinted in Crypt of Shadows #5 (1973).
• L'Uomo Ragno #193 (Editoriale Corno, 1977) contains the Italian version of the IH181 story. This is a 52 page book that reprints more than one US publication in its entirety. In fact, the cover is from Amazing Spider-Man #152 (1976), and the first 18 pages of this book reprint that issue. The next 18 pages are the IH181 story. Finally, it contains the second half of the story from Daredevil #127 (1975) -- the first 9 pages appeared in L'Uomo Ragno #192. I shudder to imagine how this would get labeled.
• Gamma: la bombe qui a créé Hulk #11 (Arédit-Artima, 1980) is a French book, with the most unwieldy title ever (in English, that would be: Gamma: the Bomb that Created Hulk). It uses a modified version of the IH179 cover. This 68-pager reprints the first two and last two pages from Defenders #50 (1977) and then the entirety of IH179, IH180, and IH181, followed by the Kraggoom story from Journey into Mystery #78 (1962).
• Hulk #8 (Atlantic Forlag, 1980) is a Norwegian comic. This is a 52 page book that, like the French book, uses the IH179 cover (albeit with extensive modification). This reprints IH179, IH180, and IH181, but in order to fit them (plus advertisements) into 52 pages, one page was cut from both IH179 and IH181, and four pages were dropped from IH180.

I could go on, but let's consider these. Which, if any, of these books "should" be labeled IH181? None of these four books use the IH181 cover. None of them contain exclusively material from IH181. I think it's safe to say that no one cares about the reprint filler in L'Incroyable Hulk #40, so that one has the most reasonable claim to "being" IH181. But there are two and a half books in L'Uomo Ragno #193, and three and a half books in Gamma: la bombe qui a créé Hulk #11. The Italian one is particularly problematic to label like a US publication, because it has an ASM cover and leads with an ASM story, but the American collector's interest is probably going to be from the IH181 content. Finally, the Norwegian Hulk #8 doesn't actually reprint any US publication's story in its entirety, opting to edit down all three reprinted books for length. If you label these like US publications, which issue number do they get?

Given the discussion about label dates, it's probably worth noting that L'Incroyable Hulk #40 has a November 1974 publication date, the same as the US IH181. Much more so than the others I listed, this is a contemporaneously published licensed foreign edition, rather than a reprint book. What does that mean for label purposes, well... Leaving IH181 aside for the moment, let's consider more of L'Incroyable Hulk's run. The first issue, L'Incroyable Hulk #1, is a 24 page book containing a French Canadian translation of IH106, plus the first two pages from ASM58 in black and white. ASM58 was serialized over the first 7 issues, for ... reasons. But I think it's not entirely inappropriate to simply say that L'Incroyable Hulk #1 is the French Canadian edition of IH106. That one-to-one relationship doesn't last long, though. By issue #5, Editions Héritage had kicked the book up to 52 pages, double-printing Hulk stories (IH111 and IH112 in that issue, for example). Over the run, they went back and forth between printing two Hulk issues per issue of L'Incroyable Hulk or just one (padded out with material from '50s or '60s Marvel sci-fi / horror / suspense or Western titles). After #67 (which contains both IH208 and IH209), Editions Héritage even made the double-issue thing explicit for awhile, giving their books double issue numbers on the cover and advertising them as "Format Double". This continued from L'Incroyable Hulk #68/69 (IH210, IH211, plus some filler from Kid Colt Outlaw) until L'Incroyable Hulk #158/159 (containing IH299 and the first half of IH300, but no other filler). After that, they dropped back to 36 page books that printed (usually) one Hulk story plus part of some other, seemingly random, current Marvel book. L'Incroyable Hulk #160 contains the second half of IH300 plus part of Thor #339... all the way through the final issue, L'Incroyable Hulk #188, containing IH328 and half of Marvel Team-Up #74.

You could ignore the filler content. In doing so, you could label L'Incroyable Hulk #1 as The Incredible Hulk #106 (French Canadian Edition). That's not... entirely wrong. But then what do you do with L'Incroyable Hulk #5? Is it IH111 or IH112? If you just pick the first one of the double issues, you do L'Incroyable Hulk #8 quite the disservice, because it contains IH117... but also the Sub-Mariner appearance in IH118 (and, to confuse things, uses the cover of IH112). Would L'Incroyable Hulk #160 be labeled as IH300, when it literally contains only the second half of that book?? Also, the labeling needs to be consistent across the entire run so that it is possible to slab and collect the full run of 142 issues (which is less than 188 because of the double-numbered issues), so it's not appropriate to give Incredible Hulk labels for single-Hulk-issue books and L'Incroyable Hulk labels for double-Hulks (plus that's simply dumb).

There are other problems, too. But you don't really have to dig very deep to see that a lot of these foreign books don't have a single, clean US publication equivalent. So they shouldn't be labeled that way.

[steve566]

5 hours ago, rakehell said:

I maybe should have used a better example, but Marwood already used La Masa 4.

The closest I could get from my own collection is this -

& it ain't what it looks like. That's not Wolverine's hand & this isn't a 'Greek Edition' of Hulk 181. I forget which issue it does contain, but it's definitely not 181. 

Gotta love the Greek books!; I'm fairly certain this would just get the old style label since it doesn't correspond to a US cover. It is actually part of an interior panel from a hulk comic that I cant recall at the moment. 

[steve566]

3 hours ago, Qalyar said:

 

• L'Incroyable Hulk #40 (Editions Héritage, 1974) contains the French Canadian version of the IH181 story. However, it has a new cover (with Hulk getting punched in the face by a blond-haired shirtless white guy who is maybe supposed to be Wolverine, but has no claws, so...). However, this is a 36 page book. In addition to the IH181 story, it contains three additional comic stories. The first originally appears in Astonishing #56 (1956) and was previously reprinted in Beware #2 (1973); the second, originally from Menace #1 (1953), then again in Crypt of Shadows #2 (1973); and the last, originally from Adventures into Terror #17 (1953), reprinted in Crypt of Shadows #5 (1973).
• L'Uomo Ragno #193 (Editoriale Corno, 1977) contains the Italian version of the IH181 story. This is a 52 page book that reprints more than one US publication in its entirety. In fact, the cover is from Amazing Spider-Man #152 (1976), and the first 18 pages of this book reprint that issue. The next 18 pages are the IH181 story. Finally, it contains the second half of the story from Daredevil #127 (1975) -- the first 9 pages appeared in L'Uomo Ragno #192. I shudder to imagine how this would get labeled.
• Gamma: la bombe qui a créé Hulk #11 (Arédit-Artima, 1980) is a French book, with the most unwieldy title ever (in English, that would be: Gamma: the Bomb that Created Hulk). It uses a modified version of the IH179 cover. This 68-pager reprints the first two and last two pages from Defenders #50 (1977) and then the entirety of IH179, IH180, and IH181, followed by the Kraggoom story from Journey into Mystery #78 (1962).
• Hulk #8 (Atlantic Forlag, 1980) is a Norwegian comic. This is a 52 page book that, like the French book, uses the IH179 cover (albeit with extensive modification). This reprints IH179, IH180, and IH181, but in order to fit them (plus advertisements) into 52 pages, one page was cut from both IH179 and IH181, and four pages were dropped from IH180.

 

not one of these would receive the new style label stating Hulk 181 since none use the original cover.. it may say partial or full 181 on the label but I doubt it. CGC doesn't seem keen on doing any of research on each individual story in foreign books. Just as a side note the French Candian Hulk 181 is a interior panel from 181 and the guy on the cover fighting hulk is a recolored Wendigo. I imagine the Italian book would read Amazing Spiderman 152 italian edition and the the french la bombe would read Incredible Hulk 179 french edition.

From my understanding this is purely a cover based labeling system. I don't believe the redrawn La Masa's would get the new labels.  I believe they are doing this to appeal to foreign comic set builders; I don't know anything about the registry so I cant comment on that.

For example of these Dracula books I believe all would get new style label except for the Spanish red cover since its a redraw, the Uk and Swedish because its a different cover with similar elements, and the Brazilian Mumia since its a totally different cover

Just a guess from my experience thus far

---

 

[steve566]

[Qalyar]

1 hour ago, steve566 said:

From my understanding this is purely a cover based labeling system.

If it's a purely cover-based system, then L'Incroyable Hulk has a different set of problems. Under that "rule":

• L'Incroyable Hulk #5 would be labeled as The Incredible Hulk #111 (book actually contains IH 111 and IH 112)
• L'Incroyable Hulk #6 would be labeled as The Incredible Hulk #113 (book actually contains IH 113 and IH 114)
• L'Incroyable Hulk #7 would be labeled as The Incredible Hulk #115 (book actually contains IH 115 and IH 116)
• L'Incroyable Hulk #8 would be labeled as The Incredible Hulk #112 (book actually contains IH 117 and IH 118)

This would result in a book being given a number that is out of sequence for the publication and represents material not actually present in its contents. And then the interior panel used as the cover for L'Incroyable Hulk #40 would, following that logic, get a L'Incroyable Hulk (old-style) label instead of an Incredible Hulk label, making it impossible to know that it is part of the same publication series as the other books (and making it pretty much impossible to deal with in the registry, but that's hardly the critical issue here).

There are other books in the series with similar problems. There is a long run, starting with L'Incroyable Hulk #50, where the covers are desychronized from their contents. Here's part of that sequence:

• L'Incroyable Hulk #50. Cover from IH 187, contents from IH 191.
• L'Incroyable Hulk #51. Cover from IH 191, contents from IH 192.
• L'Incroyable Hulk #52. Original cover (I believe from an interior panel of IH 193), contents from IH 193.
• L'Incroyable Hulk #53. Cover from IH 193, contents from IH 194.
• L'Incroyable Hulk #54. Cover from IH 195, contents from IH 195. Hey, they matched one! Maybe they'll keep this up.
• L'Incroyable Hulk #55. Cover from IH 192, contents from IH 196. Nope. It got worse.
• L'Incroyable Hulk #56. Cover from IH 194, contents from IH 197.
• L'Incroyable Hulk #57. Cover from IH 198, contents from IH 198. They matched again, but...
• L'Incroyable Hulk #58. Cover from IH 196, contents from IH 199. Of course.
• L'Incroyable Hulk #59. Cover from IH 199, contents from IH 200.

If they were given labels based on their US IH cover number, this run would be ordered: 50, 51, 55, 53, 56, 54, 58, 57, 59. With 52 being given a totally different label. Of the US-labeled books, only two of these (54 = IH195 and 57 = 198) would actually contain the material described on the label. That's nonsensical. People do not collect anything this way. They will not submit these books this way. Besides being obtuse and confusing, it almost guarantees slabbing errors down the line.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Qalyar

[Aman619]

Rough estimate, how many people collect these foreign editions?  And how many of you are getting them slabbed? I see a lot more raw copies than slabs. Given the font issues in using the actual comics names as the title and issue, and then juryrigging  new database fields (after 20 years) for a second title name, and then making them easy to find in the census?  Good luck.  But if some American collectors want all foreign reprints of certain key books, covers and/or stories, it’s fine as is... but not perfect for every foreign comic (run) collector.  

[Qalyar]

32 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

Rough estimate, how many people collect these foreign editions?  And how many of you are getting them slabbed? I see a lot more raw copies than slabs. Given the font issues in using the actual comics names as the title and issue, and then juryrigging  new database fields (after 20 years) for a second title name, and then making them easy to find in the census?  Good luck.  But if some American collectors want all foreign reprints of certain key books, covers and/or stories, it’s fine as is... but not perfect for every foreign comic (run) collector.  

I can't speak to other collectors. I know that for my personal collection, my goal is high grade slabbed copies of everything associated with a series. Frankly, the only reason I haven't submitted more weird foreign books is that it's tough finding them in grade (and that's despite most of my interests being 80s-00s books rather than the 70s stuff up thread).

More people might if the indexing was better and the labeling made sense.

[rakehell]

11 hours ago, steve566 said:

Gotta love the Greek books!

I'll use any link, no matter how tenuous, as an excuse to post that one. I just love the cut & paste quality of it. It looks like they were seriously behind in the editorial office at Kabanas Hellas & someone just grabbed a page off someone else's desk & said "Here's your cover!" just in time to meet the deadline.

 

[steve566]

13 hours ago, Aman619 said:

Rough estimate, how many people collect these foreign editions?  And how many of you are getting them slabbed? I see a lot more raw copies than slabs. Given the font issues in using the actual comics names as the title and issue, and then juryrigging  new database fields (after 20 years) for a second title name, and then making them easy to find in the census?  Good luck.  But if some American collectors want all foreign reprints of certain key books, covers and/or stories, it’s fine as is... but not perfect for every foreign comic (run) collector.  

More and more everyday... as people get priced out of American comics they are looking for collecting alternatives. I agree with you that the vast majority of foreign comics will never be slabbed.. the appeal of most of these comics is the variations on the covers and with in the stories.. by slabbing you are limiting yourself from exploring the interiors. 
I think CGC realizes this and is appealing to the set builders that’s are collecting just the key covers. The new labeling system makes the census 100% easier to search for foreign comics. If I’m looking for all of the Foreign Asm 300’s all you to is type and Spiderman 300 and every foreign published version of 300 pops up with the American version.. no more searching forever for each individually titled 300 comic.

the new system is def not perfect and open to some “grey area”. I would love if they would go more into detail about what’s inside each foreign comic but I understand it would be a massive undertaking.

[Qalyar]

2 hours ago, steve566 said:

More and more everyday... as people get priced out of American comics they are looking for collecting alternatives. I agree with you that the vast majority of foreign comics will never be slabbed.. the appeal of most of these comics is the variations on the covers and with in the stories.. by slabbing you are limiting yourself from exploring the interiors. 
I think CGC realizes this and is appealing to the set builders that’s are collecting just the key covers. The new labeling system makes the census 100% easier to search for foreign comics. If I’m looking for all of the Foreign Asm 300’s all you to is type and Spiderman 300 and every foreign published version of 300 pops up with the American version.. no more searching forever for each individually titled 300 comic.

the new system is def not perfect and open to some “grey area”. I would love if they would go more into detail about what’s inside each foreign comic but I understand it would be a massive undertaking.

Setting aside whether it's a net positive to attempt to label this way, it is admittedly mostly effective for ASM 300. As far as I know, all the foreign comics that use or adapt (frequently replacing the repeating "300" background with a repeating "VENOM") the ASM 300 cover actually do contain the ASM 300 comic.

If you care about the contents of ASM 300, there is at least one foreign book that reprints ASM 300 with what I'm fairly sure is an original cover. That would be Die Spinne #163, a German-language adaptation published by Condor Verlag.

[Get Marwood & I]

53 minutes ago, Qalyar said:

Setting aside whether it's a net positive to attempt to label this way, it is admittedly mostly effective for ASM 300. As far as I know, all the foreign comics that use or adapt (frequently replacing the repeating "300" background with a repeating "VENOM") the ASM 300 cover actually do contain the ASM 300 comic.

If you care about the contents of ASM 300, there is at least one foreign book that reprints ASM 300 with what I'm fairly sure is an original cover. That would be Die Spinne #163, a German-language adaptation published by Condor Verlag.

I'm not a technical expert, but if they standardised the 'Key Comments' field label wording for non-US publications to include where original US content is reproduced (e.g. "Reprints Amazing Spider-Man #129"), or even added a new field specific for that use, they could make that element searchable in the census. So a search of 'Amazing Spider-Man #129' would bring up each individual comic entry, but showing the separate title and issue numbers of any related non-US publications.

I don't know how it is currently configured, but there is some element of that approach in play already in the census - if I search ASM #129 now I get the original US book and any subsequent reproductions that have been added to the census, including some at least of the non-US copies:

I don't know to what extent that is based purely on the new labelling approach though - probably completely - but it should be possible to create a search which preserves the original titles and issue numbers of the non-US comics where original US content is reproduced, for those to whom it matters. 

@Qalyar @steve566 Gents - a question for you two as experts on these books - the copy below (posted in the Westerns thread on the boards) shows the Mexican Aguila Blanca #67 comic which has Rawhide Kid #17 reproduced. The book is dated 08/60, the same as the US original copy. I'm interested - would this be the actual cover date for the Mexican book or is it possible that all that they have done is 'reprint' the original US date? Would this book really have gone into production and be released at the same time as the US original? I find that fascinating if so.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/26/2021 at 3:50 PM, Qalyar said:

There are other problems, too. But you don't really have to dig very deep to see that a lot of these foreign books don't have a single, clean US publication equivalent. So they shouldn't be labeled that way.

That's a good additional point Qalyar, further strengthening the argument for literal labelling in my mind. 

[Qalyar]

30 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

 

@Qalyar @steve566 Gents - a question for you two as experts on these books - the copy below (posted in the Westerns thread on the boards) shows the Mexican Aguila Blanca #67 comic which has Rawhide Kid #17 reproduced. The book is dated 08/60, the same as the US original copy. I'm interested - would this be the actual cover date for the Mexican book or is it possible that all that they have done is 'reprint' the original US date? Would this book really have gone into production and be released at the same time as the US original? I find that fascinating if so.

It's tough to nail down details for some of these La Presna books, and I can't exactly drive over to my corner comic shop to examine a copy. Complicating things, what constitutes a publication date for these '50s-'60s Western books is sometimes a bag of cats all by itself. I don't have access to this issue (at least on short notice), either as a physical copy or a digitized one, but I can provide information about other books in the series and make some conclusions.

Aguila Blanca 58, La Presna's edition of Wild Western 47 (with the classic fire cover), doesn't tell us much. The original book was published in January 1956, but the La Presna edition has a November 30, 1959 publication date. With over a three year gap, this is clearly closer to a "reprint in a foreign language" than an effort to publish a translated book simultaneously.

Aguila Blanca 61 is the La Prensa edition of Wyatt Earp 27, a book that is the subject of some controversy because there's a credible claim that the front cover Earp is an uncredited piece by Kirby (the rest of the cover is Ayers's work). WE 27 has a publication date of February 1960. AB 61 gives a February 29, 1960 publication date. So, how did they turn this translation around in the same publication month? Well... they may not actually have.

Let's look at Aguila Blanca 69. This is the La Prensa edition of Kid Colt Outlaw 91, specifically the the "Death of Kid Colt" issue. KCO 91 has an official publication date of July 1960, which is the date that CGC labels on the slab. But that's not even remotely like when this book went on sale. Comics being distributed ahead of their publication date is nothing new, but some of these Westerns made an art form out of it. KCO 91, specifically, is reliably known to have been distributed all the way back in Februrary of 1960, or some five months before the indicia's date. These sort of date shenanigans make the whole process more complicated; it's easy to imagine that La Prensa could have gotten the material to print their edition shortly after the English ones were printed, and still have time to translate the text and re-mat the pages in time to get their book out contemporaneously with the English book's printed publication date. Did they? Well, there's no way to know what the street date on AB 69 was, but what they printed says they took a lot longer: AB 69 has a printed publication date of October 31, 1960.

You'll note that La Prensa likes to gives suspiciously specific publication dates, and they're always the last day of a month. These are almost certainly a legal fiction, just like the Timely/Atlas/Marvel publication dates often deviate from the street-date reality. As I said, I don't have an Aguila Blanca 67 to look at, but it's entirely possible that it shares the same printed publication month as Rawhide Kid 17, just like Aguila Blanca 61 / Wyatt Earp 27. It's also possible that CGC opted for the US publication date to go with the US title on the label. And when either comic book was actually distributed is likely a whole different reality than the "official" printed values.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

43 minutes ago, Qalyar said:

Let's look at Aguila Blanca 69. This is the La Prensa edition of Kid Colt Outlaw 91, specifically the the "Death of Kid Colt" issue. KCO 91 has an official publication date of July 1960, which is the date that CGC labels on the slab. But that's not even remotely like when this book went on sale. Comics being distributed ahead of their publication date is nothing new, but some of these Westerns made an art form out of it. KCO 91, specifically, is reliably known to have been distributed all the way back in Februrary of 1960, or some five months before the indicia's date. These sort of date shenanigans make the whole process more complicated; it's easy to imagine that La Prensa could have gotten the material to print their edition shortly after the English ones were printed, and still have time to translate the text and re-mat the pages in time to get their book out contemporaneously with the English book's printed publication date. Did they? Well, there's no way to know what the street date on AB 69 was, but what they printed says they took a lot longer: AB 69 has a printed publication date of October 31, 1960.

Thanks for that.

KCO #91 is a book I have the UK Price Variant of, funnily enough. I understand your point about the calendar difference between a cover / indicia date and the actual distribution, or 'on sale date' as Mike's Comic Newsstand calls it:

What intrigues me is the point you also picked up on - how likely is it that the Mexican books were produced - and then potentially on sale - at the same time as the US originals given the necessary work that would have been needed to prepare them?

These three comics below all have the same July 1960 cover date as they were all produced as part of the same print state (the UK Price Variant would have taken a while longer to go on sale of course, given the shipping time from the US to the UK):

But I don't see how this Mexican comic....

...could legitimately carry the same cover date as them.

Happily, you say it is indicia dated October 31st, 1960, four months later. That makes sense to me, the gap being the time taken to do the necessary work.

But I can't see how the Aguila Blanca #67 can have the same indicia date as the US original Rawhide Kid #17?

 

Maybe CGC have made a labelling error, as I don't know what is inside it either. If it does have a printed August 1960 date however, that raises alarm bells with me.

On a side note, I wonder why they changed the position of the Kid's right leg, and added an additional damsel? The Mexican Kid wouldn't stop a pig in a passage, would he.... 

All good fun. 

 

[Qalyar]

4 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Maybe CGC have made a labelling error, as I don't know what is inside it either. If it does have a printed August 1960 date however, that raises alarm bells with me.

On a side note, I wonder why they changed the position of the Kid's right leg, and added an additional damsel? The Mexican Kid wouldn't stop a pig in a passage, would he.... 

All good fun. 

 

Right, but Aguila Blanca 61 and Wyatt Earp 27 do both claim to be Feb 1960, so... The problem here isn't that the publishers played it loose with their printed dates; that's not really a secret. The problem is that I don't currently trust that CGC is faithfully transcribing the printed dates (accurate or otherwise) from foreign editions, when they're already inventing their own standards for foreign book titles and issues numbers.

[Get Marwood & I]

9 minutes ago, Qalyar said:

Right, but Aguila Blanca 61 and Wyatt Earp 27 do both claim to be Feb 1960, so... The problem here isn't that the publishers played it loose with their printed dates; that's not really a secret. The problem is that I don't currently trust that CGC is faithfully transcribing the printed dates (accurate or otherwise) from foreign editions, when they're already inventing their own standards for foreign book titles and issues numbers.

....add in to that their habit of noting that subsequent publications are the 'first appearance' of an original US character. If the overseas publishers played fast and loose with their dates - and I agree from the evidence here and elsewhere that that is likely - then I wouldn't want CGC to justify a first appearance labelling designation on a non-US publication just because it carried the same (questionable) publication date as the original.

 

[steve566]

3 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

 

@Qalyar @steve566 Gents - a question for you two as experts on these books - the copy below (posted in the Westerns thread on the boards) shows the Mexican Aguila Blanca #67 comic which has Rawhide Kid #17 reproduced. The book is dated 08/60, the same as the US original copy. I'm interested - would this be the actual cover date for the Mexican book or is it possible that all that they have done is 'reprint' the original US date? Would this book really have gone into production and be released at the same time as the US original? I find that fascinating if so.

the Mexican La Prensa's by all accounts are almost always the closest to the US release. It has been noted that some foreign books actually pre date the US comic if you go by the indica but it has been almost universally been thought in actuality the US comic will always predate by a minimum of a few months. It is thought that the some foreign publishers used the date they received the license or material to print that particular book in the indica rather than the date it hit the stands. As with many things in foreign comics there are probably very few people that know the answer with 100% certainty. If i was to guess on this particular comic i would think that the date on the label is the date on the indica whether it is an accurate publication date or not.

[Get Marwood & I]

5 minutes ago, steve566 said:

the Mexican La Prensa's by all accounts are almost always the closest to the US release. It has been noted that some foreign books actually pre date the US comic if you go by the indica but it has been almost universally been thought in actuality the US comic will always predate by a minimum of a few months. It is thought that the some foreign publishers used the date they received the license or material to print that particular book in the indica rather than the date it hit the stands. As with many things in foreign comics there are probably very few people that know the answer with 100% certainty. If i was to guess on this particular comic i would think that the date on the label is the date on the indica whether it is an accurate publication date or not.

Thanks Steve. Is there any school of thought on why some of the Mexican cover art was amended, like the RK17 example above? Many of the UK Marvel weeklies had differences or additional art. 

[Lazyboy]

On 5/25/2021 at 7:01 PM, steve566 said:

you keep using the term reprint which in my opinion is incorrect and CGC seems to agree

Factually, they are foreign licensed reprints.

On 5/25/2021 at 7:01 PM, steve566 said:

 Do you own any foreign comics?.. could you tell me the difference between a La Masa 4, La Masa 40 and a mighty world of marvel 198? The difference between Die spinne 3, homem aranha 1, and el sorprendente hombre arana 1; what makes el sorprendente hombre arana 128 so special? These are question any basic foreign collector could answer but sounds greek to someone not involved in the niche..

On 5/25/2021 at 7:01 PM, steve566 said:

if you don’t collect these books and don’t know the history behind these fascinating “reprints” then no offense but why should CGC listen to your opinion?

A publisher licensed somebody else's successful material. Fascinating, and completely unprecedented!