Are prices still climbing or have they eased up a bit??? 43 43

[lou_fine]

On 3/1/2023 at 11:30 AM, waaaghboss said:

On 2/28/2023 at 6:39 PM, Robot Man said:

If one considers age groups, trends and movies, how does one explain the huge surgence in Pulp magazines? Published long before any of us were born and rarely if ever contained any “superheroes”.

I brought one long box of them to a recent show and sold 3/4ths of them very quickly. 

They used to put coccaine in the paper.  Only reasonable explanation 

And even more so if they were read while drinking a bottle of Coke.  

[Microchip]

On 3/2/2023 at 11:50 AM, VintageComics said:

I agree but there is actually a divergence happening across culture in real time. 

In the West, if you talk about negative aspects of society or history, you are considered a sympathizer. It's offensive, it triggers and it needs to be quieted. 

In the East, if you talk about negative aspects of society or history, you are considered to be raising awareness. It's considered necessary, it's taught openly and needs to be kept alive to forever avoid it again.

This seems to be one of the deepest rooted problems in society currently. 

Lemmy said it best.

https://blabbermouth.net/news/lemmy-on-his-nazi-collection-i-only-collect-the-stuff-i-didn-t-collect-the-ideas

Edited March 2, 2023 by Microchip

[lordbyroncomics]

Oh yeah, Nazi memorabilia is "all the more interesting" due to the passage of time. I wish weak white guys would just admit they're attracted to that nonsense rather than rationalize it with some sort of historical bent. It's one more example of entitlement and a lack of empathy. Nazis are losers who literally cooked children in ovens; no matter how bad one thinks the Iron Cross looks- Roy Orbison used to wear them onstage, for example- the fact that this imagery might upset people who lost family members in such a staggeringly harrowing way- doesn't mean anything because it's just a historical interest. Sure.

[waaaghboss]

On 3/1/2023 at 5:35 PM, lordbyroncomics said:

Oh yeah, Nazi memorabilia is "all the more interesting" due to the passage of time. I wish weak white guys would just admit they're attracted to that nonsense rather than rationalize it with some sort of historical bent. It's one more example of entitlement and a lack of empathy. Nazis are losers who literally cooked children in ovens; no matter how bad one thinks the Iron Cross looks- Roy Orbison used to wear them onstage, for example- the fact that this imagery might upset people who lost family members in such a staggeringly harrowing way- doesn't mean anything because it's just a historical interest. Sure.

Feels like a strawman.  Bookery gave an example of collecting something not indicating you support it, and you're running it into Roy Orbasan wearing an iron cross while performing being insensitive to holocaust survivors.  Is the iron cross a nazi symbol and did Roy wear it to show support for nazi ideology?  I'm actually asking and not in a sarcastic way because I don't know him or his music but you seem to.

To bring things back to the topic we were actually discussing, how do you think misogyny plays into the desire for people to collect old pulps and comics.

 

*edit* and the original post wasn't calling anyone a misogynist,  he was just pointing out the inherent misogyny involved in the shudder pulps.

Edited March 2, 2023 by waaaghboss

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 2/28/2023 at 10:11 PM, PopKulture said:

What has been the driving force for so many recent converts to pulps, many of them from comics themselves? That’s easy, but people might feel uneasy with the answer:

Misogyny. 

Pulps aren’t collected for their insides as much as they used to be: they’re collected these days for their covers. And so very many of the recent top sales of pulps feature two classes of women: those as adornment, and those in dire peril. Not all, but way more than you’d imagine.

These beleaguered women are either being herded into tubes or ice baths… entombed in gold... about to have their heads chopped off… receiving some strange, deadly transfusion… all while bound in accordance with the sadistic whims of their captors.  

Those women not imperiled too often have peacock wings or bat-costumes, like the ladies on Weird Tales. Once in a while, they have a cat-o-nine-tails, and they’re about to whip another woman - see again, Weird Tales.

This trend has been similarly obvious in comics, and what we consider those oft-discussed “classic” covers, like Shock Suspense Stories 6, Terrific 5, Suspense 3, Startling 49, and so on. Do we more often gravitate to covers where women are self-determined and fully-actualized, or portrayed as equal to men, or downright heroic in their own right?? The answer is pretty obvious: no - no we don’t. 

Now, I’m not suggesting that this is the only reason people are casting a second glance at pulp magazines, as they are thoroughly engrossing artifacts for a multitude of additional reasons, nor am I asserting that this is happening consciously as so many new collectors are drawn to this whole class of covers, but there’s something going on at or beneath the surface worth considering. 

Very interesting perspective, and I don't disagree.

That said, FWIW, I have not yet pulled the trigger on buying a pulp but the only reason I've even considered it is that it would allow me to say I have the first "appearance" of Conan.

While the cover of this book does feature a (respectfully dressed!) woman in bondage, the cover is completely immaterial to why I might want to own a copy someday.

[Beastfeast]

On 3/1/2023 at 4:50 PM, VintageComics said:

I agree but there is actually a divergence happening across culture in real time. 

In the West, if you talk about negative aspects of society or history, you are considered a sympathizer. It's offensive, it triggers and it needs to be quieted. 

In the East, if you talk about negative aspects of society or history, you are considered to be raising awareness. It's considered necessary, it's taught openly and needs to be kept alive to forever avoid it again.

This seems to be one of the deepest rooted problems in society currently. 

Could you provide some examples of what you mean?  

[PopKulture]

On 3/1/2023 at 3:02 PM, alexgross.com said:

i could probably try to phrase this more politely, but your assertion is ridiculous. all or most collectors of pulps today are misogynists? really?? are you an 18 year old majoring in women's studies at sarah lawrence?

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and conclude that your ad hominem hyperbole is chiefly an attempt to be light-hearted, but flippantly dismissing an entire practicum of academics overwhelmingly populated by females seeking empowerment and new perspectives on ages-old morays doesn't really serve much to dispel any whiff of misogyny.

On 3/1/2023 at 3:02 PM, alexgross.com said:

comics and pulps were geared 100% to a male audience back in the golden age. everyone knows that.

No, everybody does not know that. Had you asserted instead that the majority of golden age comics were geared to a male audience, you'd have better footing. The beginnings of the golden age coincided with the dominance of the successful strip reprint books like Ace, Popular, King, Magic, Popular, and Super Comics, not to mention Famous Funnies. These were geared towards younger audiences - period. That means boys and girls alike. Admittedly, during the height of the golden age, superheroes came to dominate more and more, but publishers astutely sought to attract more female readers with features girls could better relate to, like Wonder Woman and Mary Marvel. Ironically, in the case of the former, William Marston couldn't help himself by infusing Wonder Woman stories with his predilections for what's that? Oh yeah, more bondage - surely the very antithesis of misogyny, yes??  Of course there were titles like Animal Comics and New Funnies, and the wildly-successful titles Four Color, Looney Tunes and Walt Disney's Comics and Stories came into their own during the war years and would go on to outsell even the capes. Archie and his brood, too, for that matter. And then if you allow for the somewhat murky demarcations of the golden age to include the near-postwar era, you're soon to see the romance boom, but before that Millie, Hedy, Rusty, Tessie and other working women would vie for space on America's comic racks. 

On 3/1/2023 at 3:02 PM, alexgross.com said:

the nostalgia for the bygone era, and for the way it makes them recall either their youth, or an idealized imaginary time before they were born, when things might have been more innocent.

I confess: it's with a palpable distaste that I find myself now replying seemingly point-by-point to your missive, because I could honestly argue the pulps most in question are worth collecting, for a wide variety of reasons, but a simple nostalgia for a bygone era doesn't pass the smell test - especially regarding the shudder pulps (which is tragically the hottest area of pulp collecting currently).

I'll propose a collecting parallel: it's an easy enough excursion into a different sort of -ism. I collect a lot of stuff. Take sheet music for example. Decades ago, one of the hottest areas in sheet music collecting was "politely" termed black Americana. Of course, there were less polite terms for it just in my adulthood. I would no more feel blameless or ambivalent nor in any way nostalgic to show my wife's co-workers a stack of prized sheet music which included copies of Turkey in the Straw or Warmin' Up In Dixie. "Oh, don't worry, these are charming. They harken back to a simpler time. Look at the artwork. Isn't it quaint and innocent?"

I think a more scholarly position would be to ask what in the world was going on in America in the 1930's?! Why was there even a market for multiple magazines where women are routinely being tortured and imperiled book after book, story after story?? Was there some pervasive psychosis lingering across the land during those bleak Depression years, fueled by the utter and stark destruction of our national naivete or the persistent traumas from the First World War that returning soldiers unwittingly brought back stateside with them? That seems a tad more enlightened than "Oh look, she's somebody's daughter or sister, and she's being slowly exsanguinated, but isn't she painted marvelously?"

On 3/1/2023 at 3:02 PM, alexgross.com said:

plus, what is this doing in this thread? see page one.

This is the easiest of your counterpoints to ignore. Who are you to police any thread as to what sincere tangents are and are not pursued? That's just - to borrow a word of yours - a ridiculous overreach. 

Most of us here pay attention to people and what they post. I've gotten the impression over the years that you and I would share many of the same views and, in areas where the overlap is not as pronounced, likely cast a better light on some of those contradictory views. I just think you rather hastily and perhaps reflexively defended a position that requires a bit more nuance. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by PopKulture

[PopKulture]

I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to include a few non-shudder pulps from my collection that might be appreciated for presenting a more flattering view of women in the pulps. 

Here's someone that doesn't need saving:

Edited March 2, 2023 by PopKulture

[PopKulture]

Here are a pair of heroines every bit the equal of their male counterparts:

[PopKulture]

And to conclude, a trio of women who are outright saving the day!!

To be fair, the costume on the last woman could be considered suspect* in a similar vein to all those "artsy" and ogled portrayals of Power Girl, but at least she doesn't need someone rocketing to her rescue...

( * I have to maintain my Sarah Lawrence rep, after all.)

Edited March 2, 2023 by PopKulture

[PopKulture]

On 3/1/2023 at 12:56 PM, Aman619 said:

For fun, we should recreate some covers where the torturers are scantily clad women torturing tied up scared men! 

We'd get that a few decades later in the "sweats" or men's adventure magazines. There the sadism was split just a little more evenly...

https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/461135-men’s-adventure-mags/#comments

[PopKulture]

On 3/1/2023 at 3:02 PM, the blob said:

My great grandfather wrote a somewhat early science fiction book..the Land of the Changing Sun (1894) (I know Jules Verne was much earlier) ...I wanted to read it, I really did, but had to stop after 10 or 15 pages, it was pretty bad, and he was actually a popular writer back then, this was his first and only attempt at sci fi, so much popular fiction back then was just horrible

 

That's very interesting! Some of the early science fiction is indeed a bit of a trudge, but there are other genres from the same period I've found a bit more engrossing, if not more for the novelty than the literary flourishes. One niche area I'd like to dive deeper into is the once-popular "lost civilization" genre. ERB is the most enduring of those authors, but there were many long-forgotten writers and series. That this occurred during the West's colonization and exploration of the African continent isn't all that surprising of a backdrop. 

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

On 3/1/2023 at 7:50 PM, VintageComics said:

I agree but there is actually a divergence happening across culture in real time. 

In the West, if you talk about negative aspects of society or history, you are considered a sympathizer. It's offensive, it triggers and it needs to be quieted. 

In the East, if you talk about negative aspects of society or history, you are considered to be raising awareness. It's considered necessary, it's taught openly and needs to be kept alive to forever avoid it again.

This seems to be one of the deepest rooted problems in society currently. 

In the USA (part of the "West" of course) for soon going on two decades some of a, I'll write, political leaning, do not wish that any negative aspect of USA history (such as slavery, Jim Crow, institutional racism, antisemitism, treatment of indigenous peoples) be intellectually discussed. However, individuals that look upon Nazism as a positive, for example, are tacitly embraced by many of that political leaning.

Consequently, at least in that respect, your point that "In the West, if you talk about negative aspects of society or history, you are considered a sympathizer. It's offensive, it triggers and it needs to be quieted" is incorrect. Further, such can also be argued for the UK among other western nations. As concerns Canada, I will not venture to address that as I am not as well versed in this aspect of Canadian events and history as I should be.

As regards the "East" your point is also very muted because unless someone has been living under the proverbial rock, in the "East" speaking of such very frequently leads in many nations of that region to someone being imprisoned and likely tortured and, too often, being murdered by the State.

Concerning "This seems to be one of the deepest rooted problems in society currently" there are, as you note, many deep rooted problems in society that currently exist which are due, I argue (as do a great many), to historical conditions. That is, these problems did not just not suddenly materialize but are the current manifestations and ramifications of actions that have been churning for very long periods, some longer than others. For example, the current technological divide in the USA, I'll focus on access to the internet, is due to (edit No. 2), among other factors, (end edit) to long standing issues of racism and poverty with, for example, inner city African Americans and white individuals in Appalachia not generally having access to the internet from their homes. [I am not accustomed to writing such analysis; albeit, very basic; on the internet, doing academic analysis for "hard copy" venues where one has the luxury of editing prior to "publication." Kindly pardon my errors.] In sum, our views of the "... deepest rooted problems in society currently" likely differ. However, that is, obviously, fine as such disagreements as long as no one is hurt by them (as, unfortunately, too often happens as I note) is one of the things that makes life interesting and, regrettably, there are (edit) too to few of those.

I will not say more on this as, clearly, this is far too political and, as my post history shows, I visit these boards to have fun and, more often than not, post tripe.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Tec-Tac-Toe
"... [T]o ..." to "too." Edit No. 2.

[WolverineX]

Buying opportunities abound. 

 

Silver keys down across the board like the equity market

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

On 3/2/2023 at 7:04 AM, WolverineX said:

Buying opportunities abound. 

 

Silver keys down across the board like the equity market

I'm buying the relatively cheap CGC graded comic books that very few others want. Why am I doing this? Perhaps because I just need to purchase endless amounts of CGC graded comic books.

However, thanks to your post, I'll now take a closer look at the Silver Age keys that I don't own or want another (or another, another, another, ....) copy of?

[dikran]

What’s a pulp?

[WolverineX]

On 3/2/2023 at 7:16 AM, Tec-Tac-Toe said:

I'm buying the relatively cheap CGC graded comic books that very few others want. Why am I doing this? Perhaps because I just need to purchase endless amounts of CGC graded comic books.

However, thanks to your post, I'll now take a closer look at the Silver Age keys that I don't own or want another (or another, another, another, ....) copy of?

Fantastic four 1 sold at a significantly lower price last night

[Bookery]

On 3/1/2023 at 8:35 PM, lordbyroncomics said:

Oh yeah, Nazi memorabilia is "all the more interesting" due to the passage of time. I wish weak white guys would just admit they're attracted to that nonsense rather than rationalize it with some sort of historical bent. It's one more example of entitlement and a lack of empathy. Nazis are losers who literally cooked children in ovens; no matter how bad one thinks the Iron Cross looks- Roy Orbison used to wear them onstage, for example- the fact that this imagery might upset people who lost family members in such a staggeringly harrowing way- doesn't mean anything because it's just a historical interest. Sure.

First off, the Nazi memorabilia was an aside to show an extreme example that one can collect something without supporting what the material stood for (not my thing, but I wouldn't wholesale condemn others' collections).  I guess, so as not to trigger your sensitivities, maybe I should have said one can collect material related to Aztec history without they themselves supporting human sacrifice!  (Too soon?)  Further, the "all the more interesting" comment was back on track referring to the pulps we had been discussing.  You seemed yo have missed the whole point I further made that societies tend to be drawn to that which horrifies.  Maybe it's a way of facing up to our worst fears, I don't know.  I didn't create the cultural aspect, but am merely commenting on it.  And it seems to exist in all cultures, not just western ones.

As for "weak white guys" who are examples of "entitlement", for me when I read these words I actually tend to think more of sad little internet warriors who have nothing better to do with their lives then scrounge through every thread and topic looking for something to be offended and outraged about, who then ascribe to posters motives and words they never said, and "rationalize" their antagonisms by telling themselves they are saviors of society's soul.  In decades past these sort of folks generally came from a fundamentalist religious angle that found offense in everything, now they come from society's latest version of moral crusaders.

And THAT'S why pop culture from the past is fascinating and worth preserving... because as you have inadvertently pointed out... the more things change the more they stay the same.

[GrasshopperFF]

On 3/2/2023 at 8:33 AM, WolverineX said:

Fantastic four 1 sold at a significantly lower price last night

Yessir! The 8.5 dropped from a record high $350k to $217k.  I was watching the top books closely in that ComicLink auction. I helped get the Hulk 1 (7.0) to $65k. A bit relieved I lost, tho. Upon further inspection, it appeared to be a bit of a weak 7.0. At least Hulk 1 prices are not fading (much).  

[Bookery]

On 3/2/2023 at 2:43 AM, PopKulture said:

I'll propose a collecting parallel: it's an easy enough excursion into a different sort of -ism. I collect a lot of stuff. Take sheet music for example. Decades ago, one of the hottest areas in sheet music collecting was "politely" termed black Americana. Of course, there were less polite terms for it just in my adulthood. I would no more feel blameless or ambivalent nor in any way nostalgic to show my wife's co-workers a stack of prized sheet music which included copies of Turkey in the Straw or Warmin' Up In Dixie. "Oh, don't worry, these are charming. They harken back to a simpler time. Look at the artwork. Isn't it quaint and innocent?"

It might be interesting to note, if obviously anecdotal, that in my 40 years in the pop-culture business, I have known a handful of folks that collect this sort of material.  In every instance, the person was African American*.  Like I've said more than once, all societies have a tendency to find allure in that which horrifies.

*(Latest example just yesterday... an African-American customer came in looking for vintage editions of the James Bond novels after reading that they were now releasing them in politically-correct versions.  He wanted the unadulterated originals with all the bigotry and crudity intact).