This Month in My Magazine Collection, or "How I Got Most of the Warren Mags in a Month" 2 2

[The Lions Den]

On 12/19/2023 at 6:20 PM, Axe Elf said:

And here are the Vampiress Carmillas...

This Sanjulian is kind of reminiscent of the Prezio cover to CREEPY #29, except that was "Summer House" and this is "Horror House."

This is a Frazetta I hadn't seen before.

Love the Sanjulian homage to the Hughes cover of VAMPIRELLA #2!

All the books are in great shape, but that 2024 Vampiress Carmilla Annual is about as close to perfect as I have ever seen.

Please forgive me for this, but the other day I was thinking that after all the Warrens are done you might want to continue the fun with the "Warrant Magazine Reading Club"...  

[Axe Elf]

On 12/19/2023 at 6:01 PM, The Lions Den said:

Please forgive me for this, but the other day I was thinking that after all the Warrens are done you might want to continue the fun with the "Warrant Magazine Reading Club"...  

I would love to... and the Dark Horse iterations of CREEPY and EERIE too... heck, I'd even read the non-comic Warrens...  but as an overweight diabetic with a worsening heart condition, I will be amazed if I actually live long enough to see the end of the original Club.

Still, I will enjoy them all for as long as I can.  I don't know if they have truly overtaken my collection of (2000 or so) vinyl LPs as my most treasured possession (or collection of possessions), but they're close!  Their bookcase is next to the door to my bedroom, and almost every night I'll stop on my way to bed to pull out a random Warren and admire it in its bag.

[Jayman]

On 12/19/2023 at 7:23 PM, Axe Elf said:

my collection of (2000 or so) vinyl LPs as my most treasured possession

Ooh, what genre of LPs do you collect/enjoy?

[Axe Elf]

On 12/19/2023 at 7:01 PM, Jayman said:

Ooh, what genre of LPs do you collect/enjoy?

Mostly rock and roll, from oldies to punk, though I haven't acquired much vinyl that was released after 1990 or so.

[Jayman]

On 12/19/2023 at 8:20 PM, Axe Elf said:

Mostly rock and roll, from oldies to punk, though I haven't acquired much vinyl that was released after 1990 or so.

Nice! Me too. I have some early 78’s and 45’s, blues and early rock. Mostly rock albums. I just helped my friend getting some Buzzcocks shirts silkscreened for him and his wife. I prepped the artwork for him to give to the silkscreener.

Edited December 20, 2023 by Jayman

[The Lions Den]

On 12/19/2023 at 7:23 PM, Axe Elf said:

I would love to... and the Dark Horse iterations of CREEPY and EERIE too... heck, I'd even read the non-comic Warrens...  but as an overweight diabetic with a worsening heart condition, I will be amazed if I actually live long enough to see the end of the original Club.

I'm truly saddened to hear this. I sincerely hope you live a long and enjoyable life...    

 

On 12/19/2023 at 7:23 PM, Axe Elf said:

Still, I will enjoy them all for as long as I can.  I don't know if they have truly overtaken my collection of (2000 or so) vinyl LPs as my most treasured possession (or collection of possessions), but they're close!  Their bookcase is next to the door to my bedroom, and almost every night I'll stop on my way to bed to pull out a random Warren and admire it in its bag.

I understand completely!  

[The Lions Den]

On 12/19/2023 at 8:20 PM, Axe Elf said:

Mostly rock and roll, from oldies to punk, though I haven't acquired much vinyl that was released after 1990 or so.

[Axe Elf]

Well, I thought I was done upgrading my EERIEs, until I found this little 7.0ish beauty for $8.50!

And digging a little deeper into Santa's Bargain Bag, I found a nice little lot of the other three Blazing Combats for just over $15 each--all of which are upgrades over my first copies!

So $55 for the haul of all four!!!  (Plus all the other Shipping Handling Insurance Taxes, of course...)

And that will about put a wrap on the 2023 additions, other than 3 CREEPY upgrades I bought from a board member in the last couple of days; I should have those in hand in a week or two.

[Axe Elf]

Ok, I finally landed a Dracula Book 1, and I can kind of see why it's not typically mentioned among the other Warren magazines--it seems like it's kind of a "tweener."

For one thing, it's quite a bit larger than the other Warren mags--too wide for my scanner, and way too large for a standard magazine-sized bag and board.

And for another, it was printed in Spain, so it kind of falls into the "foreign editions" category of Warrens that I have been excluding from my collection--but then it also says "Published in the US and Canada by Warren Publishing, Inc." so that makes it a domestic book as well (?).

Now that I have one, I'm not sure I needed it, given the parameters of my collection, but at least I feel like I got a pretty good deal on it.  I had been watching some copies for sale on daBay for $200, $300, even $400, but those copies weren't moving.  The only copies that were selling were going between $60 and $100--but all of them had some pretty significant flaw; the pages were detached from the binding, there was a big tear on the front cover, or stains/water damage on the book, etc.  So I was starting to resign myself to the idea that I was probably going to have to spend something north of $100 if I wanted a nice copy... and then I stumbled across that which we all desire--a seller who didn't know what he had.

I say that for two reasons--first, the seller's screen name suggests that he is primarily a video game dealer, and secondly, because the book was shipped without any kind of cardboard backing or packing, just wrapped in a single layer of bubble wrap and slid into a large plastic envelope--which makes me think this is not a vendor who deals in many valuable books.  It was even a little folded over in my mailbox, but I happened to see the mailman arrive, so it was only in the box for a minute or two--and fortunately, it seems to have arrived without any serious damage.  But the pages are all attached, there are no major flaws to the cover outside of a few small non-color breaking bends (that which kind of looks like a stain in the pic is just the plastic envelope it's in).

And that's a third reason I don't think the seller knew what he had--I got it for $52 + free shipping, so I really couldn't be happier!

I need to post some CREEPY upgrades too, but this means I'm back down to an EERIE #1 (if I ever decide it's enough of a "magazine" to try to obtain an original copy) and the third variant of HELP! #12 (with both date stamps) to complete the collection.

Has anyone ever actually seen a copy of the two-date HELP! #12?  GCD has a pic of one, so I guess they do actually exist, but has anyone ever seen one in person?  It must be the rarest of all Warren magazines; I have been watching for it for more than a year now, and I've never even seen one come up for sale on any site.

ETA:  MCS doesn't even have an "out of stock" listing for the third variant--only listings for the first two--which suggests to me that they have never listed a copy of the third variant on their site in the past, either.

Edited February 21 by Axe Elf

[Axe Elf]

This one was kind of a difficult upgrade--starting with the difficulty in seeing why it needed to be upgraded in the first place.

Yeah, that's the one that needed to be upgraded.  It looks pretty 9.0ish in the bag, right?

Unfortunately, at some point in its storied history, someone took a big fat marker or wax crayon or something and went to town on the back cover.

I'm not sure that "writing on the cover" fully describes this defect.

So I had to find another nice copy sans marker markings that wouldn't break the bank--and for $21 (just over my $19.62 average per CREEPY), I think I did pretty well!

(That "waviness" that appears on both back covers is a scanning artifact--not present on either copy.)