SUPERMAN #1 different printings 7 7

[Aman619]

On 3/31/2024 at 11:24 AM, jimbo_7071 said:

OK. The reason I ask is that those 8 snips are all from "No-Dot" copies.

Any thoughts, @The Lions Den?

The copies with the dot all have much cleaner lines around the letters. (A couple of them have a tiny bit of red below the G, but less than what's seen on the "No-Dot" copies.) These snips are from the first 8 blue-label "Dot" copies that I found on HA. You can see how much cleaner the lines are. The last image is one that's closest to the "No-Dot" copies; I suspect that one was printed around the time in the print run when the plate changed.

Looking the new second set from with dot copies, the red is more fully inked. Printing solid where the no dot copes look muddled red, like a weaker transfer of ink. 
 

if we have decided that the dot was printed for awhile and the presses stopped to file away the dot, then they ran off the rest of the run…. 
 

then the rough edges might be attributed to the plates sitting around for a “while” allowing the inks to dry a bit on the “mountaintops” then the presses start up again and new ink overlays on them, not clean metal with fresh ink, causing the edges to have extra outside the letter shapes AND cause the poor transfer making the exc text mottled red. But the red all over the covers would have the same roughness so we’d have to look over their entire covers 

so basically, who knows as Lions den says b

[jimbo_7071]

On 3/31/2024 at 6:28 PM, Aman619 said:

Looking the new second set from with dot copies, the red is more fully inked. Printing solid where the no dot copes look muddled red, like a weaker transfer of ink. 
 

if we have decided that the dot was printed for awhile and the presses stopped to file away the dot, then they ran off the rest of the run…. 
 

then the rough edges might be attributed to the plates sitting around for a “while” allowing the inks to dry a bit on the “mountaintops” then the presses start up again and new ink overlays on them, not clean metal with fresh ink, causing the edges to have extra outside the letter shapes AND cause the poor transfer making the exc text mottled red. But the red all over the covers would have the same roughness so we’d have to look over their entire covers 

so basically, who knows as Lions den says b

I wish I knew how easy it would be for a feature like the dot to break off accidentally. I can envision a situation where the plates were removed from the press because the printers thought that the run was finished, and then maybe they realized that they goofed up and were 100,000 covers short—or maybe D.C. called in a last minute increase to the size of the order—or maybe some covers got ruined and they had to set everything back up to run more covers.

Any extra handling of the plates could have led to extra wear and tear, which could account for the missing dot and the ink bleed.

Maybe they ran part of the order on Friday, shut down for the weekend, cleaned the old, dried ink off of the plates before they started up again on Monday, and were a little too rough with their cleaning.

I have a hard time seeing them interrupt a print run just to address the issue with the dot on a 10-cent funny book.

Edited March 31 by jimbo_7071

[BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES]

On 3/31/2024 at 6:16 AM, jimbo_7071 said:

Since you seem to know something about printing plates, I'll direct this question to you. Anyone else who is familiar with printing should feel free to chime in.

Take a look at these 8 snips from Batman 1s. Do you see how the red along the bottom of the G in "SPRING" looks a bit blurry? (You can see a similar characteristic on other letters, too, such as on the bottom of the S in "SPRING.") Do you know what could cause that? Could it be from burrs on the plate early in the print run? Could it from wear to the plate or buildup late in the print run?

 

So which are these -- and the one below -- examples of?

[BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES]

On 3/31/2024 at 3:28 PM, Aman619 said:

Looking the new second set from with dot copies, the red is more fully inked. Printing solid where the no dot copes look muddled red, like a weaker transfer of ink. 
 

if we have decided that the dot was printed for awhile and the presses stopped to file away the dot, then they ran off the rest of the run…. 
 

then the rough edges might be attributed to the plates sitting around for a “while” allowing the inks to dry a bit on the “mountaintops” then the presses start up again and new ink overlays on them, not clean metal with fresh ink, causing the edges to have extra outside the letter shapes AND cause the poor transfer making the exc text mottled red. But the red all over the covers would have the same roughness so we’d have to look over their entire covers 

so basically, who knows as Lions den says b

We have apparently decided that the operative rule is not Occam's Razor but Owner's Razor:  Whatever answer explains all the variables and concludes that my book is not a second printing or second state first printing, that is the correct answer.

For Superman 1 owners, try this:  If your book has the Action 14 "now on sale" ad -- it was printed before the books with ads saying "on sale June 2nd" because they originally thought the books would be on sale at the same time, hence the words "now on sale"  When the book was printed , they realized the Action comic was not on sale yet, stopped the presses and changed the ad to read "on sale June 2"

 

  

, 

Edited April 1 by BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES

[jimbo_7071]

On 3/31/2024 at 9:13 PM, BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES said:

So which are these -- and the one below -- examples of?

The ones in my post are from "No-Dot" copies. I don't know about the one that you posted. Some of the "Dot" copies have blurred edges, but none of the "No Dot" copies that I could find had clean edges. The "No-Dot" copies that I was able to find online all had blurred edges.

[Aman619]

very few of the scans however are high res, most look blurrier than they'd be with a magnifying glass in hand. So judgements on the blurriness are pixels trying to show an image with too few pixels to work with.  The splotchiness shows up okay though.  The Spring issue above is one of the cleaned, sharpest in both sets of screen grabs. 

[buttock]

If someone felt that the dot being off was enough justification to stop the presses and correct it, then why not fix the little comma looking misprint underneath the 'SS' in ISSUE?

[Captain Canuck]

On 3/31/2024 at 9:30 PM, BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES said:

We have apparently decided that the operative rule is not Occam's Razor but Owner's Razor:  Whatever answer explains all the variables and concludes that my book is not a second printing or second state first printing, that is the correct answer.

For Superman 1 owners, try this:  If your book has the Action 14 "now on sale" ad -- it was printed before the books with ads saying "on sale June 2nd" because they originally thought the books would be on sale at the same time, hence the words "now on sale"  When the book was printed , they realized the Action comic was not on sale yet, stopped the presses and changed the ad to read "on sale June 2"

 

  

, 

If only this was the case, but assume the issues with the On Sale Now are 2nd/3rd printing.