One Book, Two Page Colors!

[dad-migration]

I took a look tonight at my copy of Silver Surfer #2. I haven't opened this book since I bought it new off-the-rack in 1968. I noticed something really amazing about this book.

 

One of the canards that have been trotted out by people to excuse ambiguity in page-color description is that different types of paper

were used, and these different papers aged differently. Some grew darker with age, while others remained whiter.

 

I always thought this was pure BS. Of the hundreds of books that I bought off the rack, I don't recall there being any difference

in paper quality. It all looked like

fresh newsprint.

 

Tonight I discovered irrefutable evidence that I am wrong!

 

As most of you are aware, the early SS books were all 25-cent squarebound. The page color

in the front half of my SS#2 is white, while the page color in the back half is a distinct off-white. Same book, same storage conditions.

 

I don't know how they printed and assembled these books, but I can only guess that the paper roll was switched right in the middle of the book.

 

As a scientist of course, I am always happy to be proven wrong. All knowledge is subject to revision....

[Aman619]

I think what you have is a married book...the front of one and the back of another, and one was stored in a nitrogen induced basement celler, while the other was glued atop a flagpole in Kansas City, subject to harsh weather conditions fro years. They were put together in 1988 by a dealer who specialized in these kinds of one-of -a -kind puzzlers...

 

That explain it???

[LordRahl]

That's funny. I have a Surfer 3 with the exact same problem. I didn't notice it until a couple of weeks ago when I picked up a second copy and was comparing the two. It was a total trip, the first half of the book had markedly darker pages then the second half of the book.

[fantastic_four]

How could the front and back halves be different paper? Most comics are printed two pages to a sheet and then folded over...meaning that the first and last page are the same sheet of paper, and so on, right up to the centerfold.

 

Are squarebounds constructed differently, with each sheet page being independent of the rest? I've never wondered about that until just now.

[seank]

This is what happens when you store your books with HALF a stick of butter. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS use a WHOLE stick of butter when storing your valuable comics.

[LordRahl]

Not sure how they are constructed and I didn't thin it was possible either to have 2 different page colors on the same book but I have the book and it's a fairly sticking difference. But it's exactly half the book, so one color ends with the first part of the centerfold and other begins with the second page of the centerfold. Very weird.

[sborock]

Many books from before 1969 have 2 different types of paper used in their making. Many '60's square bounds have that. The biggest Key book with two different types of pages is Marvel #1

[joe_collector]

I always thought this was pure BS.

 

Me too, until I received an X-Men 99 that looks like it was printed on onion paper. Scarily-freaky book and high-grade on the outside, but with wafer-thin paper inside and a few of those Greggy-like nut-sac wrinkles.

 

At that point I stopped discounting the "different paper" argument.

[Aman619]

I usually get these wrong... but I think the 64page squarenounds books are made from two 32-page signatures glued to the spine. So if each section was printed separately, th epaper rolls could hav ebeen switched in between, and later both halves converted together.