THE BEST OF DC WAR COMICS AMERICA AT WAR Edited by Michael Uslan
One of the great discoveries of 2018, in addition to me getting back into old back issue comics, and purchasing my first Golden and Atomic age comics, is my jumping into conflict or combat or war comics, with both feet.
The first conflict title that really grabbed me was OUR FIGHTING FORCES STARRING THE LOSERS. I have been reading comics for decades and somehow I managed to remain largely clueless to these comics. I mean I had seen war and western comics as a kid, and had no interest in them as most kids of my age at the time.
I think those books are very much something you have to grow to appreciate, much like the art of Jack Kirby.
But here many decades removed from that kid, this year I stumbled across the amazing run of Joe Kubert covers for OUR FIGHTING FORCES, and they just blew me away.
In an age where a lot of morons are using gimmicks like variant comics to sell multiple copies to a dwindling reader base , and publishers are playing into the gambling aspect of the speculators, who don’t even read the comics, they just oooh and ahhh over what amounts to pinups on the cover, rather than in the book where they used to be.
To the point where you have covers that are completely devoid of typography. Typography is part and parcel, of what makes s great, iconic cover. Another part of being iconic, is there being only one image, per issue, a popular shared point of reference that an entire public can reference.
If you say Amazing Fantasy 15, or X-men 94, or Hulk 181, what makes all those issues so iconic, is they bring up one agreed upon, and shared image in the minds of the audience.
Now covers have a minimum of 2 variants and often 10 times that many. At that point you have stopped selling stories, and are in the business of selling pin-ups. And if all you want is a pin-up, just download the damn cover images. Do not get me wrong there are some wonderful images being created for these ‘variant’ covers. But they are pin-ups or posters, they are not covers. They act against the very idea of a cover, which is a single, memorable image you can identify with that story. You weaken your own product, by dilluting and muddying the waters, with multiple covers, or multiple endings, or multiple versions. Plurality being the enemy of the iconic.
It is the reason modern comics are a speculator’s bubble, poised to burst. The whole market, much like the 90s, is built on speculation, and chasing the very transitory and ephemeral nature of what is hot. A lot of it is forced or manufactured rarity. Ooh this issue had a curse word in it, ooh this issue had a possibly risqué or controversial image.
It is completely manufactured market, based on very superficial minutiae, than in any way on content or quality.
DEATHSTROKE is consistently one of the best books DC comics is producing. Christopher Priest month in and month out delivering fantastic writing, with fantastic interior art.
Unfortunately all the speculator’s comment on is the cover variant.
While no doubt the creators are glad to have the numbers, having the readers is the real goal of this medium, and the real satisfaction of being a creator.
It is one reason that older comics, particularly from the Bronze Age, are getting so popular. The storytelling, the typography, the beauty, the singularity of vision, all stands out, especially in comparison to the lack of all of those things in most modern comic books.
Joe Kubert I really have grown such a HUGE appreciation for his story-telling, particularly his covers. He is such a master artist, and no-where is that more obvious than on his long and fruitful run in Conflict Comics.
Here without further ado are just a few of the must own LOSERS Joe Kubert covers (the complete essential run goes from OUR FIGHTING FORCES 123 TO 141. 19 issue run of AMAZING covers. And even though Kubert keeps doing the cover art till 151, I would say 141 is a good jumping off point for individual issues collectors. After 141 DC would go for a more conventional , less experimental style, and those later issues lend themselves to just picking up in a collected trade format.
The more boring covers seems to coincide with the switch of Editors from Joe Kubert to Archie Goodwin. And then it would quickly bounce to Jack Kirby and Finally Murray Boltinoff who would see the series to its demise at issue #181. The series at its strongest, and the individual issues worth collecting, are issues 123 to 141.
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You heard it here first!!! Forget about paying a fortune for the first issue of new book BATMAN DAMNED, a flash in a pan overpriced at cover price, book. And get something with real staying power, Joe kubert’s 1970’s run on OUR FIGHTING FORCES issues #123 to141!!
This is the last day to preorder books that will be shipping in December at a discount.
Here are my suggestions for the books worth your time:
MARVEL COMICS
Nothing. I can recommend nothing from Marvel Comics.Marvel is GROSSLY overpriced. Save your money and either pick up these issues for a $1 or $2 each in a few months, when they are no longer new, from the secondary market. Or wait till they get collected into trade paperbacks and read them from your local library for free. Or buy them used online for a fraction of what getting the individual issues would cost. I grew up with Marvel Comics, and i think they still have some fantastic creators I would love to read on a monthly basis, Ta-Nehisi Coates CAPTAIN AMERICA , comes to mind. After much hate from the moronic bigoted internet crowd, the moronic antisjw nazis, it turns out Coates CAPTAIN AMERICA is shaping up to be great. The same with just about anything Al Ewing touches. Unfortunately these great creators are sabotaged by a unsupportable comic price, and horrible editorial and marketing decisions.
The movies quite frankly are a lot better, and a lot less disorganized, stupid, and at times ingrained bigoted than the comics. The comics play lip service to diversity, and it is great to see creators like Coates and Walker get a chance to start their vision, but inevitably Editorial steps in and ruins/aborts their process/ending. The comics back pedal from everything to try to pander to the racist anti-change and anti-diversity mob, who typically don’t even read the comics they complain about.
The movies so far under Feige’s reign have embraced diversity with no back pedaling or moronic denigration that makes up so much of what goes on in the comics when it comes to characters of color (‘Oh Well we can’t have the Black Nick Fury be his own man. Let’s explain him away as the son of a White Nick fury.’ What????? Yeah this is the stupidity and racist great ideas that is happening in Marvel Comics, by there non-writers of color and editorial department.)
So yeah, so far the movies are actually better by far than the comics. So stick with them for now. Or until they start following the stupidity of the current comic books.
DC COMICS
Unfortunately DC that was doing a good job of keeping their prices under $3 a comic, ever since hiring the trojan horse of Brian Bendis, they have adopted Marvel’s disastrous and customer offensive pricing policy. Of charging $4, $5, $6,and $7… for COMIC BOOKS!!!!
Absolutely immoral.
And I like Brian Michael Bendis as a creator, but I despise him as a shill for the company, and his arrogant frat boy attitude to companies milking the audience, and his basic ‘ah they will pay the higher price. Lower prices do not sell.’ I’m ten years of proving Bendis is wrong. It is not diversity that is the cause of Marvel Comics’ inability to keep from bleeding readers, it is the bloody price of their books. Add to that the over abundance of ads, poor placement of ads, and atrocious paper quality and you have a company that is repeatedly slapping their customers in the face, then wondering why the customers are not sticking around.
DC will soon find they will have the same issue as Marvel Comics. They will keep the die hards for a while, the sheep who buy multiple issues and variants, and the speculators, but that is a far cry from the millions of people a publishing arm of Times Warner should be reaching.
Besides their last $2.99 books, which word is they are going away soon… The only book over $3 that I get from DC, that I make an exception for, is Christopher Priest’s brilliant DEATHSTROKE. And that is going to change, as editorial has decided to reward the critical acclaim that series has received, by mixing it into their editorial marketing ploy, basically gutting Priest’s ability to tell unhindered stories with the character. Once Priest leaves, so do I.
Books I picked up at this year’s terrific Terrificon at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conneticut!
Man, we had such a great time at this year’s Terrificon two weekends ago. We just made a weekend of it in Connecticut, and only spent one day at the con, but what a fun day. My better half, who is not the comic head I am at all, was surprised by how much she enjoyed it.
Part of it is the convention is very well laid out in the simply massive Mohegan Sun Casino Complex. The Con which was huge in terms of space, only took up a fraction of this massive Casino Complex. And there was huge room between booths and areas, so while well attended, you didn’t feel crushed in a crowd, like Awesome Con or New York Comic Con. Also the emphasis here was very much on Comics, so you just had a very laid back, yet fun crowd. The writers and artists were very much the superstars here.
Another part of the success is the panels. While the shopping was great, and I found great deals; walking around and shopping to me, is not enough reason for me to go to a con. And I am not really interested in getting anyone’s signature, and shopping alone I can do online and save the hotel fees and travel expenses.
I am someone who likes great panels, informative conversations with those creators who created what is best in this hobby, and their interesting behind the scenes stories . So I did my homework and new the panels to attend, and the time to get there for them.
The Black Panther panel was a definite hit, being able to see three generations of Black Panther writers on the stage. Don McGregor and Christopoher Priest were the name draws, and were excellent but I think everyone was wowed by newest Black panther artist and writer Afua Richardson. She was just a joy, and her talk of how she laces symbolic and linguistic meaning into the covers she did for Black Panther has I think everyone who left that talk.. on the hunt for her work.
The girl power vibe in the room was strong. 🙂 But so was the Christopher Priest vibe, this guy is one of my favorite writers, the only monthly DC book I buy anymore is his Deathstroke, and he has written some of my favorite runs. Quite frankly he was a huge reason I attended this con. Him and Roy Thomas. Getting to hear both of these legendary crreators speak, a win, win.
In addition there was the mellifluous John Suintres (from the WORD BALLOON podcast) as MC, Jim Starlin the always stoic Larry Hama, the slightly bemused Michael Golden, and Paul Kupperberg.
So a fantastic set of panels oh and some great food and shopping. The Mohegan Sun Casino offering world class food and shopping options. We stopped at Bobby Flay’s Burger and it was awesome.
And without futher ado, onto the comic book shopping. Here are some of the books I got at Terrificon 2018. All of my shopping for the con was between 50 cents and $2.50 per book. The following books averaged $2 a book, and as you can see are in great mid-grade condition. Fine to VF condition. Why on earth would anyone pay over $3 for new books, when you can get great bronze and silver age comics , with great stories and art for that same price or less???!!!!. Shame on you Marvel and DC . Instead for new comics replace Marvel and DC with Canadian company Chapterhouse and American company Alterna. And preorder from Image, Dark Horse, IDW to also get their new books for less than $3.
All in all just a great experience. Along with Heroescon and Baltimore it is considered one of the best, most enjoyable true Comiccons.
I definitely look forward to going next year.
Go ahead and like and subscribe to this post. I have pics of the panels, with Christopher Priest, Roy Thomas, Jim Starlin, etc…so if this post gets enough likes, and new subscribers I’ll add additional pics and content.
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– ACCIDENT MAN- Ease of browsing. This is one of the reasons I canceled Netflix in favor of Amazon Prime. That and the fact I am not paying for more than two streaming services, and my other choice is HULU.
Searching Amazon Prime is a lot like the old days of the giant video stores, only it is a lot better. You have the greatest movie library in the world at your fingertips, and ratings and trailers for almost all the movies to help you make your selection. And also they have a CUSTOMERS ALSO WATCHED recommendation queue to turn you on to other films you might otherwise not have known about.
That and the trailers have helped me discover a lot of great and obscure films I otherwise would have never know about. This film starring two of my favorite Martial Arts actors of the 21st century, Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins, is an adaption of a great, little known British comic magazine character, ACCIDENT MAN. He originally appeared in the UK’s excellent, but short lived, TOXIC magazine.
And that was followed up with a mini-series from DARK HORSE COMICS.
I didn’t realize until doing the research for this post, there is a hardcover ACCIDENT MAN, that collects all of his appearances in TOXIC magazine, as well as the Dark horse Comics. That is so a MUST BUY! I have the Toxic issues, and I’m keeping them because it is great to see the artwork at full, magazine size, but having all his work collected in one spot on quality paper… sign me up!
Here’s the link to the hardcover. I would recommend buying two copies, one to keep and one to resell when it goes out of print, because it will. Thank me later. 🙂
Considering the Blu-Ray comes with an audio commentary and making of features that reward multiple viewings, I would spring for the Blu-ray/DVD over the streaming version. Especially considering you can get the disc a bit cheaper. You can use the link above to order your copy today.
Thanks to Alien Bee of Alien Bee Dot Net for providing the special features details that even Amazon did not have. Go check out the Alien Bee site for more great reviews:
Subscribe and like if you found the post informative, and please spread the word. And email or comment with what your purchase, recommendation of the day was. Till next time!
This blog post is on a recent video courtesy of SLEEPY READER, via his excellent Youtube Channel. Watched it courtesy of the Youtube Channel on my Roku streaming device
SLEEPY READER 666 Vlog #76 – I like the fact that Sleepy reader covers diverse content, rather than just showing you the latest comics, or variants. I like that his stories are a little deeper than that and more informed.
In his most recent episode he discusses the late great Harlan Ellison, as well as Brian Michael Bendis, and kinda wags his finger at them for being too self aggrandizing. Based on a bad meeting he had with Harlan Ellison when he was 24.
And that got me thinking about the impressions we make of a person, the life long animus, or bad impression we somehow cement of a person, based on a cursory meeting in our youth. When you might have been catching your idol on a bad day.
Evidently seeing Ellison being bombastic and vocal, an impression of Ellison was created, a definition of Ellison based on that one meeting, that some can carry through an entire life.
It is a common mistake that young people do (I have done it), imagining that one moment is the man. A lot of people go to conventions or meet their heroes, and because the hero doesn’t say what they wanted him to say, or respond how they expected him to respond that creator is suddenly for all time, and in all things, an asshole, or pompous, or whatever.
And most of the time it is that the person may have have a bad day, or a bad interaction, or a bad lunch, or a rude fan before you, or his mind is on a personal issue at home, so perhaps he doesn’t fully pay attention to the 200th person in the line, asking him the same stupid question, or make the same inane joke as 50 people before.
Most of us barely are able to get along with the small circle of people who make up are 9 to 5. A celebrity mutiplies those interactions by the thousands arguably, and even if he is on most of that, 99% of that time, that leaves 1% he is not going to satisfy, or be at his best for.
I’m saying that basing your view of a person on one peripheral incident, that that person arguably has forgotten, five minutes after it happened, if he were to bump into you the day after he would likely not know know you from Adam, yet for you that incident of decades ago has become a defining , enlightening moment on that person’s personality for all time.
And all of us have done this at times. It is the reckoning of someone very young, and the mistake of someone very young. We who are older, who have been on both sides of that being disappointed, and disappointing a person, should hopefully grow to know better.
People have bad days. You call em on it, or you don’t. But either way you let it go, and you do not try and define a person you really do not know, based on just that one incident at a convention or party.
An idol doesn’t owe you the approval of his character, he produces work, an if the work speaks to you, he’s done his job. The judging of his soul or his character is not a part of that contract we develop with those who amaze up.
I’m one of those who grew up on the work of Asimov, Bradbury, Baldwin, and Harlan Ellison. Along with a good helping of Stan Lee, and Bill Cosby and Edgar Allen poe and Electric company.
What I gained from all those influences, those creators remain. I’m an immesurably richer person for the creativity of people I know only through their work for the most part.
And if later time finds them in places far from the heroic heights we met them on, it does not change the great things their work did for us, and many like us.
It’s the concept that is lost on a witch hunt America, that a man’s evil does not erase his good. No matter how our culture of championing falls, would like it to be so.
I think sometimes, particularly in America, we raise people up, just to tear them down. That is arguably not the way, I’m not a bandwagon guy. Judgement not by the consensus of the media or Social media, or one cursory interaction.
We all make up opinions on people, but perhaps those opinions should be as cognizant of our own… fallibility, as we can make it. And look at the supposed sins and failings of others, always in relation to our own sins and failings.
Something I absolutely do not think is currently happening in the media.
Was Harlan Ellison a prickly, abrasive, off-putting, and arguably contrary and combative person? As someone who has listened to just about all his recordings as well as read and listened to his writings… I believe Harlan Ellison would be the first one to say Yes!!!
He famously said, something to the effect ‘I’m a snake on a rock, don’t mes with me I’ll leave you alone. Mess with me i’ll bite you and hang on.’
That was Harlan Ellison. He suffered not fools. And he believed, he believed the wrong things should be railed against.
And that fire permeated his work, like the fire of invention. Harlan Elision changed the landscape of fiction, with an almost incendiary mirror to the fallacies of our age. His DANGEROUS VISIONS, written before I was born, and that I discovered as a teen, is (I think) for most who read it… the defining anthology of an age.
And in the decades since its publication that anthology and its sequel, continue to be the standard bearer by which all future anthologies are measured.
Harlan Ellison has been chastised for having been self aggrandizing, for his ‘look at me, aren’t I great’ attitude.
I, for one, think Harlan Ellison was a great writer. And his body of work will remain… great and essential, and oddly timeless.
He in many ways was some odd ying to Ray Bradbury’s yang, both of them being the voice for reason, in a world embroiled in madness. They both were masters of the cautionary tale, and their shadow looms large in the works of popular culture to this day. Like Poe they were the masters of the short story, and those short stories will only grow more beloved and adapted in the years to come.
Was Harlan Ellison self aggrandizing. It is the poor creator who isn’t , if he wants to sell his work.
Some creators are bad or uncomfortable with it, and hire others to do it for them. Some are great at it.
Harlan Ellison in addition to being a great writer, was arguably just as great a performer and showman. Like Jim Steranko he had the circus in his blood from a young age. Likely the way such men came up, kicking down doors is the reason the world knows their name today.
So to expect them to be something meek, because you are not comfortable with their breed of strong, is both inane and arrogant.
I love reading Ellison’s Books for the very brashness of them. and their elegance, and the breath of his imagination, all imposed by a hard early life, where dreams and the scraping, and shouting, and biting for them was all that made them real.
The very ‘center of attention’ nature of Ellison, that so can put off others, is the very thing that galvanizes me to him. And is one of the reasons listening to him perform his works makes them even richer.
He was a natural performer, and one of the best audio performers. Which is surprising giving his slightly nasally voice, but him performing was the audio equivalent of the energy Jack Kirby brought to his panel breaking drawings. It was raw energy and emotion and passion.
If you only know Harlan Ellison’s fiction from just reading, pick up the audio books.
He was one of the best audio actors of the 20th century, right up there with Orson Welles, Vincent Price, James Mason, Roddy McDowell, David Birney.
The thing about Ellison, he earned the right to be proud of his work. As did Bradbury, who had his own very good tv series. And there were plenty, and remain plenty to sing the praises of Ellison’s work. i own his 50th anniversary tome. An updated followup to it, containing the newsletter and other work he did prior to his passing, I definitely look forward to.
So to bring this back, if anyone does not like people who they feels push their importance’ that is their right.
But for every one who for whatever reason finds that behaviour bragging or pitiful, there are a lot that find it neither bragging or insincere, but simply informative, and the person’s personality.
And for me, Ellison, the personality I saw as a fan, was a great personality. And God knows we could use more of his take no bs personality now, in a world of sheep meekly being bled to death by corporate gleed and malfeasance.
I’m sure he saw in this 21st century, everything he railed against in his fiction.
People also to do a sharp, awkward pivot off Harlan Ellison to accuse Brian Michael Brendis of disappointing publisher DC Comics, because he misled them by , like Ellison, over-hyping himself.
That is to paraphrase some complaints I have heard. I like the work of Bendis, but he is no Harlan Ellison. The two do not fit in the same sentence. But you can get the gist of the thematic comparison Sleepy was making, by checking out his channel, and the video in question at the link below.
And to be clear, i like Sleepy Reader’s channel. I think it is very informative and you should subscribe. I have enjoyed just about all his shows and find him a highly intelligent, informed and informative person, providing a wealth of great information to this niche community of Comic Book fans on Youtube.
I take the time to write this post not to highlight how all of us in this talk show age, even the most intelligent of us, have started to internalize the sloppy thinking that has brought us to an America, that is regressing rather than progressing.
I am reminded of an Alan Moore line, that highlights the discrepancy between the truth of who we were as angry young men, and who we hopefully grow into being.
As angry young men we have monologues rather than a conversation. ‘Monologues we have mistaken for the world’ to quote Alan Moore.
In closing HUGE FAN of Harlan Ellison here, as I mentioned, I hope they will releases a 70th anniversary anthology to follow up his 50th anniversary book.
For those reading this who want more from the late, great Harlan Ellison, as well as some of the other greats mentioned please use the following links:
Originally published in 1962 and updated in later decades with a new introduction, Ellison Wonderland shows a vibrant young writer with a wide-ranging imagination, ferocious creative energy, devastating wit, and an eye for the wonderful and terrifying and tragic. Among the gems are ”All the Sounds of Fear,” ”The Sky Is Burning,” ”The Very Last Day of a Good Woman,” and ”In Lonely Lands.” Though they stand tall on their own merits, they also point the way to the sublime stories that followed soon after and continue to come even now, more than fifty years later.
A Lit Fuse is an unguarded, uncensored, unquiet tour of the life of Harlan Ellison.
In late 2011 Harlan Ellison the multi-award-winning writer of speculative fiction and famously litigious personality did two uncharacteristic things. First, he asked biographer Nat Segaloff if he d be interested in writing his life story. Second, he gave Segaloff full control. The result is the long-anticipated A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison. The expansive biography, which is the first such project in which Ellison has permitted large portions of his varied works to appear, is published by NESFA Press.
Segaloff conducted exhaustive interviews with Ellison over the course of five years and also spoke with many of his friends and enemies in an effort to get inside the man and pin down the best-known Harlan stories. Their wide-ranging discussions cover his bullied boyhood, his storied marriages, his fabled lawsuits, and his compulsive writing process with more depth and detail than has ever before appeared in print. But it also delves deeply into the man s deeply held principles, his fears, and the demons that have driven him all of his 83 (so far) years. Friends, colleagues, and admirers such as Neil Gaiman, Patton Oswalt, Peter David, Robert Sawyer, Michael Scott, Edward Asner, Leonard Nimoy, Ed Bryant, Alan Brennert, Robert Silverberg, and many other notables add their voices.
Along the way the reader is treated to an analysis of the Connie Willis controversy, the infamous dead gopher story, allegedly pushing a fan down an elevator shaft, and the final word on The Last Dangerous Visions. What emerges is a rich portrait of a man who has spent his life doing battle with his times and himself, always challenging his readers to reach for a higher plane and goading himself to get them there. It s funny, wise, shocking, and well, it’s Harlan.
Rediscover the Early Ellison. This collection restores to print fifteen never-collected tales from the first dozen years of his career. Hard-hitting crime stories like “Thrill Kill,” “Girl at Gunpoint,” “Kill Joy,” “Knife/Death” and “Burn My Killers!” share the table of contents with stories of betrayal, including “Death Climb,” “Riff,” “Mac’s Girl,” and “The Honor in the Dying.” And, together for the first time, Ellison’s three detective stories featuring insurance investigator Jerry Killian. Toss in the solo outing of a diminutive private dick named Big John Novak (of whom Ellison expected to write much more, but never did) and a sexy Western called “Saddle Tramp” and you’ve got quite an assemblage of tales from the seamier side of life. All that, plus “The Final Movement,” a never-before-published story from the mid-1950s. Better than a poke in the eye with a white-hot bone of Amenhotep, I think you’ll agree.
Harlan Ellison is probably best known as a script writer for sci-fi and fantasy movies and TV series such as the original Outer Limits,The Hunger, Logan’s Run, and Babylon Five. But his range is much broader than that, encompassing stories, novels, essays, reviews, reminiscences, plays, even fake autobiographies. Essential Ellison includes contains 74 unabridged works, including such classics as “A Boy and His Dog,” “Xenogenesis,” and “Mefisto in Onyx.” Includes black-and-white photos.
Watching these Youtube videos on line of people so-called pressing and cleaning their comics.
I can not believe what I am seeing it is like giving baboons knives. 🙂
People do not press your comics yourself, and do not pay to have an ‘expert’ do it for you.
Why?
Few reasons.
1/All of these so-called experts are using t-shirt presses or steam irons to ‘improve’ your comic. They are all just winging it, with no real understanding of ph balances, and acidity and moisture content, before or after. It’s a bunch of hacks, each one with no understanding of reason 2.
2/ The application of heat and moisture to newsprint, jump-starts a chemical reaction in the pulp paper, the newsprint, that continues and accelerates long after the initial application is supposedly done. The process is called advanced deterioration. The two things you should never apply to pulp paper, to avoid early deterioration, heat and moisture. A whole slew of new and returned collectors are doing just that. In hopes of turning short term profits by slabbing and reselling their ‘hot’ comic. In the long term what they are doing is SHORTENING THE LIFE of that bronze, silver age or golden age comic.
It is far better that your comic has a spine roll in it, than you BURN IN heat and moisture and humidity deep INTO the fabric of newsprint paper. That as stated is kicking into high gear deterioration and breakdown of that pulp paper on a molecular level, that CONTINUES after you have it graded and slabbed in plastic.
And yes, it comes back on the surface looking flatter and squarer, but internally you have taken years (if not decades) off the life of that pulp paper. And that deterioration process will continue, as well as the possibility for mold growth, IN THE SLAB. Particularly if there is not sufficient time between ‘pressing’ and slabbing.
I’ve seen warped books in a slab before, and the root cause appeared to be a disastrous ‘pressing’ job, immediately followed by slabbing that still humidity soaked book, in plastic.
Now of course the person who sells you the book, doesn’t care, as long as he is getting paid for the arbitrary grade on the slab, people only seeing the cover of the book in the slab, and having no idea of excessive humidity or ph levels in the actual pages of the book. So it becomes a game of hot potato, to not be the one stuck with this graded book, that when finally unslabbed from its protective case, will be found to be in worse condition than a similarly aged book that had not suffered heat and moisture intrusion.
So arguably people are paying more for slabbed books (that is what they call graded comics, that have been sealed in plastic after grading) that are actually shortening the life of their comics, that because of this mania of people seeking a ‘perfect’ cover, they are ruining the actual comic book pages by entrusting them to witch doctors claiming to ‘press and clean’ them.
And I’m sure there is at least one restorative service that is keeping ph levels and moisture content, in mind. However they are the conservationists at the Library of Congress, and are not the services selling themselves as pressers to help you increase the grading on your comic book. 🙂
This is not brain surgery. I do not know what it is about the 21st century , or America in the 21st century, where common sense is not common, and idiocy is contagious, and sought out over reason. How do we jump on obvious idiotic band wagons like ‘Me too’ and ‘Let’s iron my old pulp comics!” 🙂
And before I get hate mail, I think crimes of abuse when proven in a court of law, people should of couse face the punishemnt prescibed. However, I think when punishment is applied by the mob, before the verdict is in, people losing their jobs, their families, their name before their day in court… that is not justice. And when you are making judgements on your biases and trama, and projecting your issues, or unapplied vengeance in your own life, over the facts of a case that has nothing to do with you, that is mob rule. That is lynch mob justice. That is a witch hunt. And calling it ‘ME TOO’ doesn’t make it any less so. Okay back to the regularly scheduled program.
I do not have a major issue with drycleaning, provided the person knows what he is doing, however If you love your comics, for the love of GOD, spread the word to have people stop pressing their comics. If you have to get out an overwrap or wrinkle, do it the old fashioned way, apply weight and time, to the book. Not heat or moisture.
That should be common sense to anyone over twelve years old, especially anyone who is a comic fan. The fact that it isn’t… disturbing.
Not trying to be belligerent, I’m a collector, so I hate the idea of people shortsightedly ruining collections, in this new speculator’s bubble we find ourselves in, a couple decades after the last speculator bubble popped.
Love the hobby guys, and avoid the snake oil salesman. 🙂
FENSTHE SPOOK- I enjoy this guy’s channel. He covers older books, and underrepresented genres like WAR and HORROR comics, that I really have gotten into.
He does not post often, but that just gives you more time to catch up with his older videos. Great content, and naturally personable. Great channel.
And his take on graded/CGC books is similar to mine. I do not mind them for select, more valuable books, but I really find it more cost effective to just purchase the slabbed books I want, at the grade I want , rather than the expense and INSANE delay to get the book back from one of the grading organizations. And since I am a very good deal hunter, I find it typically more cost effective as well. Time is also a big factor in any purchase decision.
I hear some people on Youtube going on ‘Well I’ve wanted and searched for this book for three years, but I didn’t want to pay $10 for it but I found it today in a $1 bin. Yay.’ Now you do not have to be the smartest person in the world to figure out 3 years , of even semi-actively scouring and thinking of a book, gas, mileage, and TIME, adds up to a lot more than $10. P
Seriously I hear some of these people crow about finding a book after multiple years of looking, and having paid $10 or $20 less for it. I’m not an immediate satisfaction guy, but I am a cost analysis,time and effort factored in guy. And in no crunching of the #s, does that type of minor savings outweight the time and effort expended even just thinking about the purchase. Much less the multiple boxes scoured just looking for the book.
It is that kind of poor thinking, that has Trump in office right now. 🙂
People not being adequately able to see the real cost of one situation over another.
Okay, that was a pretty large diversion, rant I just went on, I do that.
It’s my thing. 🙂
Anyhow, getting this car back on track, for most of my books, especially new and newer ones, bagging them in Mylar and full back backing board is more than enough. And I can still read them if I choose. 🙂
So yeah, subscribe, or at least spread the word about Fens channel. It is good stuff.
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