The Thin Man

gary, can i get your buddys email on that xmen 1 double cover?

so i forgot to get to the point of telling you some of my background. DUH! anyway with 9 stores i don't have a lot of time. and typing takes me way too much. but i like sharing this stuff especially if you guys become smarter buyers and then i hope you will share with some other collectors and we all get it at some point! i am at all major conventions on top of the store work. this year i am skipping wondercon,NYCC atleast. so stop by and let me know ahead of time if i need to bring some of the stuff or you guys just want to compare notes. i would love to see the asm 7 in person. and i love double covers. but i think they are starting to get pricey.

oh well, imy scan didn't show but i can email it to anyone who wants top see it. maybe one of you guys can tell me what i am missing. jamie@grahamcrackers.com or jamiegram@aol.com for faster response.

kenny, thanks for your comments. i appreciate your candor and honesty. and your willingness not to hide behind those insipid icons. at least you come out and say what you mean. and what is it with the screen names? drives me nuts..is everyone afraid to be themselves? is it easier to say stuff and then hide in anonymity? the gold boards and the general boards do that and it drives me nuts. as you can see i use my name. i will stand by what i say no matter how dumb it may be!! iwhat i want everyone to understand is,yes, it tends to be insulting to you guys when i complain of the printed by elves etc thing. BUT you have to understand my extreme frustration with this. year after year,convention after convention i hear the same things. it drives me nuts. the mysticial nature of how comics are produced. ughh!! ok having said that then lets move on. i have stated my problem and lets get you guys some info. as for mr dice,what he should have done is NOT take the easy way out. simply state what you are thinking not stupid firking icons.simple as that. and what he needs to do is not take umbrage at someone who is messing in his turf. i get it. what he should be doing is critiquing what i wrote and NOT how i wrote it. i am a poor typist. i could get all that stuff over to you in person much more effectively. i am one of those two finger type guys. and i went into that detail so i could anticipate any questions ahead of time. i did not know sparta had any training tapes..that would great for you guys to see them. i asked at ronalds printing when i was there in 96 with the DC comics RRP group and they said no way!! one thing i have to mention (or forgot to mention actually) is that you guys have no idea who i am so i wanted to give you some idea of my background. i own 9 stores in the chicago area named Graham Crackers Comics. i have collected comics religiously since i first found captain america in 1965. i have complete runs of all the major stuff. i sold my collection in 97 and proceeded to recollect it all agin in ten years in better shape than i had before. the stuff i have that makes it somewhat unigue is Action 1-up to the current issue. same for Batman,Superman and Detective from 27 up. i have all the major Timely runs..Cap,Human Torch, Marvel Mystery (incl. annuals) etc complete. marvel..all pretty much. DC silver keys mostly and goldenage keys all,missing adventure 40,pep 22 and a couple others. oh yeah,,,weird stuff..complete Mad, Classics bunch of just cool gold that i like. my big thing is also the Spirit. i am complete in Spirit sections from 1940 through 1947 with the rest so so. some autographed stuff by eisner also. and some artwork kirby,adams and a page from 1947- Spirit and P'Gell!! anyway..you are right lets go on and i think i will just let Steves reply lie. i am sure he will agree that there is no reason to be pissed off. i did a scan of that spiderman cover but i suck at figuring out hoe to get a scan on here. i will try but i may have the path wrong.

thanks for the help... signed long winded boy

this color thing happens more than you may know. printing is based on the idea of oil and water and they don't mix bascially. so what may have happened was some grease in some slight form was on the plate when it ran through the press and the color was blocked and didn't make contact. where does the grease come from you ask? lots of places but it is more of a chemicial with the properties of grease not actually wheel or bearing grease...like you use when you lube your cars suspension. BUT there is real grease present because the press is made up of bearings and gears etc that require bearing grease. and it may not fall on the paper in a blob of grease but maybe residue. another possibilty is there may have been a fault in the negatives. whe they were striped together and lined up....one for each cool....the red plate negative may have had something covering it...tape,paper.whatever and ttherefore the plate was burned with that mistake. hope that helps. i have a copy of the amazing spidey from two weeks ago with color missing in the middle of spideys head. just black and white. i hope some of this helps. jamie

a sentence or two? what? are you kidding...so the guys can continue to assume there is this mystical thing about printing? lets try to dispell this. and if you are pissed that i may be steping on your toes then say so. that little icon of yours is insulting and ridiculous. short of having a tour of the printing plant (can you tell me the name of the two major printers of comics please?) and shy of a video (nobody wants anyone inside to film..i have asked...this is the most detailed we can get i suppose. do you understand that for 30 odd years i have been asked questions that are truly silly. "why would someone write their name on this issue of.....Fill in the blank comics. don't they know it is worth something??" etc etc. we need to dispell this even if it takes a book, besides if everybody CLEARLY understands how this stuff works then everyone can move towards being smarter purchasers and maybe even move into the ream of understanding some restoration issues. this is an education that is needed to give everybody some foundation for understanding their hobby. geez how small minds we have out there?

grahamcrackers.com

gents, this is actually and easy one to explain BUT i can't really describe the mechanism very well in writing as to how the covers and the comics themsleves got "together" but i can try. the covers were and still are printed separately from each other.in the old days such as when this spidey was printed and even up to about 10 years ago the covers and the insides had to be manually feed into a machine separate from the actual press either in the press room or in the bindery. the insides were already folded and stacked into piles at one end and were "dropped" onto a "conveyor" of sorts that the insides sat on. this conveyor was triangular in shape with a point up and the insides were dropped onto it as it moved. so the books landed open..spine up . not flat but at a 30 to a 45 degree angle upside down. moving down the line (this machine was easily 10 feet long) the books passed under 2, 3 or 4 stations of covers that had been printed and folded..but not trimmed. the covers were synced to drop down on the insides as the book passed beneath. there were alignment mechanisms to keep everything basicially straight and the conveyour line of books then boks and covers moved at a nice pace...hard to describe, these covers and insides then passed under another set of stations which were the staplers. staples themselves were from a roll of wire or a "spool"and the stapling apparatus not only stapled the cover and inside together it also cut the wire and folded the wire making a "staple" as you see it. now beofroe i finish -all you guys out there who think comics are magic or think elves put these books together fo the express purpose of us collectiong them 30 years later have to come to the realization that our hobby is and was a business. it was cheap entertainment (not so anymore) designed to be thrown away just like the newspaper. there was no more regard for what was coming off the press than making wallpaper to toilet paper. it was a job that pressman and their assistants did. a job. they wanted to get it done and go home. please rememeber..this is very important. comics were cheap throw-away trash that gave people jobs. we care greatly for them but it was work to the people putting them together. if you refuse to believe that someone could throw a bunch of covers to amazing fantasy 15 on the press room floor and walk on them like it was nothing more than garbage...then stop reading because i guarantee you won't believe it. in 1961,1935 and 2008 that is EXACTLY what happens. to scrap paper. or dirty paper or any paper that they could not use to print more books with. they had no idea it was ever going to be worth anything. well until the 70s when world color press in sparta,illinois started having "leaks" of product to the collector community. anyway..........the comics are untrimmed and stapled and they are moving to the end of this horrible conveyour that mangles many of the comics. (you would cringe ). DON"T READ THIS PART IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH..... the books drop onto a sorting table from a height of several inches to possible 2 feet in a sorting table seeks to contain the books in order...and attempts to keep them facing the same way. many don't and the "jogger" as he is called at that end now grabs them anyway he can to make sure they are going the same way (anyway he can) and grabs a stack.(depending on the size of his hands) and (he may bend them all) but he "jogs them". he does this to make sure they are in a neat tidy stack. take a bunch of crappy books at home grab 20 of them at the top and bottom and while holding them drop them on their sides (either one or both) to force them into a nice neat little stack. do it with the top and bottom also. see! what a nice tidy pile. now inspect the possible damage to the books!! and do fifty at a time!! in a hurry..you have to jog 60,000 an hour....get going!!! now try it with 40 or fifty using your stomach to help keep them orderly. now....take a stack - put them on a stacking cart but alternate the piles every whatever size you felt like that day so they wouldn't fall out of the cart. sometimes you are in a BIG hurry and you literally throw them in a cart. they fall on the floor....who cares! they are cheap pulp-nobody cares about the shape as long as it is readable!!!!! youpick them up and throw them back in. now you will have to roll the cart to the bindery yet to trim them on the cutter. hope you don't hit an bumps on your way there! now you gotta trim them all. tough job. now ..how is that for a start. if you could have seen this in action you would wonder how ANY books could come out 9.4. you would never believe any comic could ever be perfect. but there are- those books were in the middle of this grab and shake and drop piles. and when the books where bound in string every fifty (turned at twenty five to make the stack flat)-to go to the distributor..those perfect ones stayed in the middle. they never got that string dent you see sometimes. one note usually gold books they many times used wire to hold the books. ok so back to the spidey 9. keep in mind that the pressmen have to print 200,000 copies or more of each comic. they are printing stapling- folding -jogging THOUSANDS of books and at a frentic pace? why in a hurry? gotta get done to clean the press and set it up for the next book. time is money. so with all the hub bub many times nobody was paying attention to the "RUN". they were standing around talking,smoking (yes they smoked in the press room. yes, it was filled with chemicals and flammable vapors as well as paper and paper "dust". they would refill these stations with insides then refill the covers and keep working until they were done. they didn't really inspect their work...just wanted to get done so they could take a break. and they didn't see or even care about too many mistakes.hey! it's only worth a dime after all!!! the spidey 7 is simple. one cover on top of another. one came off the press crooked . nobody noticed because it was in a huge stack of raw covers and why would anyone even look for it. then when the covers were dropped onto the books on the conveyour the two covers stuck together and where stapled and later trimmed and sold to some kid somewhere. why did they stick? ink that wasn't dry. static electricity probably. or better yet someone deliberately out of 300,000 of the same issue and YOU found it. not likely. it was an accident. a very cool accident.that is all it is.nothing in the pressroom or the bindery was deliberate back then. anyway i happen collect cool stuff like that so let me know when you are getting rid of it. i have several boxes of comic "accidents". having nine stores and being in retail for 26 years i have accumilated a bunch of weird stuff that has gotten into my Diamond boxes. new or old i always kept it because i thought it was cool. i knew how it was done..no mystery there- but it was neat nontheless. one of my coolest books? a goldenage Blackhawk that was bound with the centerfold out. meaning the centerfold is now page one and page 52 with page the actual page one inside the book. how about a triple cover? or the wrong cover on a book? how about parts of the story repeating inside? or two copies of the same book inside ONE cover? please remember this is MASS produced product. there is no mystery and no comic gods making this stuff secretly in some cave somewhere. staples are wire, paper is pul made to disintegrate after many years. and colors fade. now how do i know any of this? i worked in printing for 5 years out of high school. i have to admitt...i was a "jogger! and i ran the big trimmer and i worked on the big presses/ and i bound stacks after trimming with string. and i accidentally dropped stuff on the floor and walked on them ! yes, i must be a horrible person and i even delivered stuff to the stores. OK. now you know how double covers,triple covers etc happen. this method is basicially used today altho more automated and less hands on. i am only talking about regular comics..not squarebound,not bookshelf format with heavy paper (ie dark knight or killing joke are bookshelf format books). so you wanna hear about the cutter?

thanks ryan nice to see you guys too. what else ya looking for?

grahamcrackers.com

anybody have any they want to sell? i gotta warn you i am cheap. i also want mark jewlers insert books need a bunch. can anyone tell me when the jewlers ads ran? and the other jewlers that did this. was it mark jewlers under different names..or other jewlers? what is the oldest double cover anyone has? i have one from 1946..of the top of my head. and i don't have any double cover keys....spidey one af 15 etc. that would be cool.