Doohickamabob

I'm thinking most are in the VG to FN+ range. Most have solid spines, tight at the staples, etc. Some of them have nice glossy covers, but some have noticeable wear. The seller had them stacked raw in a plastic bag that was inside a box, and his story indicated they had been stored that way in a garage for at least a couple decades. The first thing I did after getting them was put them in sleeves/backings.

Made an unexpected local deal yesterday. This guy was selling some silver/bronze Archie comics, and happened to also have an almost-full run of Planet of the Apes magazine #2 through #22. I figured what the heck and bought them for a well-below-guide price. I haven't seen most of these before -- they're off my usual collecting radar -- but the covers are really dynamic and cool.

I never realized Margaret Thatcher was so HAWT!

First one: Doofus! I hate that stuff. Second one: Whaaaat? They can't afford a buck? eBay could make every aspect of their system foolproof, and people would still find a way to make it suck for everybody.

I'm always interested in her, but.....I don't have cable.

Nice-looking copy. Basically Famous Monsters of Filmland #0, plus beautiful half-naked women. Win-win.

Recent acquisition -- a high-grade copy of "Margie Is for Loving." The cover art proves the title...

It's from the Sunday Spirit Section, September 23, 1945. Thank you!

Lady Luck Which issue of Lady Luck is that (enormous) splash page from?

You mean there's MORE?

I read somewhere that this was one of William Gaines's all-time favorite covers. I think he might have had the original art framed in his office (I'll have to double-check but it says something like that in one of the behind-the-scenes Mad books, probably the Frank Jacobs "Cover to Cover" book.) Definitely a fun cover, and for some reason my experience has been that this is more difficult than other issues to find in nice condition.

Yeah, even over a period of decades, all issues and types of Mads seem to be essentially the same size in terms of height and width. (Not counting the first 23 regular issues, which were comics.)

I'm loving the early 1960s Mads, especially since most of them appear to be in nice grade. Here's a recent foreign-Mad pickup. It's Swedish and gross.

A few more items. The crossword book is one of my favorites, because most of these types of books ended up being written in and then thrown away. So they're a lot more rare than most of the other titles by the same publisher. I also have always wanted to have a copy of the "Triffids" book. I am a sucker for a GGA female rendered in greenish hues.

Some stuff...

Just stopping in to see what's up in these corners. I see Hap Hazard is sharing his amazing collection, as usual. Plus I see Robot Man has been posting all sorts of cool stuff, along with Flex Mentallo, Dr. Love, pcalhoun and several others. Good to know you're all still at it. I've been off the site for a while due to life, but I like to stay involved in the collecting and appreciating game when the opportunity arises. I'll post a few recent acquisitions here in the next message.

When I have the organizational wherewithal to tidy things up to allow access to the box that is under the box that is under the box inside the storage container where the magazine is located, then I will retrieve the magazine and take a pic or two of the lovely Bettie Page, and post it here.

Very nice! Here's my copy.... No plans to grade it any time soon. (It looks like it might be in the same grade range as your copy.)

You found Mad #1 at a flea market?!?!?! With a Bill Gaines signature!?!?!?!?

Thanks for the responses everybody. Nice to see Mitch Mehdy comment along with Dr. Love, Robot Man, Flex Mentallo and others. Hey, there are a few of you in San Diego, aren't there? (Mitch, Dr. Love, Hap Hazard, Fuelman, myself...) We should have a group meet-up sometime. As for this: That is great! On top of the killer artwork, I have to add that the framing and matting is really top-notch. Perfect color choices. The plexiglass even looks like it's low-glare and I'll bet it's UV blocking too.

DROOL...

Finally, a hodge-podge of Mad related or other random books. These are two of my favorite Mad paperback covers, for obvious reasons. I used to have an exhaustive collection of Mad paperbacks that I purchased as a kid, but (somewhat foolishly, given their low hammer price) auctioned them all off in a lot due to a lack of apartment space. Also seen are some Harvey Kurtzman "Help" books, a Bill Elder book that almost seems to be ghost-written by Kurtzman (though apparently Herbert Klopzfinger or whatever is a real person -- sure sounds like a Kurtzman pseudonym), and a "Love Letters to the Monkees" book that has a cool Jack Davis cover. Also, there's "Subliminal Seduction," a funky book about images of sex and death hidden in advertisements. I also have a first-edition hardcover version of this book, which has nice large pictures of the supposedly hidden images. For fun, at lower-right is a feminist book with a catchy title.

These images show a bunch of oddball publishers, of which I only have a handful of titles. These are very random. The image at bottom has many of the more "offensive" titles, which are more from the 1960s than the '50s. Some of these I picked up at garage sales or cheap online just because they seemed so out-there in terms of subject matter and presentation. (For example, "Oriental Orgy"? "The Raper"?) Also seen here is "Wild Party!", one of the few Bill Ward cover books I've managed to pick up in auction for a reasonable price. I think it slipped under the radar of other bidders.

These are a bit more obscure. The Pyramid publisher had some really cool GGA covers and book titles, but they don't show up as often as Popular Library, etc. The "Love Camp" book is one of the harder ones to get, telling a story about a Nazi sex cult. At lower left are two books from the Saber/Tropic publisher, which was more of an early 1960s publisher than most of what I usually collect, which is 1940s and 1950s. If I could afford it and had the patience, I would try to collect many of the really standout Saber/Tropic books, which often have wonderful GGA artwork by Bill Edwards. They also sometimes have bizarre torture type covers, like the "Passion's Greatest Trap" cover seen at lower right. (Also pictured is a Lion book, the suggestively titled "Dark Tunnel," which is about a homosexual cross-dressing spy.)

Some of these publishers get a little more obscure or narrow in terms of collecting focus. One of the better-known publishers in this group is Beacon. Among my favorite titles are "Confessions of a Psychiatrist," and also "Sexecutives," the latter of which is by Ed Wood Jr. of "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and "Glenn or Glenda?" fame, though he uses a pseudonym here. "The Naked I" is Popular Library but it goes with the other beach covers. At lower right is "Leg Artist," published by Red Circle. I don't have many from that publisher.