Doohickamabob

Here are some more images... These are from two of the other most well-known publishers of the time period, Novel Library and Popular Library. (I also snuck a Bantam in there for thematic reasons.) These are some of my favorite GGA type of painted book covers. Many of the Popular Library covers are by one of the all-time greats, Rudolph Belarski.

I've been inactive on the boards lately, but I just put together some images of a few other paperbacks in my collection. I tried to group these mostly by publisher, but some of them are pretty random. I'll start off with the publisher that has obvious crossover appeal for golden-age fans -- Avon. Others have posted many of these recently (I've really enjoyed the images people have been posting!) Not all of these are Avons, of course. A couple of non-Avons I slipped in to make the images fit the 4x2 arrangement that seems to present well on the forum, or just because I was being sloppy. Several of these Avons are all-time favorite paperback covers: "Musk, Hashish and Blood," "The Green Girl," "Earth Man on Venus" among them. Things get rather offensive with the "N***** Heaven" cover, as well as the "12 Ch*nks" book (I masked those titles so as not to run afoul of mods). I put the Eton "Kiss My Fist" book in there because it fit well thematically, but the "Dancing Sandwiches" book is just there to fill out the space. Another favorite cover of mine is the "6 Deadly Dames" one, which I think has a great layout and appealing green background. Farther down, there's lots of very va-voomish GGA stuff, plus many covers that Avon re-used for golden-age romance comics covers. There's also a "Murder of Roger Ackroyd" book which was Agatha Christie's first big hit (technically "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" was her first hit, but "Roger Ackroyd" was the first book to feature one of her signature surprise endings). Unfortunately my copy is only 4th edition. If it were 1st edition it would be worth as much as $10,000.

150 book covers and five pieces of original art?!?!?! Pictures! I request pictures!

That's a bit small but it's fun to look at anyway. I see a U.S. Mad #1 and Mad #24 in there.... And two "Gas" Mads.... I see several other Alfred issues with the red border -- I assume they include a France, a UK, and maybe an Italy... I think I see the Spanish #1 (the pollution cover?)... And a couple of middle-finger covers... Definitely a Dutch #1 issue in the bunch... Also an Argentina and a Turkey... Plus loads of covers/issues I don't recognize.... Lots of great stuff there!

Nice couple of older specials! Love the Kelly Freas painted covers.

I've been sorting through my paperbacks and decided to update some photos. These are digest books: Diversey, Broadway, Exotic, Ecstasy, Croyden, Cameo, Quarter Books, Venus, Rainbow, Leisure Library, and Archer publishers. Here are some pics. I love these covers.

A few more pics:

Just got my copy of the complete Junior & Sunny archives in the mail. It's awesome. The book came out last winter and I couldn't wait any longer. The book was edited and put together (and 20-page intro written) by Grant Geissman, who has also written "Foul Play!" and several other books about EC Comics and related artists. I love it -- nearly 400 pages of quality reprint goodness. It has every issue of Junior and Sunny, and also the first issue of Corliss Archer, also by Feldstein. It doesn't have the more obscure titles Hap Hazard or Homer Cobb, but I don't think the interior artwork or stories were by Feldstein, just the covers. The bio information goes into Feldstein's inspiration for the Junior/Sunny characters, and I was interested to find out that the female character of Deena looks like she is based on Feldstein's high-school sweetheart and wife Claire. In the photos you can really see the similarity in hair style. (Feldstein denies the basis, but says he probably connected them subconsciously.) I hope this comment doesn't come across as an ad, but I wanted to share with people a really high-quality book with some of the best non-Archie teen material I've read, not to mention first-rate GGA, by an artist (R.I.P.) who is one of the greats, and whose vision shaped my favorite childhood comic reading material, Mad Magazine. The book is that much more cool because it is very difficult to find copies of most issues of Junior or Sunny (and they're usually expensive), and I can't wait to read them without worrying about damaging pages, etc. Some pics from the book follow.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. If you need to save money, figure that out before you bid on somebody's item.

I tried blocking with lower case and it still says invalid user ID. At least dude has left. testeagleoz You might have misspelled it, or maybe you copied/pasted with an extra space at beginning or end. That id is valid, and here is the eBay link .

"Though I lost the man of my dreams, it ended up being all good, because I get a 10% employee discount -- and the quesadillas at Pedro's are to die for."

"Half man, half sea lion, Brian's playful romantic ways soon earned my 'seal' of approval!"

The Tragic True-Romance Tribulations of Patricia Tribble-head

Thanks for the clarifications on nationalities of those issues. They sound interesting. I was trying to find them on the CollectMad website, but they are not represented there. Regarding posting images here in the CGC forums, you can either link to an image that is hosted somewhere else (such as on a Photobucket type of site), or you can upload them here using the File Manager at the bottom of the posting screen. For the images uploaded here, the file size supposedly needs to be under 200kb, but I have found that it won't accept files in the 190kb range either, so I usually try for 187kb or lower. If you need help resizing your files, let me know. Most photo programs have a "save for web" or "resize" option and somewhere within that option it will allow you to tweak the image according to file size. I also recommend setting the image width to no more than 800 pixels, because anything wider blows out the formatting of the CGC page.

Ah, the three-headed woman. The two smaller heads are growing off her shoulder and back. (No wonder he doesn't seem to care too much for her ...) Yeah, and he has the mark of Cain on his forehead, so he must have done something terrible to his brother clown. Meanwhile she has a tattoo of a teardrop on her cheek, indicating that she murdered somebody in prison. She also has fingers growing out of the middle of her arm. Some of these romance comics sure get twisted.

I wish I had many of the items you mention, but I don't. (And if I did, I'd probably want to keep them.) In addition to here, you might try posting in the message area called WTB: Want to Buy, if you haven't already posted there. Collectors of foreign Mad issues seem to be a very rare group, and I have only come into contact with a handful over the years. Many of the items you mention are things I would be interested in seeing or collecting, so consider posting some images or possibly selling directly instead of trading. By the way, what is "Kreten 1994"? Is that a Czech version of Mad? Is "Edicion Caribe" a reference to the Dominican Republic? I have never seen any of those issues at all. I do have a variety of foreign issues, including about a half-dozen #1 issues, but am always on the lookout for more. I also am fond of foreign issues that have original material, or original cover artwork -- the more unusual the better.

I'm a fan!

Perhaps this is the wrong place to ask this question, but now that the Captain America #1 cover has been confirmed as authentic and unrestored, and is attractively sealed in a CGC case, what is it likely to be worth in a high-visibility auction?

ebay member: Testeagleoz Another member who filed a 'item not as described' on the seller (and won ) because he didn't agree with CGCs grading and believes it's the sellers responsibility to ensure the book is graded accurately. Again: WHAT? What are the details of this? (Was the comic returned safely for a refund?) I'm just curious how a buyer justifies trying to argue that the CGC graders are wrong.

Where is my magnifying glass? (Great books even if they're itty bitty.)

love it!

I don't get it, I just don't get it. I just don't understand collectors sometimes It doesn't make sense to me either. It sat at $270, and I expected snipes, but not SNIPES. (EDIT: Looks like it was a 2-person bidding war.) Is that a Dave Berg cover? The greytone aspect is interesting.

I definitely have too much time on my hands:

Boundaries overstepped? Does that have anything to do with somebody posting about women eating onion rings? (Did I hallucinate that?) Or the comments about the paddle on that Junior cover? (I'm surprised because those comments seemed pretty tame -- just mentioning a possible subliminal aspect of some cover artwork doesn't seem like much of a rule violation.) Regarding Cindy #37, what is it about that particular issue that sends its value into the stratosphere?

I'm loving these messages about Junior and Sunny. I never noticed about the paddle grip.....verrrrry funny. Speaking of which, I just bought a copy of Grant Geissman's complete "Junior and Sunny" reprints. It hasn't arrived in the mail yet, but I am really looking forward to it.