Doohickamabob

Just shy of $3,000...

Collecting Mads is pretty economical compared to comics. New (old) collections of Mads keep surfacing all the time, so they are not difficult to get for low ("cheap") prices if you're in it for the long-term hunt. Plus you get to read them again, and it's a testament to their excellent quality control that much of the stuff holds up really well. The real trick is putting together a run of Mads all in grade.

For most of Mad's history, it was published 8 months per year. I believe they regularly skipped February, May, August, and November. I think things started getting changed around in the '90s (maybe it became 12 times a year), and I think now they might be only publishing 6 times per year (I'm not keeping up). That's the same basic arc for my Mad reading. I guess it must have been for a lot of kids. My perspective was pretty limited -- I was the only kid I knew who read Mad regularly, so I was under the impression I was unusual. Later on I discovered no, there were hundreds of thousands of kids like me. By the time Mad started taking advertisements, many of the core editors were long gone -- William Gaines had died, and founding members such as Al Feldstein had retired. Mad was owned by Time/Warner and was more of a "brand" than the cultural institution it used to be. I think it was a matter of taking advertisements or going out of business, since market tests showed kids were far less likely to buy black-and-white magazines, and the money from the ads would be used to offset the costs of color printing. I can understand being put off by the change, though. You had a full run from the #1 comic on? That is impressive! Did you get all the Specials too? (Including Follies/Trash/Worst with bonuses intact?) That is very challenging indeed -- I still have many gaps to fill. You know, as much as Mad has passed its prime, I still occasionally pick up new copies and find myself laughing. I bought a Mad before a long plane flight last year and had to hide my face from laughing so hard at one of the fake advertisements or something. Now, MOST of the mag isn't anything cutting-edge at all, but they seem to sneak in some stealth subversive gems every now and then. I also enjoy seeing Sergio Aragones continuing to contribute, although I hear recently he really hurt his back and has trouble drawing.

First Marvel magazine right? That woman looks like Catherine Keener.

Tough, tough book.... And for lower grade this one presents very well!

I've got a pretty substantial campaign of Golden Age comics (crime, jungle, teen, romance) and other stuff going this week on eBay (auctions ending Sunday, March 25). Here is the link to my post in the Marketplace section. Also, photos of some of what's being auctioned:

I am all for it and would be very interested to see what you want to share. In terms of not violating copyright or devaluing the market for the physical magazine, it is probably more defensible if you only post a story at a time, along with commentary. Then it is closer to what falls under "fair use."

$2500 for a tanned-edges 3.5 copy is really steep. Still, this is definitely really rare.

Very nice! Did you get a good deal? 20 bucks each. (thumbs u Sounds good to me! Good deal on shipping too...

Very nice! Did you get a good deal?

Nice. This is my guess what the photo would look like if it weren't cropped so much:

Love it...

It looks like the robot is enjoying that train a little too much.

Lots of covers I haven't seen before. I'm enjoying the black-on-black presentation too.

Lots of Creepy #1s showing up on the boards lately. Maybe because the price is going down with this issue. I paid $100 for it and the same copy sold for $126.50 in 2006 on Heritage They must have been high distribution or something. (1964 right?)

I don't think there is a going rate because it fluctuates so wildly. About a year or so ago, a VG+ copy sold for in the $900 range. I think the seller/buyer was one of the boardies. I've seen copies go for $150-$200 one month, $500+ another month. (If I can get my act together to start selling again, I might be auctioning a copy on eBay in a couple weeks. I don't really care what it sells for as long as the bidding activity is fun to watch.) Speaking of CSS #22, I recently noticed a company that sells T-shirts of various comic-book images. This one looks like a winner, though it would probably not go over well in many environments (see below). There are other EC shirts that are a little more all-purpose, my favorite being the Weird Science-Fantasy #29 shirt with Frazetta cover. (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation or connection to this website, I just think it's cool.)

Thanks, Netflix! The issue is #25 from August 1936 ( link ) .

Nice! Note the first-ever appearance of Alfred E. Neuman's face on a Mad cover. (Though he didn't have a name yet.)

I think I read in one of my behind-the-scenes Mad books (probably "Mad Cover to Cover" by Frank Jacobs) that William Gaines and Al Feldstein always allowed for one "easy" cover per year. I think it gave them a month off from deadline worries and such -- probably the month before or after they went on their yearly trip (Gaines treated the core staff to an all-expenses-paid international vacation each year). Among the "easiest" Mad covers is also the "Mad Lowers Its Price!" cover which shows the same price but at the bottom of the page. And then there's the big "SEX" cover which is bright pink on a black background. That's a favorite. Another good one is the variant cover that supposedly says the actual numerical number of each issue printed (though there are only 4 different numbers, but you'd have to flip back through the newsstand a bit to figure that out). The whole trend was obviously started by Harvey Kurtzman with his conceptual covers during the comic-book phase. Scrolling down it looks like somebody else has posted a few.

That's tasteless but they've done much worse! You have to admit the artwork is great (I think that's Frank Kelly Freas).

"The juice is not worth the squeeze" ... I have never heard this before, but it's great. I may have to borrow it.

I love how detailed that cover is.

Are comics also dying as they stew in their juices inside mylar sleeves?

Looks like you have two comics too many. Better give a couple of them to me so you can have a more croppable group shot. or you can just pile 'em up as if you were busy reading in the middle of the pile! I want to dive right into that pile. Another reason why I prefer collections in mylars, diving into a pile of slabbs would be painful. The unslabbeds are as cool as the slabbeds! (I see a copy of Worlds of Fear in there....one of the toughest pre-code horror books...)

I love these!