rjpb

Love it!

It would appear that both UK price stamps on that ASM are second hand prices, initially 5p for a book that had a shilling price for the UK variant, and then later a 3p sale price, which would differentiate it from an American edition with a distributor stamp for a UK price, which as you say was generally reserved for books where there was no UK price variant. 

After getting back into comics in the mid 80s, I went to the LCS nearly every week for nearly 30 years. I wasn't a big purchaser, two or three books a week on average, some weeks more, some weeks none, but it added up. When I had to start reminding myself to read them after purchase, I knew it was time to stop. I'm sure there s still new stuff out there I could enjoy, but not enough to make a routine of it anymore. I buy a few GN a year now; whatever Brubaker is putting out, and newly printed material by old faves like Kim Deitch, Peter Bagge and Jaques Tardi to name a few, but I'm pretty much done with pamphlets. I've sold most of the floppies I purchased since the 80s, and a number of trades and hardbacks as well. 

Fascinating story. I'm always interested in the political and cultural forces that have  influenced the comics medium. 

When I was a kid this was by far my favorite SA book. 

Lois' hairdo in her amnesia story is no doubt meant to remind readers of Doris Day, who appeared in a few films during that era in which she was initially impervious to Rock Hudson's charms before finally falling for him. 

Sprang is the quintessential Batman artist of the late Golden/ early Silver Age. And the constant Batman retconning of the 1950s, along with goofy outfits, villains and situations is what kept the title entertaining in a period when the "Dark Knight" persona was in exile. 

I never bought an issue of DHoKF back in the 70s. It came out just as I was losing interest in Marvel comics and I wasn't a big fan of the B/W mags to begin with. But when I see them, I can't think of a comic that looks more a product of it's era. It has to be the ultimate mid 1970s title. 

I think they were just called Columbus Comic-Cons. I remember them mostly being in a banquet room downtown, but had forgotten where exactly. As I recall they were put on two or three times a year by a local used book dealer Roy Willis and a part-time dealer Gordon Odwarka, both who passed away only two weeks apart in 2008. 

Did you go to the Columbus cons in the 70s? I attended most of them, often selling off my collection. 

On 3/28/2018 at 1:03 PM, Gatsby77 said:

The "Don't buy Batman" post is particularly funny to because I started buying Batman in 1989 -- mid-way through Year 3 with # 437.

Granted, he was right about Death in the Family -- by the time the Batman movie hit prices peaked at:

Batman 426 - $45

Batman 427 - $35

Batman 428 - $35

Batman 429 - $12

But, if you weren't buying Batman off the rack in 1989-1990, you missed out on A Lonely Place of Dying (increases in Batman 442 and New Teen Titans 60-61) and (in 1990) Robin # 1, which quickly went from $1 to $12.

As everyone knows, Tim Burton's movie was a monster hit that also lifted _all_ Batman back issues (but esp. Joker covers going back to the Golden Age) and buoyed comic collecting as a whole.

As I recall those sort of prices were a brief peak, and they came down fairly rapidly. I bought those issues off the stand due to the hype, and traded them in at my LCS for about $10 apiece in store credit, when they had them on the wall for about $20 apiece, but I can't recall when that was in relation to the Movie release. What I do recall was not too long after, you could get the four issues together for around $20, and I was happy to have dumped mine when I did.

The stress lines on the spine may not have been visible from the front, but pressing brought them onto the front cover, making them more evident to the eye. The 9.2 definitely shows more artwork on the left side of the cover than the 9.6.

I've seen books go the other way when visible stress lines have been moved onto the spine itself via pressing and slightly realigning the spine.

Theoretically it shouldn't impact the grade, as there are stress lines either way, but it doesn't always work that way.