Qalyar

Seven issue run and, honestly, not terrible as a light horror series. Obviously, the Roman Dirge covers are also a draw, especially for fans of Lenore. If you're a completionist fan, there's also a red foil variant to #1 which is... not super common, but not that rare. There was also a slipcased hardcover that collected #1-6; I don't believe I've seen a copy. to my knowledge, #7 was never reprinted. In 2016, Marvel did a 5-issue miniseries for the Haunted Mansion also (gee, I can't imagine why Marvel would get to do Disney stuff... weird!). I haven't read it. It does have "modern cover variant"-itis (there's at least 7 versions of #1, including a Scottie Young cover that I assume is the chase option -- and that's not counting the Halloween ComicFest book that's technically a different title -- even the last issue has four!). Finally, in 2020, IDW published a standalone 72-page Haunted Mansion graphic novel (I believe technically called Haunted Mansion: Frights of Fancy). I haven't read it either, but based on the art direction, it's definitely more "Disney" and less "horror".

Sharp copy, too. The one I had in my Batman-ing days was... not... this pretty.

Two years later, I can finally state where the blue variant cover of this book came from! Blizzard released a compilation set of their Diablo games (Diablo, Diablo 2, and D2: Lord of Destruction), called the Diablo Battle Chest. There are, erm, a lot of versions of this box set. The very first version released is referred to by video game collectors as the "Tall Box". No comic in that one. Shortly after, it was reissued as the "Wide Box". Predictably, there are multiple versions of the Wide Box. This book is from the very first version of the Wide Box. Well, sometimes. The first Wide Box was also used for some international distribution; only US editions have the comic. Also, some reports suggest that not ALL examples of the first Wide Box actually contain the comic. I can't confirm or deny that, although I can confirm that SOME do. The relevant version of the Wide Box can be distinguished from later versions because the game covers reproduced on the box set are overlapped; in particular, the "O" in "Diablo" on the Lord of Destruction cover is concealed. Absolutely no idea how many of these boxes or how many of these comics were distributed, however. These comics weren't secured inside the boxes, which included a bunch of jewel cases CDs and a lot of other stuff. Needless to say, these boxes weren't exactly handled with care and precision, which did not contribute to keeping these books in high grade. Nor did the general lack of comic collectors' interest or awareness of this book. Many copies were well read and roughly handled.

This checks nearly all the boxes to be a really hard book to find as a NS. After the peak of NS distribution had passed? Although certainly not a post-2000 distribution diehard, I don't think anyone would argue that direct market copies weren't dominant by '95. Way, way off the main-line titles? Check, I'm not sure I ever knew this flashback-y one-shot book ever existed at all. UPC box on the back, where no one will see it on a bagged and boarded book? Very much check. And in 9.8 to boot. Congratulations. Books like this aren't necessarily worth magical Christmasland FMVs, but trying to find them on purpose is another story entirely.

I just wanted to thank you for taking all the time go through these images and share them with us. Spawn has never really been one of my books, but I followed along all the same, because this really was an achievement in modern collecting -- both in terms of the quality of the books you had assembled, and the sheer breadth of the material you tackled. I know that, as a physical collection, it's gone, but through this thread, in a way, it continues to live on. And rightly so. I do not think we'll see its kind again for a very, very long time.

First printings -- which this is -- aren't exactly rare rare (with a print run of 10k copies), but I would buy them all day long at $10 apiece, even in this condition. Frankly, I've seen these in a lot worse shape, and that color rub along the top border is a pretty common flaw on this issue. It's not a manufacturer's defect, in the normal sense of that term, but I would say that the properties of the cover and ink make it more likely than you'd otherwise expect. Anyway, nice acquisition of a historically important book.

I love the oddities that ended up in here! A lot of the smaller publisher or straight-up independent works aren't really valuable in the FMV sense. But sometimes they have great writing, or unique artwork, or they just represent the attempts -- sometimes successful, sometimes not -- for people to break into the industry. (...and yeah, okay, sometimes they're just forgettable; not every book's a winner in ANY age). We're not all gonna collect all of that stuff. Hell, even I don't collect most of that stuff, and I collect some pretty deep drek at times. But I sure appreciate the stories that can be told about some of these books. I hope everyone does.

I kid, I kid. My own comic photography skills are bad bad. More seriously, these sorts of color breaks are always sort of a lottery. If they get 9.8s, people whine about gift grades; if they get 9.6s, people ask why this break mattered but that break over there didn't. It's probably not fair, but it's a trope for a reason: I think the grade loss is more likely against a black field than with whatever other color cover. Probably just because the contrast is more dramatic.

Agreed, I've seen some weird stuff on this book, but never one missing the silver like this.

Agreed. The VG+ photography doesn't really disguise that the book absolutely already had a color-breaking spine tick.

Lower left.

I'd guess that somewhere in the ballpark of $400-500 is appropriate for a well-presenting copy. No idea what that 9.6 slab that started the thread in 2018 might sell for at this point. I passed on a copy of this in 2021 because it had a gnarly corner ding at LL but the seller was adamant that they wouldn't go below $350, and I just didn't have enough interest in the book to drop that on a damaged copy. I've probably moved on from chasing this one at all, to be honest, so that's one less competitor for you the next time a nice one emerges. Copies do exist, but this is definitely not a book that comes up constantly, or sometimes even yearly. Like with some rare promotional pieces, stuff like this is more like hunting for specific GA books than chasing a normal Copper / Modern, regardless of market value. It has to be about the hunt.

Impossible to say for certain from that one image, but it looks like that crease is flat enough that I'd assume it occurred prior to pressing.

And why the world won't end if they occasionally start giving out actual 9.9s.

Different sits categorize this thing in different ways: The CGC Census calls it the "Batman 80th Anniversary Special Edition", noting that it reprints Batman #1 (11/11) [that is to say, Batman v2 #1]; this is distinct from the two variants of the "Batman 80th Anniversary Special Edition" that reprint the 1940 book. MCS considers this a variant of Batman v2 (2011) #1, labeling it as #1SPECIAL. I agree that Key Collector doesn't seem to list it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Fairly sure this was indeed an SDCC 2019 promotional. Absolutely no idea how many might have been distributed. It's probably about the same rarity as other SDCC Batman stuff. May have attracted a little less attention than the 1940 reprint, just because that probably felt like a sexier book than a reprint of something from just eight years prior?

Interesting series, really. Originally, this wasn't a Barry Blair title at all. It started off (at Aircel) written by a guy named Gordon Derry, with art by Denis Beauvais (Aliens, Predator, and lots of D&D stuff). But those two guys had a fallout of some sort with Aircel and both left. The next few issues were written by now-famous fantasy author Charles de Lint and (in part) illustrated by Dale Keown (Pitt, Incredible Hulk, etc)! But ultimately, Blair took over the title for the last several books in the original run, then rebooted it for the 2nd series with Aircel. In 1998, Sirius picked it up for four issues, again written and illustrated by Blair. Blair's art style is somewhat controversial, but he was undeniably a talented guy. That said, this wasn't his story or his world, and it sort of shows. Derry and Beauvais eventually were able to put out an omnibus book reprinting the 13 issues they did for the original run, along with two issues that were never published (because they were replaced with de Lint's stuff).

This is the work of Werner Wejp-Olsen (also known as WOW), who was a long time fixture of Scandinavian comic strips. This was #1 of a three issue series where he attempted to introduce his most famous character to the US comic book market. It didn't really go any better than his earlier attempts in the US newspaper comic strips market. But he had a long career in Denmark. Not everything plays well to every audience, I suppose. Here is a retrospective from one of his former US editors, written after his death in 2018. Draculina was Hugh Gallagher's publishing house for horror magazines, smut, and a lot of stuff in between. He worked on the Tender Flesh film, so it's no surprise there's a comic of it, although he doesn't have good things to say about the comics industry! Draculina was a print publisher from ~1997 through 2001ish, but it's still around in a limited fashion for online material. Here's an interview with Gallagher about the company's history. Fair warning, he's got some ... opinions. A bunch of these were given out at SDCC, along with other promo distribution channels like this one. As a result, these aren't all that rare, but it's kind of a neat book. I assume there are Barry Windsor-Smith fans out there even if he did do Wildstorm Rising. Astro City is underrated, and that cover is fantastic.

By the Horns was a pretty good little series, and that ashcan isn't super common. I'd consider that book a "hold". Frankly, Markisan Naso has had a couple good titles (Voracious, and this one). At some point, someone might notice... Much of the rest of that pickup is just silly for half cover out of a random HPB box.

It's not though. There's a whole constellation of ways that pressing can go wrong. For example, if the pressing process has imprinted a pattern into the paper or has flattened the comic in ways that cannot possibly reflect actual production. Pebbling is also an imprinted pattern, but caused by poor post-press drying practices rather than poor pressing per se, but they usually notate that as "pebbling", so I expect something else is the problem here.. Any of those is a concrete, mechanical flaw. "Poor pressing" doesn't mean CGC's graders think the presser could have done a nicer job and worked out more flaws; it means they believe the presser damaged the book. That's especially true in combination with a grader note like "water logged", which means that these books (or at least parts of them) were exposed to so much water that there is structural evidence of that experience. I can only assume that also reflects errors by the presser.

How else would you press metal covers, hmm?

This depends a lot on the properties of the ink. Generally, I suggest starting out by freezing the affected pages. Obviously, you want to ensure that the pages are kept free of moisture during this process! If that doesn't work, you can instead try heat -- I'd suggest a hair dryer on its lowest setting, kept well away from the paper itself -- although I'd expect you to have better luck with the cold treatment on this ink. In either case, instead of trying to pull the pages apart manually, use a length of waxed dental floss to separate them, working very slowly.

Mea culpa. That's what I get for speculating about books I don't collect. Ramping up the run on issues that are expected to be of particular interest, however, is certainly something that has occurred. Just... not on those books, it seems!

There's no one answer here. Sort of the default case is that a book sells out and the publisher believes there's enough interest to make another printing profitable. That's probably the case for those miscellaneous Batman issues. It's definitely the case for things like Killing Joke or DKR. Runs like Death in the Family probably didn't need 2nd printings because DC knew that was a pushed, high-profile story arc; they very likely had higher print runs from the start. Historically, some indie books (and especially the top-tier undergrounds) went through a lot of printings because they simply didn't have the money to print large numbers of comics at a time! To some extent, some high-profile modern books abuse that process by intentionally shorting the initial print run so that they can go to reprints with new covers to drive collector demand. But there are other reasons for reprints, of course. Sometimes we get 2nd printings because a book is needed in an alternative distribution channel. That's how we get unique prints in multi-packs and the like, as well as reprints for stuff like pack-ins with toys. Sometimes books go to multiple printings because something about the book needs corrected or because something went wrong in the printing process. And sometimes, it's hard to know why a book gets reprinted. Take Charles Burns's indie series Black Hole. The first two books went to a 2nd printing because they outperformed publisher Kitchen Sink's expectations. Then, Kitchen Sink went out of business and the rights were purchased by Fantagraphics, which reprinted #1 - #3 under the new imprint, in part to make them more available to prospective readers of the rest of the miniseries (there was evidently enough stock of #4 on hand to not need a reprint). Those all make sense. But Fantagraphics also eventually sent #5 and #9 to 2nd printings for no reason collectors have ever been able to discern. In particular, the #9 2nd printing was released after the first compilation was already on sale! Why was that necessary? We'll likely never know.

What? Skipped the epilogue in #606?

I love all the covers from that run, honestly.