DiceX Posted September 11, 2004 Author Share Posted September 11, 2004 I have a book that seems to be perfect in every way except a little hole at the top of the book in the back cover ... what do you think this book will grade anyone care to give a opinon?? Depends on how big the hole is, and what caused it. It can be from production, but they are (usually) on the bottom of the cover. Show a scan of it and perhaps someone help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jduran1 Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 I am just curious if the tick marks on the spines of the Amazing Spider-man 300's are production flaws and are they considered as a grading defect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aman619 Posted October 31, 2004 Share Posted October 31, 2004 what was stippling in production? also--- Dice it would be great if you coukld partnerr with FLASH guy and produce a quick animation that demonstrates once and for all how comics were printed and in what order they were assembled and trimmed.... Maybe Red Hook could help create the images... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisco37 Posted November 5, 2004 Share Posted November 5, 2004 I am just curious if the tick marks on the spines of the Amazing Spider-man 300's are production flaws and are they considered as a grading defect. Doubtful. ASM #300 does have a common printing defect, however. Many (most?) copies have a jagged edge down the entire right side of front cover. It is recognized as a printing defect by CGC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divad Posted November 7, 2004 Share Posted November 7, 2004 I am just curious if the tick marks on the spines of the Amazing Spider-man 300's are production flaws and are they considered as a grading defect. Only on yours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-spider-man Posted November 27, 2004 Share Posted November 27, 2004 (edited) Hi; Dice X I have another little error for you I have two Marvel Howard the Duck comics #15 from Aug. 1977 one has page #2,15,18&31 with a lot of pink color on them in place of the green and yellow which is in the other one. What happened hear did they just use the wrong color or maybe left out a color and why is it just on 4 pages and not the whole comic ? I will attach page 18 which it is most noticible on, let me know what you think. Edited November 27, 2004 by cosmic-spider-man Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiceX Posted November 27, 2004 Author Share Posted November 27, 2004 The magenta and yellow plates were switched on press. When they were hanging plates, the pressman hung the plate with the yellow images on the magenta ink cylinder, and the magenta plate on the yellow cylinder. Looks like they noticed it after they started printing, and shut down the press to switch the plates to the correct ink units. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-spider-man Posted November 27, 2004 Share Posted November 27, 2004 Looks like they noticed it after they started printing, and shut down the press to switch the plates to the correct ink units. Does this mean you think my copy would be the only one, because I have seen another one with the pink on those 4 pages. Question did they have seprate plates for every single page or did plates have more than one page on them like maybe 4 pages on one plate since only 4 pages in this comic were colored that way? I am sorry if this is a dumb question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiceX Posted November 27, 2004 Author Share Posted November 27, 2004 Your comic would definately not be the only one. I couldn't guess at how many there would be. But I doubt any production defect would be "one of a kind". However, some may be rarer than others. For the comics that were printed on a "Letter Press", there was a single plate for each individual page, and each individual color. Meaning there were 4 plates for the front cover. A black, a magenta, a cyan, and a yellow. The same for each page of the book. So a book with 32 pages and a 4 page cover would have a total of 144 individual plates. 36 black plates, 36 magenta plates, 36 cyan plates, and 36 yellow plates. One plate per color, per page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-spider-man Posted November 28, 2004 Share Posted November 28, 2004 Some of my descriptions have changed with time. One that effects the old posts quoted above came from talking to one of the people that actually worked in the comic plant. That is...Body pages were one single section that was ran on a single press. The press printed the 32 page body form, and they were put on skids to await binding. The cover was printed seperately on large, flat sheets that contained covers from other titles. Those flat sheets are put into a very large, single blade, guillotine cutter that makes long cuts completely across the sheet, to make individual (flat) covers Hi; DiceX hate to keep bothering you but I find this all very, very interesting you say that each page has 4 plates one for each color and you have also said that they did the whole 32 pages of a comic at once on one sheet could you explain this a little. I am just guessing that each press must have some how had 16 plates on it and that the sheet must have to be fliped at some point to print the other side does this mean that each sheet goes through 8 presses each with 16 different plates on it to get the finished 32 pages story. If this is correct how are the plates put on the press and how do they apply the ink to the plates and are the presses just a large squar press that goes strait up and down producing one page at a time or is it some kind of large roller press where the pages just keep moving through continuously never stoping? Back to my comic with the 4 pink pages you are saying that the 4 plates for two different colors of those pages got put on the wrong press and their for got the wrong color on them. I am also assumeing that each press only has one of the 4 colors is this right sorry if this sounds dumb but I would love to hear how it really works when you have the time . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiceX Posted November 28, 2004 Author Share Posted November 28, 2004 The press prints on a long roll of paper. The paper goes through the first press unit. The press unit has two big cylinders with multiple single page plates on them. The paper passes between the two big cylinders where the first color is printed on the front and back of the paper. The paper continues to the next unit. It's the same as the first except it has a different color ink in it with the plates that have the image that will be printed in that ink. Then it goes through the next two units the same way. This will give it four colors of ink on both sides of the paper. The paper runs through a long dryer to set the ink. For the body pages, at the end of the press, each section that makes up the book will be folded and stacked onto a skid to be put into the binder. For the cover, it delivers in a large sheet along with the cover to multiple other titles on the same sheet. The sheets are cut up on a large cutter to seperate the individual covers. The cover and body pages are stuck into a binder, where it puts the cover on the body pages, staples them together, and trims the three outside edges. Does that make a little more sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-spider-man Posted November 28, 2004 Share Posted November 28, 2004 Thanks DiceX this is by far the best thread on the boards and sorry for the lame questions I will have to go and visit the comic plant some day and see it all in action. Thanks again for all the great info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiceX Posted November 28, 2004 Author Share Posted November 28, 2004 Keep in mind that a lot has changed since the old Letter Press days. Now the plates are large and fit completely around the cylinder. All the pages for that side of the paper are on the single plate. There are still 4 plates for the individual colors, but all the pages are on one large plate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-spider-man Posted November 28, 2004 Share Posted November 28, 2004 DiceX would it be safe to assume that on this error on the Howard the Duck that the error ones would have been printed before the corrected one or is it just as likely that it could have happened at the end of the print run. I guess what I am asking is did they change the plates during a print run for any reason other than errors like this, like did they wear out after so many pages or did they use the same plates for the whole run? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiceX Posted November 28, 2004 Author Share Posted November 28, 2004 That error was made at the start of the press run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
furdell-migration Posted November 29, 2004 Share Posted November 29, 2004 Hey, DiceX! Here's another bizarre printer's error to throw at you. This one really has me baffled. I have a copy of Spectacular Spider-Man vol I #1, with the cover from Marvel Team-Up #52. (Not a double-cover, just a wrong cover.) It had me completely fooled for about 10 pages, since they're both Spidey comics and I wasn't paying that much attention to the story. (Eventually the lack of teaming up in MTU made me re-check the fine print on the first page, and sure enough...) So, I guess this leads me to a couple of questions. *1) You've said in this thread that wrong covers are possible, and you explained how. MTU #52 and PPTSSM #1 came out on the same month (Dec 1976 I think), but I would assume they also came out on different weeks (since Spidey comics were usually organized that way). I can't verify this -- I don't know how to figure out what week a comic came out on. But, if they did come out on different weeks, how could this have happened? (ie by the time one comic was being printed, wouldn't they be done with the covers from the other comic?) *2) Is it likely that there are other copies like this, or that there's a twin -- an MTU #52 with a PPTSSM #1 cover? *3) I can't figure out how much this comic is worth, because the inside comic is worth so much more than the cover comic. Any ideas? Thanks a lot... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiceX Posted November 30, 2004 Author Share Posted November 30, 2004 1) Comics that were distributed a few weeks apart could certainly have been printed at the same time. 2) There are probably other copies. I doubt it's an "isolated incident". 3) Whatever someone will pay for it. (I don't have a clue.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic-spider-man Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Hi; I got another little manafacturing error that I have been wandering about for a while. I have two comics a Defenders 50 and a Marvel Tales 82 and I did have a Peter Parker 7 that all have two sets of staples in other words two at the top and two at the bottom what I found strange about this is that one set of staples is inside the cover and the other set holds the cover on and all three of these comics are like that. It is like the comic was stapled together without the cover and then they sent it back through and stapled a cover over it did this ever happen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divad Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 Hi; I got another little manafacturing error that I have been wandering about for a while. I have two comics a Defenders 50 and a Marvel Tales 82 and I did have a Peter Parker 7 that all have two sets of staples in other words two at the top and two at the bottom what I found strange about this is that one set of staples is inside the cover and the other set holds the cover on and all three of these comics are like that. It is like the comic was stapled together without the cover and then they sent it back through and stapled a cover over it did this ever happen Cosmic, I asked DiceX the same question a few months ago. Here is his reply: I received the book today. It looks to me like it was a "hand bound reject". I'll try to explain it... A publisher requires a certain number of books to be produced. During the bindery run, they have enough raw product to produce the run + a percentage predicted by the bindery allowed for waste. Say the run is 100,000 books and the bindery expects 3% waste...They receive 103,000 books worth of raw product. During the run there are books that jam up in the binder, or have odd flaws (untrimmed, unstapled, no cover, etc.). Those books are stacked to the side until the end of the run. When the raw product has been depleated, if the count doesn't add up to what the publisher ordered, they have to find a way to fill the order. They go through the "reject" skid to find any books that can be salvaged. There is usually nothing wrong with them, they just have been produced incorrectly. They take those books and piece together what they can. These books are bound by hand, stitched (stapled) by hand, then hand trimmed on a flatbed cutter. Whatever they have to do on a book by book basis. After "pulling rejects", if the order still has not been filled, they have to go back to press to run enough raw pieces to finish it off. The book you sent looks like it was produced without a cover. The body of the book had already been stapled, so a fresh cover was placed on the book and stitched onto the body. (The second set of staples) The staples are done by hand, so that would explain why they were off centered. There are no other staple holes in the cover, so it was definately a raw cover that was placed on the book. Afterwards it was hand trimmed on a flatbed. No doubt in my mind that the book left the factory this way. I don't know if this book would have passed through CGC without a purple label, because I don't know if they would have been able to tell it was a factory error. Yorick 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiceX Posted December 1, 2004 Author Share Posted December 1, 2004 That's the one. Thanks, David. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
