Grading/Restoration Check on this Golden Age book 0

[Drahcirh]

So I've had this book for a while - pulled it out of a dollar bin ages ago. I always assumed the outside cover was restoration/color touch, but it really is a lazy job and I'm curious if that is indeed what you'd call it. Notice the bleed over on the top of the book. I'd love a grade assessment too.

[Yorick]

We saw this with a Spirit 22 on feebay.  The discussion should still be in the golden age forum, but the basic jist was that the distributor spray painted the whole stack's edge for identification (I don't recall if it was for returns or another reason).  Not restoration in my opinion, but it is paint/ink applied post-production.

Cool double cover.  Any notable artwork inside?

[Drahcirh]

1 hour ago, Yorick said:

We saw this with a Spirit 22 on feebay.  The discussion should still be in the golden age forum, but the basic jist was that the distributor spray painted the whole stack's edge for identification (I don't recall if it was for returns or another reason).  Not restoration in my opinion, but it is paint/ink applied post-production.

Cool double cover.  Any notable artwork inside?

That's actually really interesting, I'll have to try and track down that discussion.

Honestly, I'm not sure - it lacks any written credits that I remember and my eye isn't attuned to golden age artists. It's something I'd definitely like to look into when I have a better understanding though. 

[Tony S]

It is as Yorick said distributor ink. If you are unfamiliar with what distributor ink is....

Comic books back in the day were sold on a returnable basis. Retailers might only make a couple of cents on a comic book - but they only paid for the ones sold. Comic books were printed with a cover date that ranged 2.5 to 4 months later than when the actually arrived on the newsstands. This was an attempt to get retailers to keep the comics out for sale for a longer period of time - the publishers hoping for more sales and fewer returns.   Retailers were wise to this and some would write or stamp an arrival date on the cover. Retailers were also deciding individually when to pull comics to return. 

Comic books back then were also distributed by regional distributors. Here in the Evansville Indiana area it was Loge News (I might be misspelling) Many distributors tried to enforce some consistency on how long comic books were out for sale before being returned.  They did this with a color code system.  Big stacks of comics would be placed on a table and an employee would use a can of spray paint and ideally do a nice neat stripe of color along the top edge of the comic. Then once a month the distributor would send - along with new comics - a note telling the retailer to "pull all red (blue, green, etc) coded comics and return for credit".

Even if careful, the top and bottom comics in the stack tended to get more spray paint on them. Here in Evansville the joke among comic book collectors was that the employee spraying comics at Loge was paid by the number of cans of paint emptied, not by the hour.  A lot of comics had excess distributor ink. 

If done neatly and the paint is only along the top edge, it doesn't affect the grade CGC assigns a book. Excessive ink will impact the grade - and how much the grade is affected depends on how bad the excess distributor ink looks.  Your book here certainly has a fair amount of overspray. But I've seen a lot worse. 

The book will not be considered restored - at least not over the distributor ink.  Nice pick up for a $1. 
 

Edited October 17, 2018 by Tony S

[JollyComics]

First story was penciled by Gene Colan.

[Drahcirh]

54 minutes ago, JollyComics said:

First story was penciled by Gene Colan.

Thanks!