Still no underground comix in Overstreet... 0

[Gambold Vintage]

...but everything else under the sun is there, including promo comics, "Victorian era" images and drawings going back to the 1500s. 

The refusal to include undergrounds, which would take at most about 20 more pages in a 1300 page book, continues to look like the political position that it is. We get it, the publisher doesn't like them. Time for a new publisher. 

 

[Ken Aldred]

Probably more than 20 pages.

You should have a look at a copy of Fogel's Underground Comix Price Guide.

It's quite fascinating, and considered as significant as Overstreet in its specialist field.

Edited July 28, 2019 by Ken Aldred

[ninanina]

...and Heavy Metal.

[Gambold Vintage]

Yes, Fogel's is fine, but it's existence is not an adequate excuse for Overstreet to pretend that comics like Zap and the Freak Brothers don't exist.  Fogel's also is not an annual.

Frankly, Overstreet has no excuse. When asked about this in the past the responses are always fuzzy and evasive.

It's time for the Guide to stop censoring an important era in American comics, to say nothing of artists like R Crumb and Rick Griffin.  

 

 

[catman76]

Probably because the unbelievably huge amount of undergrounds and the confusion about the many different printings for so many of them. Then all the adult content and vulgar title names I doubt they want to be printing in their guide  

[Robot Man]

Sadly, they have not been embraced by a lot of people. I can see why. Me, I love them since the first time I saw them. A lot of folks are offended by them. I get it.

Also there is a pretty limited collector base for them. 

The Fogel guide works fine for me. Besides, Overstreet has been beaten up by not being “accurate” in their pricing for years. I can’t imagine they would do much better reporting UG prices. 

[Lazyboy]

57 minutes ago, emartin said:

Yes, Fogel's is fine, but it's existence is not an adequate excuse for Overstreet to pretend that comics like Zap and the Freak Brothers don't exist.  Fogel's also is not an annual.

Frankly, Overstreet has no excuse. When asked about this in the past the responses are always fuzzy and evasive.

It's time for the Guide to stop censoring an important era in American comics, to say nothing of artists like R Crumb and Rick Griffin.  

 

Why would you even care what the outdated, irrelevant OPG does? Seriously.

[lou_fine]

1 hour ago, catman76 said:

Probably because the unbelievably huge amount of undergrounds and the confusion about the many different printings for so many of them. Then all the adult content and vulgar title names I doubt they want to be printing in their guide  

Not sure what you are talking about here.  

I imagine you certainly can't be referring to books like this one here:

After all, this copy here did managed to fetch over $1,300 in a recent Heritage Auction from last year.  

Especially since after almost 80 years of publication, I believe that absolutely all comic book collectors here would know how sweet and innocent little Miss Apple Pie Betty Cooper would never ever partake in anything salacious or titillating at all.    

Edited July 28, 2019 by lou_fine

[Gambold Vintage]

The sixteen pages of Victorian comics cover a lot of titles and information. This is an era which far fewer people collect than undergrounds  - I think 16-20 pages would be more than enough to cover all the principal titles and various reprints of the underground era.

That said, it's clear that Overstreet will never include them, for the reasons other posters cited here - their titles and/or content offend certain people. This is unfortunate, because if they can fill a guide as large as Fogel's they are clearly a presence in the market and Overstreet should not act like they don't exist. It's also censorship, pure and simple. It might change when Overstreet himself steps down. I hope it does. 

>Why would you even care what the outdated, irrelevant OPG does? Seriously.<

Me and every dealer and collector in the country.  Please. 

Edited July 28, 2019 by emartin

[lou_fine]

21 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Especially since after almost 80 years of publication, I believe that absolutely all comic book collectors here would know how sweet and innocent little Miss Apple Pie Betty Cooper would never ever partake in anything salacious or titillating at all.    

And here's sweet and innocent Betty finishing off a song that vampy Veronica couldn't get all the way through:

 

[Tony S]

Overstreet doesn't list undergrounds for the same reasons Voldy doesn't grade them. They are very small niche of the comic collecting market. Many of the books had multiple printings that are difficult to tell apart. Expertise in the underground comix market - both identifying and valuing them - is pretty thin. It really has nothing to do with Bob being offended by them. He's not. Listing them would be more effort than it's worth in terms of increasing guide sales. And any listing would be full of errors and omissions. 

I can think of several publications I wish had a price guide. Famous Monsters, Fangoria, Starlog, the various Eerie publications, the countless men's magazines with story titles like "Soft Flesh for the Nazi's Fanged Doom" with women in bondage and rats. A price guide with that and undergrounds I'd buy every year.  

I'm not knocking the idea - and I have a small collection of undergrounds myself. Just bought a run of Cherry Poptart here on the boards.  But I think the direction needed headed is to see Fogel's price guide come out more often. Not to try to get Oversteet to publish a guide about stuff they have limited knowledge of. 

[Gambold Vintage]

>Overstreet doesn't list undergrounds for the same reasons Voldy doesn't grade them. They are very small niche of the comic collecting market. <

I'm sorry, this is not a believable reason. Victorian and Platinum age comics are MUCH smaller niches of the market and they get whole sections in the Guide, every year.  Undergrounds get graded on CGC and sold on E-Bay, Heritage and the rest all the time, and in much larger numbers than comics from the 1800s.

This is from Wikipedia, although there is no citation. It does make clear that Overstreet has never officially given a reason (if anyone can find one, please post it!):

"An early decision was made by author to exclude the niche of underground comix, an adult-oriented expression of the genre that Mr. Overstreet had no interest in documenting, for reasons he has never made public,^{[citation needed]} despite the book being promoted by its publisher as "the most complete listing of comics from the 1500s to the present."

I have seen other commentary on various boards (again, not cited) that this is a personal, long-standing decision by the publisher. 

>It really has nothing to do with Bob being offended by them. He's not.<  How do you know this? And while he may personally not be, is he  concerned his readers would be? Again, without any statement from the publisher, we can only comment on the action - which is frankly censorship. 

Hoopefully the next person in charge will be more receptive to including this important part of American comics history.  

 

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by Gambold

[comicwiz]

@Gambold I was you 17 years ago on these boards. If content didn't get purged so much here, I'd probably be able to link you to a thread asking the same question. I was one of the first advisors to Dan's FUGG, and brought on @oldmilwaukee6er to help Dan with the first guide. I'm an Overstreet advisor as well, as is Dan. I thought the best chance we had was when Jerry Weist included a section (with values) in his Comic Art Price Guide, and later when he was one of the people involved with ranking Zap Comix 1 as the 7th most important comic book of all time in this publication. The Air Pirates protracted legal battle with Disney is, if nothing else, a very important part of comic book history. I'd welcome their inclusion and would help in any manner possible to update values if it were ever included in the Overstreet, but I long ago came to terms with them being the black sheep of the comic hobby.

Edited July 29, 2019 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

1 hour ago, Tony S said:

Overstreet doesn't list undergrounds for the same reasons Voldy doesn't grade them.

CBCS' decision to not grade underground comix has absolutely nothing to do with Overstreet's reasons for excluding them. I was the person CGC would contact for help on identifying printings when Steve B was the President, and Haspel was a grader. I put Steve on blast twice on these boards regarding UG's, and in one of the instances, he mentioned it was NOT a smart business decision for them to grade undergrounds, or something to this effect, but that they still graded them. I offered to help CBCS with ID'ing them when they started out, but I'm glad they don't grade them because even though I respect Steve and the company, they would do a half- job, which would mean I'd have to put Steve on blast a third time, and that wouldn't be something I would want to see happen. I would rather they stick to grading what they know.

Edited July 29, 2019 by comicwiz

[Lazyboy]

2 hours ago, Gambold said:

>Why would you even care what the outdated, irrelevant OPG does? Seriously.<

Me and every dealer and collector in the country.  Please. 

[Tony S]

27 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

CBCS' decision to not grade underground comix has absolutely nothing to do with Overstreet's reasons for excluding them. I was the person CGC would contact for help on identifying printings when Steve B was the President, and Haspel was a grader. I put Steve on blast twice on these boards regarding UG's, and in one of the instances, he mentioned it was NOT a smart business decision for them to grade undergrounds, or something to this effect, but that they still graded them. I offered to help CBCS with ID'ing them when they started out, but I'm glad they don't grade them because even though I respect Steve and the company, they would do a half- job, which would mean I'd have to put Steve on blast a third time, and that wouldn't be something I would want to see happen. I would rather they stick to grading what they know.

Not to debate - because I know and fully acknowledge you are an expert on undergrounds. I've learned a lot just reading your posts over the years. But it sounds like CBCS and OPG had very similar reasons not to deal with undergrounds.  In your own words, they "stick to what they know". 

[dupont2005]

I’ve never even looked in an Overstreet guide before 

[icefires]

CGC recently graded a new Cherry 23x that has "Kitchen Sink Press" as the publisher on the label. Wrong

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by icefires

[comicwiz]

6 hours ago, Tony S said:

In your own words, they "stick to what they know". 

And not that it couldn't be a reason, but for years, it was public knowledge that Underground Price Guide author Jay Kennedy took legal action against someone who he claimed had lifted from his work. My understanding is that case settled out of court. What Jay alleged was they lifted everything, including his "errors", and that's how he was able to establish it was copyright infringement in the courts. In order to break down UG's in any guide, it would be necessary to denote the differences (at the very least) between various printings. and as far as I know, there is only one body of work that has done this. Jay has long passed, and it's not to sound like it would be open season, but Jerry Weist did what he did while Jay was still alive, and so did FUGG. There's no reason why it couldn't be approached in the same manner. My feeling is that CBCS' reason has more do with it being outside their wheelhouse. They do have someone knowledgeable on foreign editions, and they do those, which I feel can be just as tedious, if not more tedious on undocumented books. And yet they still do those. Perhaps if they had someone on-board that knew UG's, they might have done them. Who knows if there is any other reason, but I've aways felt the OSPG's reason had more to do with the risks with publishing research that could easily be contested as belonging to Jay Kennedy.

Edited July 29, 2019 by comicwiz

[Gambold Vintage]

>My feeling is that CBCS' reason has more do with it being outside their wheelhouse. <

Well, without any official statements from anyone, it's all guesswork on our end. But I'm not buying the "outside our wheelhouse" excuse. Undergrounds are comic books just like any other. If they aren't sure about a publisher or edition when grading a book, make a phone call. 

I'm pretty sure that the industry aversion, particularly Overstreet's, is because of the adult sexual content. Not all undergrounds have such content (Freak Brothers, Zippy, etc) but enough do that the whole genre has a big X RATING on it.  So like respectable movie houses, they are staying away from the porno so as not to offend the hinterlands. 

Edited July 29, 2019 by Gambold