• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Q&A Comic Production Flaws
16 16

674 posts in this topic

I would think the Dollar Comics would be very prone to bindery tears due to the fact that it's a saddle stitched book.

That many pages with a staple in the middle is a nightmare to produce.

foreheadslap.gif

 

Indeed, the defect is ubiquitous on them...and the ones that are "taller" than other books of the era are inevitably beat up on the top edge. frustrated.gif

 

My guess is that it is too noticeable for them to ignore. Thanks for the info!

 

I have no idea, because I've never submitted a Dollar Comic.

It will only cost $15 to find out the answer. 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would think the Dollar Comics would be very prone to bindery tears due to the fact that it's a saddle stitched book.

That many pages with a staple in the middle is a nightmare to produce.

foreheadslap.gif

 

Indeed, the defect is ubiquitous on them...and the ones that are "taller" than other books of the era are inevitably beat up on the top edge. frustrated.gif

 

My guess is that it is too noticeable for them to ignore. Thanks for the info!

 

I have no idea, because I've never submitted a Dollar Comic.

It will only cost $15 to find out the answer. 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

 

and the $30 to and from shipping insane.gif Yeah, I'm going to give it a shot. It will be a filler copy until I find a 9.6....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

screwy.gifNow why am I posting all these printing errors on 35 cent Marvel price variants well I have always wanted to know if these were printed at the beginning of the print run or at the end.

 

893scratchchin-thumb.gif Well these Printing Errors that I have just posted " the four pages in the Howard the Duck #15 and the Captain America #212 with the missing Marvel Comics Group Logo" seem to suggest that these price variants were printed first and that Marvel corrected the problems before they printed the normal 30 cent print run confused-smiley-013.gif.

 

893scratchchin-thumb.gif Well now for the other side of the argument, the 30 and 35 cent Marvel variants with the ghost of the original or normal price in the blue ink of the background now DiceX gave a great reason for this and I am sure it is correct.

 

893scratchchin-thumb.gif And I have one more argument that the price variants were printed after the normal print run. We were asking why some comics have two sets of staples a while back and it was explained that if the count of comics needed came up short they would take some from the discarded ones and fix them up to meet their number goal "includeing stapling a cover on one that didn't get a cover by hand" and this happened when the print run was done.

893scratchchin-thumb.gif Well I have seen four Comics with this Double staples and they were all price variants, two were 35 cent variants, one was a 30 cent variant that I just got, and the other was a Marvel Direct Market issue with the price in the white diamond.

 

smile.gif I now think that based mainly on DiceX explanation of the Ghost price that the Marvel price Variants were printed at the end of their print runs on both the 30 and 35 cent ones but I still not 100% on that confused-smiley-013.gif and would like to hear anyones ideals on this that have any interest, expecialy DiceX and povertyrow. thumbsup2.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hi.gif Hi agian I back with another Production Question and hopefuly it is not as geeky as my last post hear crazy.gif.

 

893scratchchin-thumb.gif Well I was wondering just how is the ink applied to the printing plates confused-smiley-013.gif I am especially interested in how the ink is applied to comic book covers hear is why over the years I have been collecting comics I have noiticed that every now and then I would find a comic that had just incredible cover gloss "it is like when you hold it edge ways to the light it just reflects so bright that the different color areas look like they almost glow and they really stand out from one another almost giveing depth to the cover" and then I see other copys of the same issue that look flat with almost no shine at all.

 

confused-smiley-013.gifCould this be due to the amount of ink applied to that comics cover?

 

What got me thinking about this is I just found one of these super glossy comics at a local comic shop and when I got home with it I had another copy of the same comic that was just flat as could be and it doesn't look like it has faded or had much wear so I assume that it looked this way new, the same as most all of my comics looked when I bought them new. 893scratchchin-thumb.gif I just wonder why their are some that really stand out from the rest?

 

Hear is the comic I just found you can't really see the cover gloss from the scan or how much better it looks than the other, all you can see is the colors are much richer on the glossy one, in fact spider-man's costume is purple on the glossy one and is very blue on the flat one. 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

 

797930-HD10c.jpg

797930-HD10c.jpg.6cfe88b5c30b00d811d51f969424ca47.jpg

Edited by cosmic-spider-man
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having just pulled some old comics out of a collection I purchased recently, I have another theory about books with outstanding gloss. I think it might have something to do with the polybags in which they were stored. I just bought a bronze age collection that had been sitting in airtight metal cannisters in a storage facility for 30 years. It consisted of about 280 books, ranging in condition from FR to NM. About 10% of the books were in the old PVC polybags that Robert Bell used to sell. The remaining 90% were not in bags.

 

The books that came out of the bags not only had great paper -- they also had superb cover gloss. Even the ones with more severe structural defects (like some books in G/VG condition) had blinding gloss.

 

What I am wondering is whether this superb gloss is something that happens from the polybag interacting with the cover inks as the polybag degrades, or whether the polybag is just preserving the books better.

 

BTW -- all of the books that were not obviously purchased by the guy as back issues have BONE WHITE pages despite being locked into these cannisters with a bunch of degrading PVC polybags for 30 years. This supports the belief that it is not the polybags that are the culprit, but rather the non-acid-free backboards and (most importantly) adverse environmental conditions that cause paper to age prematurely. The PVC bags were degraded severely, but they didn't appear to cause any damage to the books themselves.

 

hi.gif Hi agian I back with another Production Question and hopefuly it is not as geeky as my last post hear crazy.gif.

 

893scratchchin-thumb.gif Well I was wondering just how is the ink applied to the printing plates confused-smiley-013.gif I am especially interested in how the ink is applied to comic book covers hear is why over the years I have been collecting comics I have noiticed that every now and then I would find a comic that had just incredible cover gloss "it is like when you hold it edge ways to the light it just reflects so bright that the different color areas look like they almost glow and they really stand out from one another almost giveing depth to the cover" and then I see other copys of the same issue that look flat with almost no shine at all.

 

confused-smiley-013.gifCould this be due to the amount of ink applied to that comics cover?

 

What got me thinking about this is I just found one of these super glossy comics at a local comic shop and when I got home with it I had another copy of the same comic that was just flat as could be and it doesn't look like it has faded or had much wear so I assume that it looked this way new, the same as most all of my comics looked when I bought them new. 893scratchchin-thumb.gif I just wonder why their are some that really stand out from the rest?

 

Hear is the comic I just found you can't really see the cover gloss from the scan or how much better it looks than the other, all you can see is the colors are much richer on the glossy one, in fact spider-man's costume is purple on the glossy one and is very blue on the flat one. 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This supports the belief that it is not the polybags that are the culprit, but rather the non-acid-free backboards and (most importantly) adverse environmental conditions that cause paper to age prematurely. The PVC bags were degraded severely, but they didn't appear to cause any damage to the books themselves.

 

I noticed the same thing when rebagging some original owner comics that haven't seen the light of day since the mid-70s. Though the polybags were yellow to the point that seeing the comic underneath was hampered by the cloudiness of the bag, the comic appeared as pristine as the day it was bought off the newsstand.

 

As you have suggested, my bet is environmental conditions are the #1 adverse factor in the premature aging of comics regardless of the bag and board used for storage. It's getting to the point after seeing nice comics emerge from polybags time and again that the warning against using them for longterm storage is overblown and how a collector manipulates the storage environment is much more important...

 

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This supports the belief that it is not the polybags that are the culprit, but rather the non-acid-free backboards and (most importantly) adverse environmental conditions that cause paper to age prematurely. The PVC bags were degraded severely, but they didn't appear to cause any damage to the books themselves.

 

I noticed the same thing when rebagging some original owner comics that haven't seen the light of day since the mid-70s. Though the polybags were yellow to the point that seeing the comic underneath was hampered by the cloudiness of the bag, the comic appeared as pristine as the day it was bought off the newsstand.

 

As you have suggested, my bet is environmental conditions are the #1 adverse factor in the premature aging of comics regardless of the bag and board used for storage. It's getting to the point after seeing nice comics emerge from polybags time and again that the warning against using them for longterm storage is overblown and how a collector manipulates the storage environment is much more important...

 

Jim

 

Yep. I agree. Several of the Edgar Church books that were stored in Mylar sleeves lost some page quality because of environmental conditions. Like Tracey Heft says, the "inherent vice in paper" (i.e., the lignin and other atmospheric pollutants that it absorbs before being placed into an archival storage environment) means that there will be enough dangerous substances inside of a sealed mylar that if the comic isn't stored in environmental conditions designed to arrest the formation of paper-damaging acids, it'll degrade even if kept in the most archival storage media possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something I've always wondered in regards to nicely preserved comics...

 

Has anyone notice them aging quicker than newer comics if stored improperly? Take the Curators for instance. If I placed a 1964 Curator comic and a 1977 comic, both with white, identical pages, in a humid closet for a year whould the Curator pages start yellowing quicker due to it's age?

 

Or to even use a more extreme example...replace the Curator with a GA Mile High...

 

Jim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something I've always wondered in regards to nicely preserved comics...

 

Has anyone notice them aging quicker than newer comics if stored improperly? Take the Curators for instance. If I placed a 1964 Curator comic and a 1977 comic, both with white, identical pages, in a humid closet for a year whould the Curator pages start yellowing quicker due to it's age?

 

Or to even use a more extreme example...replace the Curator with a GA Mile High...

 

Jim

 

What I have seen is two comics printed one month apart, stored in the same box right next to each other for 20 years, where one has OW-W pages and the other one is approaching CR-OW. I think that there was enough variance in paper chemical content from roll to roll of newsprint that it would not be uncommon for books stored in adverse environmental conditions to degrade at different rates. If this is true of comics printed a month apart, I can't see why it wouldn't be true of comics printed a decade apart.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I am wondering is whether this superb gloss is something that happens from the polybag interacting with the cover inks as the polybag degrades, or whether the polybag is just preserving the books better.

 

893scratchchin-thumb.gif could the bag be reacting with the cover ink, I have thought about that also, but I recently bought a small lot of 70's Marvel's off ebay about 30 or so and I found that probably a dozen or more of them had exceptional gloss but these books were not in bags and I don't think they had ever been in a bag but I don't really know for sure confused-smiley-013.gif.

 

When I was younger I had a subscription to 4 or 5 Marvel comics they would come in these brown paper sleaves and ASM was always my favorite. Well at that time I had never noiticed any comic being all that glossy either from my subscriptions or all the ones I bought new from the spinner racks at my local supermarkets and drug stores, until I got my ASM #225 in the mail one day, it just had incredible Cover Gloss. The big blue guy and all the little Spider-men on that bright yellow cover really stood out and reflected the light. Well while writhing this I decided to get it out to have a look and it has been stored in a plastic bag since I got it new back in late 1981 and it still has unbelievable Gloss cloud9.gif and is actually in very nice condition.

 

893scratchchin-thumb.gif So I am thinking it must have something to do with the ink application confused-smiley-013.gif

798058-asm.jpg

798058-asm.jpg.f51d952adea844774726b5875a96ab24.jpg

Edited by cosmic-spider-man
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ink density can have an effect on the gloss.

The ink has an inherent sheen that will be richer when the ink is applied more heavily.

 

However...Most of the gloss comes from the actual paper.

One book I've noticed in particular is Marvel Team Up #15. All of the copies I've ever seen have a gloss so rich, I thought it was sprayed on afterwards.

I think this comes from the type of paper, because I've compared it with other issues from the same era and the paper is definitely different.

 

I don't have time at the moment, but I'll post some stuff in the thread in the next few days.

Some "Show and Tell". 893applaud-thumb.gif

I have some good stuff for you guys. gossip.gif

 

I have no idea about the polybag stuff. FFB has done more research in that than I have. confused-smiley-013.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

noticed the same thing when rebagging some original owner comics that haven't seen the light of day since the mid-70s. Though the polybags were yellow to the point that seeing the comic underneath was hampered by the cloudiness of the bag, the comic appeared as pristine as the day it was bought off the newsstand

 

I also think the polybags don't affect the comics and if they do it is not very much. I have had most of my collection stored in polybags "I think I got them from Robert Bell back in the late 70's" most of those comics were keeped in those same bags until the late 90's so most of them had been in the same bags for 20+ years when I eventualy put them in new bags they looked brand new like I just bought them and the bags were so yellow that if you stacked a half dozen of them together you couldn't see through them. I wonder how long you could leave them in those bags?

 

thumbsup2.gif Can't wait to hear DiceX views on the Cover Gloss thing. hail.gifhail.gif and when you get time explain how ink is applied to the printing plates if you don't mind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something I've always wondered in regards to nicely preserved comics...

 

Has anyone notice them aging quicker than newer comics if stored improperly? Take the Curators for instance. If I placed a 1964 Curator comic and a 1977 comic, both with white, identical pages, in a humid closet for a year whould the Curator pages start yellowing quicker due to it's age?

 

Or to even use a more extreme example...replace the Curator with a GA Mile High...

 

Jim

 

What I have seen is two comics printed one month apart, stored in the same box right next to each other for 20 years, where one has OW-W pages and the other one is approaching CR-OW. I think that there was enough variance in paper chemical content from roll to roll of newsprint that it would not be uncommon for books stored in adverse environmental conditions to degrade at different rates. If this is true of comics printed a month apart, I can't see why it wouldn't be true of comics printed a decade apart.

 

I don't think you can draw any conclusion from this set of "facts" 27_laughing.gifinsane.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
16 16