TWO 'DOUBLE DOUBLE COMICS' (SORT OF) - BUT ONE IS MORE 'DOUBLE' THAN THE OTHER...

Copyright DC COMICS

As it happens, I bought two of the above Superman albums (via ebay) on the same day just over a week ago, and it's just as well I did.  I ordered the first one knowing it was a bit battered (I felt confident I could 'tart it up' a little), but then, nearly 3 hours later, it belatedly occurred to me to check to see if a better condition copy might be available and - surprise, surprise - there was, so I bought that one too.

When the first one arrived, not only was it battered and b*ggered, it had 64 pages missing.  Not to worry, the seller gave me an immediate, no-quibble refund in full and told me to bin the book.  How can 64 missing pages go unnoticed you may wonder.  Before we get into that, first let me remind you (as disclosed in an earlier post) that the album is a collection of 7 issues of Super DC, which consisted of 40 pages per issue.

The covers of each individual stapled comic had been removed (without affecting any of the strips), then the comics were glued together and given a new cardboard cover - similar in concept to the Double Double Comics that Thorpe & Porter used to sell in order to shift unsold US DC and Marvel mags.  However, unnoticed by the seller, the first two issues had become detached at the staples and been lost, leaving behind only their pages numbered 3, 4, 37, & 38.  (In other words, pages 5 to 36 were missing - twice.)

Someone had glued the pages together on either side of the gap at the spine to conceal the absent contents, but the jump from page 4 to 37 gave the game away to anyone who looked at the page numbers.  I presume this was a previous owner - the seller probably just didn't check the book in any great detail, an oversight many sellers are prone to (I can safely say, from long hard experience of buying stuff via ebay).

Anyway, I thought it was a shame just to bin it, so decided to perform some remedial surgery on it.  First I removed any pages that started a story, but didn't finish it (or finished a story with no start), which amounted to 6 pages (3 sheets) in all.  Although the book originally said '250 Super Pages', it actually had 252 counting the new cover.  The abridged edition now has 182, but following the original blurbs example, I printed out '180' to cover the now redundant number.

So it's not complete, but perhaps one of you UK Crivvies might like it, free of charge.  One stipulation: I want it to go to someone who will keep it, not just read and then throw away or give to a charity shop.  In other words, a 'forever home', where it can sit in a corner of a shelf somewhere and enjoy the status of 'interesting curio'.  Anyone interested?  Let me know.  (Remember, it's the one on the left of the picture that's available, not the one on the right.)

Posted in: Cartoons