Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinAlone, unmourned, and unloved since 1969

I haven’t mentioned “Ghost Rider” on this site for nearly two years.

§ August 30th, 2010 § Filed under retailing § 4 Comments

So this turned up in a collection at the shop…it’s one of the pack-in comic books from a Marvel Legends Toy Biz action figure, this one reprinting Ghost Rider #2 from 1990. (The reprint itself is dated 2002.)

First thing we noticed was the fuzziness of the cover image, like it was taken from a bad scan or photo. And not just that…check this out:

Those small white creases there? That’s not spine damage on the reprint comic. That’s spine damage on the original comic this cover was scanned from. Apparently it was crazy hard to find a mint copy of Ghost Rider #2 a whole twelve years after the fact. (Should’ve asked us…we could have sent them a whole pile to choose from.)

Well, okay, there may have been other factors involved here, like, say “OH CRAP we need the cover for this scanned like five minutes ago, HURRY UP FIND A COPY,” or “man, just scan the file copy, no one’s gonna care that it doesn’t look mint except some dork on a blog eight years from now.”

On a related note: a long time ago…why, way back in the year foretold by Prince, 1999…I was contacted by someone either at Marvel, or someone doing some design work for Marvel, seeking a cover scan of Amazing Spider-Man #122 for a trade paperback they were working on. I just happened to have a copy in the shop at the time, and sent a scan along…and eventually Spider-Man: The Death of Gwen Stacymade it to the shelves, and lo, there was a blurb in the book thanking our store for helping out. When the next edition of the bookwas released, the credit was gone, but we enjoyed our moment in the sun. Oh, and SPOILER: Gwen Stacy dies.

And in case you’re wondering…no, that copy of Amazing Spider-Man #122 I scanned wasn’t in mint condition. Man, it’d only been out for 26 years, we couldn’t cough up a mint copy? We suck.