OFF: Comics: Friendly Frank's and Ellison

[RBrent1044]

Wow, I'm getting taken back by these Friendly Frank references.......one
favorite (and I am definitely dating myself here), is the time I traded with
Frank (was it Mangiaracina ?) long before he was a distributor.   I sent him
multiple copies of the Perez New Teen Titans #1-4 and DC Presents #26 (their
first appearance, natch) at ridiculous prices for a "Blood is the Harvest."
That was an anti-communism book (a giveaway) published by the Catechetical
Guild in the early 50's.  Anyway, there were only 6 copies known to exist at
that time, it was worth about $600.00 in Mint, and he had a copy that was mint
except it had a tiny sliver of the cover missing at the spine.  Because of the
piece out he had it at $250.00.  So I send him my Titans, he gets them and
complains about them and weasels me into sending him more (I had zero into
them and I wanted the "Blood" so I did it, I was used to him hocking me
anyway).

About a week later I get the book in the mail, rip it open and it is dead mint
except for a tiny little rectangular piece of the spine was gone.  I open the
comic bag to inspect the book......and out falls a little rectangular piece of
the cover !!  It was the exact piece missing from the spine !!!  So I package
it up again, send it to my buddy Bill Sarill (the KING of comic book
restoration, long since retired), and for $62.50 (things were alot cheaper
then), he reinserted the piece into the comic and it was mended PERFECTLY. He
used a process to pulp the paper again and then reinserted it, leaving the
mend undetectable.  When I got it back, suffice it to say, I was quite
pleased.  I never told Frank about it, even though he deserved to hear it for
all his bullshit and nitpicking.

So, there's one of my $8.00 worth of Titans, $62.50 in repair, a few bucks
postage, gets you the best existing copy of one of the rarest comics on earth,
Friendly Frank stories.



Robert