Big Ass #1

[wpbooks]

50, you do quite the service and I salute you, sir! .....so is this Bruce guy of previous posts the one you elude to that can bite you? Hard to believe there is someone out there more tenacious than yourself when it comes down to being the "Point Master". Thanks for sharing, as I now believe I have a 2nd that I always thought was a 5th based on Kennedy, at least I'll be pulling it out to check, when I get home this evening.....Oh, and which pages are out of order, the last few or the whole book....it might be something Kennedy mentions but I don't have my guide handy and it's been awhile since I've investigated this book.

[50Cent #II (1st print)]

Thanks for the Kudos, it's much appreciated

Bruce is "unofficially" (as I guess there is no official) the Ug collector with the biggest collection on Earth as far as I've heard.  He's been collecting Ug's for decades and is still doing so, but a bit of a recluse I think.  I've e-mailed him a few times without response except for once or twice for very brief responses (the one I recall is asking if he received the package of comix from Dan Florian as he hadn't left feedback in a while regarding it, his response was something like "yes, the package and Dan is top notch and I'm a bit slow with leaving feedback." or something similar.  But questions about comics in general or information he might have have gone without response.  I believe he's joined this forum, but hasn't posted here so I believe he does lurk around the board to read...

The Kennedy doesn't state anything about pages (only 28) and their order.  He also had the 2nd and 3rd print listed only as the 5th print, which makes his 3rd print actually a 4th print and I haven't seen any brown/brown JK 2nd prints and think they may have just been green green variants.  Also, he really didn't know the printing as he put ? next to the printings.

The pages out of order are the first page of All Meat Comics coming before the Mrs.Quiver 1 page.  The Mrs. Quiver should come on the page before the 3 page All Meat Comics story as in the 3rd and 4th prints.  The order on the 5th print and later has the Mrs. Quiver on the last page.

[dr_s]

I think Bruce has posted, under tree something. This was a while back however, when I was calling him the Good Doctor from the Midwest.

[50Cent #II (1st print)]

That was the CPG forum, I copied all his info. and now know why he knew so much.  Didn't know he and JK had a falling out long before JK died.

[wpbooks]

So, 50, the last 4 pages of my copy, not including inside back cover or back cover, are All Meat title page, Mrs. Quiver, all-meat page 2, all-meat 'the end'.  The box on my cover is R.Crumb in red.  Can you verify then, that my copy is either a 2nd or a 1st per your criteria?  As I have no other copy to compare cover stock with, but I have other thin stock covered comics, this one feels a tad thicker, but I could be mis-feeling.....any opinion?

[50Cent #II (1st print)]

Sounds like it's a 2nd print to me.
Please post a scan of the front and back cover.

[wpbooks]

I'll scan it next chance I get, as I'm now at work, and may not be able to get to it until sometime tomorrow, but just out of curiosity, is there a specific point on the cover you are looking for, since the key point is the out of order pages on the interior.....you holding back a perhaps relevant piece of info per the cover of this classic, oh wondrous 50????? Eh?

[50Cent #II (1st print)]

Just trying to figure out if there is an obvious way to tell the difference between a one-up DD and four-up cover...

[wpbooks]

Well, here are scans of the front cover and rear cover of the Big Ass as promised.  Under harsher light, they don't appear that different from the previous scans, but I'll leave it to your eagle eye, 50.....

[50Cent #II (1st print)]

They're dark, but upon initial inspection it looks like that same as my printing.

[wpbooks]

Well, it's an old second hand scanner....whadyagonnado?

[50Cent #II (1st print)]

Note the early printings had the girls face on the lower back cover red.

[wpbooks]

How does her face look on later printings? BTW, The darkness in my scan is on second glance a pretty accurate depiction of how the book looks when held, could your scanner be brightening the book somehow?  I think the dots on the bowtie stick out as slightly more florescent on your scan, and less on mine.  It was the point that kept jumping out at me before I scanned it.  This really is a toughie when you get down to it, and it seems weird that between 1st and 2nd printing they wouldn't have changed the plates to fix the stories in the rear however Mrs. Quiver may fall.  Having MQ as page 2 of  All Meat makes no sense even to an acid-head....so why only change the background color of the FC signature without changing the printing plates inside...Could it be some kind of 'state' issue, rather than 'printing' issue or is there another flaw in the interior that hasn't been noticed, that somehow might have been changed before the rear page placement was noticed?  This is one fucked-up, nutzoid piece of bidness, indeed!

[50Cent #II (1st print)]

I don't think it's a different state.  The paper with the white box is thick, the rest of the prints aren't.  That with the white box and different staple placement to me makes it almost definitely a different printings.  That's why I think the white box version is a 1st print, even though I heard that Bruce stated that the 1st print has a red box (Weist sold a copy of the red box print to a collector stating it was a 1st print, but he probably got his info. from Bruce?), but like I said if I don't know how to differentiate between a cover printed on a one-up DD vs. a four-up I won't know for sure.  The face gets less brick red and more flesh tone on later printings (I think after they changed the Mrs. Quiver to the last page). 
As for why they didn't catch the page order error, who knows but I haven't found anything anywhere that states the page order error was noticed by any collectors until I posted it here a few days ago, so it looks like it was either kept secret by those who knew for almost 40 years (unlikely), or I was the first to discover it AND document it outside the printers after the "2nd" print.  Haven't found anywhere where the corrected version vs. the later version was noticed either, and that's odd.  You can speculate as well...

[wpbooks]

Never having had another issue as a point of reference, I always read the Mrs. Quiver interlude, as just that...kind of like an interruption in a Monty Python skit.  I thought MQ was somehow part of All-Meat and not a separate story.....probably because I first read Big Ass after I had become used to the Python method of disconnected humor, and assumed undergrounders were playing along with the same types of 'stream of narrative' and Crumb was ahead of the pack.  Delusional thinking, perhaps, but a sign of the time as well....and I was 13-14 years old, so what did I know?  Amazing, though, that nobody seem to proofread this issue or make any kind of stink....I mean look at Zap 2 Head First, and how that got noted and destroyed almost immediately, and it's totally readable no matter how it looks....just the first corrected mistake that comes to mind.  Could the printer's/publishers of Big Ass have left this in on purpose because they just thought it was funnier somehow.....just speculating out loud!