The Buyer’s Guide #83
June 1, 1975
116 pages, 5 sections ? Photo cover depicting Larry Bigman
Includes Beautiful Balloons #32 by Don and Maggie Thompson
Again, the biggest TBG to date. Until the next issue…
This issue?s cover featured fan/dealer Larry Bigman with more than a dozen super-rare items (Whiz #2, Walt Disney?s Comics & Stories #1, Detective Comics #27, Action Comics #1, etc.) fanned out in front of him on the sidewalk in front of a bank. Alan Light recalled, ?There was an armed guard on each side of him!?
Also, #83 was the first appearance of a comic strip called Fandom Confidential by Jim Engel. The strip featured caricatures of CBG cartoonist Chuck Fiala and him talking about comics. This series evolved later into a photo-strip by the two in The Comic Reader, reprints of which appeared in a volume from Kitchen Sink Press in the 1980s.
?Comics economics have entered a new, dangerous period,? commented Murray Bishoff about the impact of dozens of new Seaboard/Atlas titles hitting the market. ?Marvel has turned to the old formula of short-term, moderate-sales magazines, discontinuing a title as soon as it looks bad and replacing it with something else.? Mark 1975 down as one of the ?glut? years.
And, speaking of things to come, TBG reprinted a news story about the original Star Trek computer game (?You must destroy **20** Klingons in **34** Stardates with **2** Starbases?) which has been floating around mainframes in one version or another for more than 30 years now. ?Far out,? the reporter observed.
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Commentary by John Jackson Miller.
Special thanks to Russ Maheras for additional commentary and cover scans!
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Covers are depicted for identification purposes. Characters depicted are © their respective owners.
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