Sunday, October 09, 2011

300 of a Kind: It's Tricentennialin' Time!

Howdy folks, and welcome to Ten of a Kind #300! (bells, whistles, cheers, all sorts of celebratory sound effects, Bully passes out paper hats and forks for the big "300"-shaped cake). That's 3,000 covers posted in this feature...actually, if you account for the occasional 13, 15, 25 (on Christmas), 30, or (on Fourths of July) 76s of a Kind, it's probably much more than that. I'm not gonna count 'em!

Anyway, I promised you a big 300 comic book, and here it is!



So, there you go! Thanks everyone, and goodnight!






Aw, I'm only foolin'. Here's what I really have for you...

300 Ben Grimm Comic Book Covers!










As you can see, that meant a lot of FF and Marvel Two-in-One Covers. C'mon, Marvel, give Ol' Blue Eyes a brand-new series so I can do this again at 400 with all-different covers! (I'm pretty sure I got 300 different covers, but let me know if you spot one used twice!)

Speaking of spotting things...thanks to everybody who participated in The 300 Challenge over the past 24 hours. I had a lot of fun reading your answers and hope you enjoyed guessin' 'em. let me know how you scored, even if you didn't comment throughout. Siskoid seems to have gotten a pretty good score (he knows his comic books)! Al started later but crossed over the finish line with a whole bunch of correct answers! MrJM had the funniest guess answers (and get a bonus point for mentioning a book that did reach #300 that I forgot about: P.S. Magazine: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly)! SueDenim gets two extra bonus points for coming up with two #300s:Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact and World's Finest Comics! (I have no excuse on World's Finest Comics #300 as I just read that one last week.

So, to tally up your score (be honest!): you get:
  • Two points for every cover you answered correctly,
  • One bonus point if you remember that 2000 AD labelled their comics as "Progs," rather than numbers,
  • One extra bonus point if you got the March of Comics one correct (because honestly, that one's hard!)
  • (And Sue got two bonus points as mentioned above.)
That's a maximum of seventy-two points...how well did you do? If you didn't do as well as you'd hoped, start studying your #400 issues for the next time around.

Oh, wait...I forgot. You get four extra bonus points (wow!) if you guessed which one of the past 33 covers was the fake one! Did you find it? [INSERT SPOILER SPACE]







"Archie Giant Series Magazine #300 was the fake cover! It doesn't exist! Didja get it? I Photoshopped it using (from left to right below) the #300 box from Archie #300, the header of Archie Giant Series Magazine #250, the picture from Archie Giant Series Magazine #52, and the yellow-back "30¢" from Archie Giant Series Magazine #454.

What were your clues it couldn't be real?
  1. It lists the price on the cover twice. (And, I photoshopped out the "Fawcett" logo to avoid confusion, even though Fawcett was Archie's distributor at that time.
  2. Betty and Veronica specials, at that time, always had both girls in the cover gag...not just one! With only Betty, it was only half as spectacular!
  3. And AGCMS #300 does not exist. The series numbering skipped from issue 251 to issue 452 in late 1976! There was no ish 300. What's up with that? The world will never know.
Anyway, the important thing isn't points, it's fun. And I hope you not only had fun with The 300 Challenge!, but also with Ten of a Kind over the past few years as my longest running feature. It's a lot of pleasure putting these together for you, and I appreciate you reading 'em!

Thanks, everyone! And remember: fun things come in tens!


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11 comments:

  1. Unknown10/09/2011 9:20 PM

    26 points over all. 12 in before the time limit. That was really fun. If only I'd started earlier.

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  2. -- MrJM10/09/2011 9:27 PM

    Bully, you're the man!

    -- MrJM

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  3. Michael Jones10/09/2011 11:12 PM

    Grimm job! (Now get back to work on Countdown to Halloween!)

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  4. Jayunderscorezero10/10/2011 2:57 AM

    27 points, I think...

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  5. Delta10/10/2011 4:21 AM

    6 points for me. 'Nuff said.

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  6. chiasaur1110/10/2011 12:50 PM

    Hey! That's only 299 comics with Ben Grimm!

    This Man This Monster has an anonymous scientist on the cover instead.

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  7. Bully10/10/2011 3:18 PM

    Hmmm, Chiasaur, I'd forgotten and technically you're right. It's the Thing, but not Ben Grimm. Hmmm.

    Okay, here's my attempt for a no-prize. That cover is a later re-creation of the events posed by the FF for Jack Kirby to draw when he and Stan came over to the Baxter Building to meet with Reed and Company to plot the next month's plots and stories based on the FF's real life adventures. So FF #51 is Ben playing grim (ha!) and gritty in the foreground ("Ya say the crumbum was posed like this, Stretcho?) while Reed hops into the Negative Zone door and Sue acts concerned and Johnny forgot to attend the meeting while Jack sketches and Stan asks questions.

    They were kind of obliged to do this for Stan 'n' Jack; after all the two comic book creators had done a decent job of portraying the weird and strange events of the visit of Galactus the previous month in words and illustrations that would assure the general human populace of Earth-616 that the Fantastic Four and humanity's new pal, the Silver Surfer, had the whole thing under control all the time.

    Then Jack and Ben went out for burgers and beer and cigars.

    That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I shall be phoning up Stan Lee for my No-Prize.

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  8. Taylor10/10/2011 3:47 PM

    this blog is so great--great work on this post.

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  9. Joseph10/15/2011 12:19 AM

    What a great collage! I couldn't have picked a better subject that the Thing!

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  10. Cazda Inc8/25/2014 2:40 PM

    Hello, I am searching for a cover or variant cover of Ben Grimm as the Thing that looks like stained glass or a mosaic tile. He has the Blue Eyes and I believe a cigar. Does anyone remember what cover that was?

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  11. Bully8/28/2014 2:18 PM

    Cazda, all I can think of off the top of my head is this one...?

    ReplyDelete