COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Conan the Barbarian 3 Universal
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Grade:
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9.8
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE
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Pedigree:
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Northland
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Certification #:
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1051188007
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Owner:
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Rune
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
This book was a great opportunity to represent the Northland Pedigree Collection in my primary collection of Barry Windsor-Smith's Conan the Barbarian books. I appreciate diversity and this is the third pedigree I have included, other books being from the Rocky Mountain and Suscha News pedigrees. Apart from a Conan the Barbarian #23 (where CGC forgot to print page quality on the label), I am not aware of any other Northland Conan books (#1 to #24) graded at 9.8 (several books have been graded 9.6 though).
I have done a fair amount of research regarding the Northland Pedigree Collection, and it seems that many of these books have OW or OW-W page qualities (see for example Northland books at http://www.comicbookpedigrees.com/gallery.php?showold=yes&page=1&pedigree_menu=35&sort=title ). So OW or OW-W page quality may be considered a special feature, probably caused by the way the original owner kept these books. The Northland Pedigree Collection has been described in these words:
"The Northland Collection consists of a near complete set of Marvel and DC Comics from 1961-1971. Motor City Comics began purchasing the collection from the original owner in June 1996. The collection was purchased off of the newsstand, read once, and then carefully stored for the past 35 years. According to the original owner; each comic selected was the best condition available at that time. Even the few comics that do not grade near mint are usually because of printing defects, such as Marvel Chipping.
All of the comics in this collection show exceptional cover gloss and have near white to white page quality. Over 95% of the Marvels from the Northland Collection grade near mint or above; with many 'newsstand mint' examples. The DCs grade at near mint or better on over 50% of the books [...] An exact record of issues, grades and certificate numbers is on file with Motor City Comics".
Rumor has it that Conan the Barbarian #3 books should be very rare or be in "supposed low distribution", but there is little evidence to support that idea in the CGC census. For example Conan the Barbarian issues 6, 11, 12 and 18 are at least just as rare, so Conan the Barbarian #3 books do not seem to be in a more limited supply or more scarce than several other Conan the Barbarian books.
Furthermore this is not really Conan the Barbarian #3, but actually #5 (corresponding to how Barry Smith and Roy Thomas chronologically made these stories). In 2010 Roy Thomas wrote the following explanation:
"I realized it worked better from a chronological point of view to make 'Grim Grey God" #3, then to utilize "Tower of the Elephant," and to save "Zukala's Daughter" for #5. So that's what I did, and the publishing order of Conan #3 and #5 was thus reversed. And it shows, with the latter being a bit cruder than #3 and #4, more in line with what Barry had drawn in #2."
Excerpt from "The Barry Windsor-Smith Conan Archives Volume 1" 2010 (the foreword by Roy Thomas).
So enthusiasts wanting to collect Barry's first three Conan stories need to collect issues 1, 2 and 5 instead of 1, 2 and 3!
The unique feature of this book is that it contains the first published adapted Conan story from Robert Ervin Howard*, and had Marvel not acquired these rights, my guess is that Conan the Barbarian would never had reached similar popularity. As Roy Thomas explained in the extra material on the 2011 Conan Blu-Ray 3D movie, when Marvel Conan comic books were selling at their best, Conan earnings were twice as high as Marvel's earnings on The Amazing Spider-man and The Fantastic Four combined.
It is possible to register only one "Conan the Barbarian #3" book in this set, but I would like to share this registration with another book, namely the most perfect Conan the Barbarian #3 book I have seen, if you insist on perfect cover centering and orientation, high CGC grade, awesome cover gloss and pure white pages:
http://comics.www.collectors-society.com/registry/comics/ComicDetail.aspx?PeopleComicID=301417&PeopleSetID=10171
*See my description regarding Conan the Barbarian #4 for further details, when Marvel acquired the rights to use R. E. Howard's original Conan stories.
Current status of the 15 (out of 16) 9.8 books (July 2017):
1051566012, WP, Suscha News pedigree
1051566013, WP, Suscha News pedigree
1051188007, O-W, Northland pedigree
0037766024, WP
1108420002, WP
1198216006, WP
1264317006, WP
1341464014, WP
0906902007, OW-W
0906998010, OW-W
1042667006, OW-W
1129553005, OW-W
1133150008, OW-W
1197426005, OW-W
1224894007, OW-W
(WP = White Pages, OW-W = Off-White to White Pages and O-W = Off-White pages.)
I have seen 14 of these 16 books, regarding perfect cover centering (none had perfect cover orientation), 0037766024 and 1108420002 are the most beautiful of all. You can see the 14 books here:
http://s1270.photobucket.com/user/runesr2/library/Issue03
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