I finish reading today’s “Astro City”, closed the book and saw it: the dreaded BOF.
Big Ol’ Fingerprint.
As I evaluate my comic books for cataloging, I hate finding that BOF. I mark down the reduction in quality and value, natch. (Gotta reassure all the buyers out there.)
Look, I’m never going to be the guy who reads my comic with sanitized tweezers while it is held on a Lucite light table display stand. It’s a book. It’s made for reading. But it’s not like I’m some grubby 10-year-old who roughs up his comics, either. I drape the thing gently across my right hand and turn the pages with my left. Then I finish the book, close it gently…and see that stain on my fingertip because the cover ink has smeared off.
It’s not like I’m a sweaty guy, either. Okay, admittedly, there are plenty of occasions when that is true, but not sitting in a chilled house in Minnesota when it’s -17 outside! My hands are dry.
To be fair to myself, the BOF doesn’t happen all that often. But it happens enough. What I don’t get is “why”? Is it that the comic books are still wet when they arrive on Wednesday? (If so, how long should I keep them set aside before reading them?)
Or is it just the quality of the printing? When the latest Green Lantern series started, I was a tad irked at the price but satisfied with the coverstock because it never smeared. Now GL is back to the same covers as all other books.
What say you?
I’ve gotten a couple of BOFs on my covers.
I’m not sure that my collection will have the re-sale value that I hope they would. I’ve got the first 30 issues of Spawn, and I looked on eBay, and there’s a ton of Spawn stuff for sale there.
I think if you have comics for sale and I have comics for sale we would kind of negate one another.
But that’s just me…
I believe one leaves oils on everything one touches, Mike. And yes, I think it’s the freshness of the printing that is the problem. When I worked with offset printers in college we were instructed not to touch anything freshly printed for 24 hours, and even then a lot of the stuff I printed (on coated stock almost exclusively) would “pick up” when you moved it unless you used the cotton gloves.
I’d have thought the technology would be better than that nowdays though. That’s been almost 20 years, and EVERYTHING else about printing has progressed to science-fiction levels from those days.
For me, I’ve noticed that it seems to be based on what paper is used for the book. For example Batman/Superman is fine, but reading X-men dangerous.