A visual attempt to display the progression of comic book grades "Good" to "Very Fine"

**Please note** A comic's final grade takes into consideration ALL aspects of the book, not just the front cover

The comic book grade of "G" (Good) should be considered the bottom of "collectible grades". For a "scarce" title I would also include G-, maybe even down to FA/G (Fair/Good) as even a copy in that grade may have significant value, especially with early 1st editions. Any grade below this can have such a vast array of "major defects" and "pet peeves" as to be nearly impossible to display here. You may run into defects like water damage, major missing cover sections, beat up and trashed copies..... etc. If all the pages are intact, though, they make excellent "reading copies".

Why take the risk of putting a "ding" in that beautiful VF copy you have of some early 1st edition, but you still love reading and re-reading that story....... well that's when we get down into the value to collectors of copies in these grades. This becomes especially critical to those titles which had pages deleted in reprint editions.

If your collection does not contain any "Classic Comics" editions, then some of the titles you've read may have had up to 16 full pages of the story deleted..... from 64 pages down to a 48 page format. Please consult Dan Malan's "Complete Guide to Classics Illustrated" Volume 1 to get all that information. and so very much more.