Run With the Hunted Reader (1993) (1 Viewer)

[Pogue Mahone]

So, I picked this up because it was a File copy, it was inexpensive, and although it was purchased sight-unseen, I never had a File copy before, so I bought it.

This signature is so 1968 -1971, that I was blown away and confused. If you do an image search, all the Harper Collins sigs are period 1993 and some of the BSP versions have 1993 signs as well. But if you do an image search, you'll see a few of these old-looking signatures on the BSP versions.

I have no doubt that these old looking signatures were signed at the time of the 1993 publication, but it's just a really weird anomaly to me.

No conspiracy theory here, only curiosity.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

I don't know. I have two signed copies of Screams; the one without a print has a characteristically-sloppy 1993 signature while the one with the print has a signature very much like the one you posted (I view it as an early '70s style). I don't see how Buk could have managed to produce such a clean-looking signature in ~1993, and while there's nothing obviously different with the paper on which my cleaner signature appears, I've always assumed that it was effectively new old stock. But who knows?

 

[skiroomalum]

My two cents, it’s a 70’s sig page Martin pulled out of a foot-high stack. Pretty common to find on “deluxe” copies of Screams, Run, etc.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

And no difference in the paper over some 20+ years?

 

[roni]

it’s a 70’s sig page Martin pulled out

That would mean, it was signed totally blank and the print followed later. Possible, of course. But.

 

[Hannah]

But.

Unlikely.

 

[skiroomalum]

What else could it be? Why couldn’t it have been printed later and signed blank? What’s another plausible explanation?

 

[Hannah]

Unlikely because of the technical ins and outs of the offset printing process. You waste a lot of stock getting a page set up on the press, and I can't see them using signed paper for that. Plus a piece - or stack - of paper that's been sitting around for 20 years is not going to go through any press without a lot of trouble (and more waste).

I don't have any plausible explanation. Is it possible? Sure. Anything's possible. It just seems unlikely.

Someone with one of those "old" signatures in a later book would have to see if the paper seems different from the rest of the pages.

 

[skiroomalum]

Well, remember for like 50 years we thought man landed on the moon and Q said that was staged? I guess we’ll just have to be patient...

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Just to add to the variables here, my copies of Screams are both signed on otherwise blank paper, unlike Pogue's example. I don't think anyone could convince me that both were signed in ~1993.