Len's MYSTERY CHESLER COMIC SOLVED!

[Yoc]

Hi Gang!
Remember way back on October 25, 2011 when Len uploaded his Chesler Mystery Comic here?
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=16231

We talked about it in Len's Uploads topic starting here -
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php/topic,1964.msg31402.html#msg31402

Well, all these months later Rangerhouse scanned another mystery Chesler with The Exact Same contents AND the back cover!
Some detective work on Heritage Auctions which keep an excellent 'Auction Results Archives' section with scans of front and back covers.  Looking at all the Dynamic and Punch Comics not already on DCM which had the same story content as our mystery books we narrowed the possibilities down to either Punch Comics #17 or #20.  #20 was the Only book to have the same Baby Ruth back cover as Ranger's book.  But the Keltner Index gives a different page count which has always been our stumbling block.

Ranger then mentioned that the cover of his copy had been neatly razor bladed off along the spine and a tiny sliver of it still remained.  He took a very close look at what he had and the two Punch issues and has NO DOUBT AT ALL that our two mystery books are in deed PUNCH COMICS #20.

We hate to doubt the wonderful work found in The Keltner Index but in this case it was incorrect.  The page count is 52pgs and NOT the 36 as reported.

We hope that GCD will update their listing for the book to reflect the information we've found and the scans that are now Both up on DCM.

You can now find both version in the Punch Comics folder.  Our thanks to Len and Rangerhouse for sharing this mysterious comic with everyone here.

Enjoy!
-Yoc

[OtherEric]

Excellent detective work from all involved!

And I'm horribly amused to see that I called it as the Punch #20 back in the original thread. 

[Yoc]

Right you were Eric.  A little 'Amazing Kreskin' in you. 
It was a LOT of fun to nail this down with Ranger and Heritage scans.  And it was all but given up for lost until RH compared his sliver with the cover from Punch20.
I respect the Keltner Index that much.  But he was POSITIVE he had #20 and the physical evidence was all there.

[OtherEric]

It probably helped that I had actually had trouble with an issue of Jumbo where the GCD info (taken from Keltner) didn't match the book I had.  And on that one, I actually had the cover (!), but it was loose so I started second-guessing myself.  We finally verified the book through the one story that had been reprinted, but it left me with a skepticism about the Keltner index.  It's still an amazing resource, but it has limits.

[John C]

Right.  It's a valuable source, but being second-hand information, it's sort of inherently less reliable than the actual comics.  We don't necessarily know who contributed issues, how they sent the information, how it was transcribed, or how it was confirmed before publication.  Having done work like that in the past, there's always some doubt that someone fed you the wrong information or you misread their handwriting after hours of typing line after line of abstract information.

So, like the slogan Reagan stole from the Russians, "trust...but verify."

[Yoc]

There was a duplicate page 2 of the first Rocketman story in my upload of Punch20.
The offending page has been removed and a correct page 3 added.
For those that already downloaded this here is the direct link to the missing page.
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/preview/index.php?did=18444&page=3

Sorry about that gang!