Crappy Comics in My Collection

-swinebread

Comic Book Meth

Cops bust a meth ring which used comic books to launder drug money. See here

The police seized half a million dollars works of comics.

I wonder if those plastic cover on those graded books would hold out the meth taint.


-Swinebread

Comics Are Back From The Dead

Hmmmm.... Comic Books might not be dead...

...At Marvel Entertainment (MVL), the industry's largest player, revenues for its print wares have been growing in double digits for the past three years and profit margins have been running at close to 40%. Plenty of magazine, book or newspaper publishers would put on a mask, cape or even giant bunny ears if that's what it took to generate those kinds of numbers - especially right now.

There's a few interesting messages in this, not least of which is the reminder that new formats of media don't necessarily replace old, and that some habits don't change as quickly as people think. And it probably doesn't hurt to be in a corner of the media world that is effectively a duopoly. Indeed, the figures are all the more striking considering that, by most industry estimates, some 60% of comic book sales still take place via one of the most archaic distribution systems in existence: ye olde comic booke shoppe.

See full article here


-Swinebread

Comic Collecting

How to Grade Condition of Comic Books -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Comics I wished I had followed

I have been thinking about what it means to buy issues from month to month. Some of the fun and wonder of comic books have actually been diminished, IMO, by being collected and only read in collected form. Of course the convenience and resale value make it more than worth it to purchase comic trades but having a story unfold over time has a kind of charm and surprise that you just don’t get with collected editions. I believe this is especially true with Silver and Bronze Age issues. I’ll argue until the day I that I die that Crisis on Infinite Earths is better when read over 12 months rather than just over a weekend.

However, I do agree that it really doesn’t matter for comics published nowadays as most of today’s comic books are really written to be collected. My thoughts are just kinda nostalgic for a previous four-color era I guess.

Here are some titles that came out when I was a kid and as a teenager that I regret not picking up for one reason or another. These series may have been great or merely mediocre but at the time they were published I think I would have greatly enjoyed them. That's not to say I didn't pick up a few issues of some of theses guys here and there but rather that I never picked these comics up on a regular basis.

The Thing



Alien Legion



Grim Jack


Justice League



George Pérez's Wonder Woman



New Teen Titians



All-Star Squadron



Suicide Squad



Dark Horse Presents



DC's Star Trek



Amethyst (1st series only)



Arak Son of Thunder



DeadWorld


Groo



Dreadstar




Micronauts



King Conan



Omega Men



-Swinebread

Comic Book Break-in

Last week, someone broke into to a relative’s house where I was storing most of my comic books… Now, I was greatly concerned about the safety and wellbeing of my relative but of course when I was told some of my comics were dumped on the floor and rifled through, I freaked.

My relative’s stuff looks OK for the most part and I told them about securing themselves from ID theft, but it really looks like the perp(s) were looking for money of which there was none. After looking around at what was searched through, I realized that the perp(s) spent the most of their time looking through my comics. Weird. I don’t have them in any kinda order despite a few title groupings, so I can’t be entirely sure that they didn’t steal any comics but if they did, they didn’t take much. I think they might have grabbed a random stack out of one box. I don’t have any real valuable comic books anyway, but I do have a few Bronze Age gems that they could have grabbed if they knew what they were looking for… but thankfully, they didn’t. I thought at least my early ‘80s X-men would have been taken but I guess they wasted their limited ransacking time by looking at Alpha Flight, Excalibur, and Power Pack.

A few comics were damaged but I’m just glad my collection is basically intact. This is one of the few legacies’ I have to give to Swinebread Jr. Needless to say, I removed my collection post haste to a new location.

Weird Fact: I discovered, while checking my comics over, that I have three copies of the Ambush Bug Christmas Special. Hmmmmm…. …all in excellent condition…




Here you can see the boxes are open and the comics are on the ground. I wonder if Gilded Lily on the cover of Alpha Flight #20 freaked ‘em out so much they stopped searchin’ TRY TO FORGET HER!


The drawer style storage boxes had been quickly opened and checked. Nope, no Action Comics number one here…



This drawer box was looked through by pulling up a few random issues but then the perp also shoved the box closed and bent fuck out of Amazing Spiderman Annual #20. You know this issue. It’s the one where time traveling Arno Stark kills the Blizzard…

-Swinebread

Faded Memories in Black and White

TMNT#6 one of the first, if not thee first, black and white indy comics I bought.

Back in the first half of 1980s there was a small boom of independent comic book publishing with black and white comics. It really kicked off because of the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and spawned all sorts of creative and not so creative books from individuals and startup comic companies. Besides TMNT the biggest legacy of the Black and White boom would have to be Usagi Yojimbo and Dark Horse Comics (all of DHC’s initial output was black and white). It was a Wild and Wahoo time in comics and I was in the thick of it as a kid, reader, and collector. I bought a lot of it and still own most of the crazy crap I purchased. There were some real gems once in a while but most of it was quite disposable. Regardless, it was still fun to pick up some odd stuff because you never knew what you might find between the pages.

As a lark, I thought I would list all the black and white 80s comics off the top of my head I can remember without snooping around the net. Most the comics I’ll mention I actually own but some were just memorable because of their title. I did this exercise a few years ago on a thread someplace but I thought it might be enjoyable to revisit it again, so her goes:
(I’m excluding Manga and Magazines)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (of course)
Critters
Usagi Yojimbo
Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters
Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils
Preteen Dirty Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos
Space Ark
Tales of the Aniverse
Dead World
Mildly Microwaved Kung-Fu Gophers
Gnat-Rat
Laffin’ Gas
Ex-Mutants
Wild Knights
The New Humans
War World
Dark Horse Presents
Aliens
Boris the Bear
Wacky Squirrel
New York: Year Zero
Portia Prinz (sp?)
The Dreamery
Miami Mice
Hamster Vice
Guerilla Groundhog
P.J. Warlock
Tales of Beanworld
Puma Blues
Samurai Squirrel
Twilight Avenger
Concrete
Aldebedo (sp?)
Cutie Rabbit (is this one?)
Xenoxic Tales
Samurai Penguins (is this one?)
Reagan’s Raiders
The Tick
The Crow
After Apocalypse
Zooniverse (was that in b/w?)
Fusion
Trekker
Bratpack (was that in b/w?)
Baker Street
Zot!
Combat Wombat
Predator
The American
Logan’s Run (not the Marvel one)
The March Hare
Man
Revolving Doors (was that b/w)?
The Realm
Four Fisted Tales
Mister Monster (When he was at Dark Horse)
Adventures (I think)
Captain Jack
War of the Worlds
Reid Fleming the world toughest MilkMan
Ms. Tree (was that b/w?)
Kola Commandos

That's all I got...

If I made mistakes oh well



-Swinebread

Free Comic Book Day and Other Strangeness

Don’t forget Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow at a comic book store near you. It’s gonna be a wild ride around here as the festivities will also include Iron Man and Dim Sum. I’m looking forward to it as I’ll be spending the day with Dean Wormer and his unruly Deltas.

On another note, a fellow coworker’s son lucked into a comic book windfall. Apparently he was looking around on Craig’s List and found an ad for a box of comics for 50 bucks. See, some poor sap was being sent off to Iraq and he told his mom to sell his stuff. Well, when my coworker’s son got the box home, he discovered it had a bunch of old comics. He didn’t have all the details but my coworker said that there was a superman from the forties or fifties and a lot of Spidermans from the sixties. If that soldier makes it back, I wonder if he’ll be pissed his collection went for so little. More info to come if I can get it.

I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a wonderful post apocalyptic novel, and a great work of literature. The simplicity of the book is its strength IMO. The father and son relationship is the core of the story (it’s that relationship that helps them endure the gristliest of horrors) but I also really enjoyed the survival aspect. Adventure can be found in the purest things, an old house, a rusty truck, or a destroyed forest. It’s my understanding that The Road is being made into a movie and it’s shooting right now. I heard on the local news that the studio is looking for a pregnant body double for Charlize Theron here. Yup, a quick check of IMDB revels that some of The Road is being shot in Oregon. That seems a little strange as the book is set in the South but Oregon does have a varied environment. Also, some of the scenes will be shot at Mt. St. Helens, which makes perfect sense at it has a blasted landscape, of ash and downed trees.

Remember Free Comic Book Day tomorrow!


-Swinebread


P.S. I swear I'll get to your comments soon, thanks for checking in.

Robby Reed Back From the Dead!

Robby Reed and the Dial B for Blog are back after a yearlong hiatus with new posts starting this month. Using expert design skills to help illustrate his informative posts, Robby enlightens with little known facts and observations about all ages of comic book history. Check out his amazing archives here, for past "issues." Hell, just check his homebrew covers. That’s worth the click alone.

-Swinebread

Graded Comics make news… finally

The LA Times has an interesting article on slabbed comics by CGC.

The Captain Marvel and Donald Duck comic books that arrive at the offices of the Certified Guaranty Co. are treated like archival treasures of the highest order -- armed sentries guard the lobby, technicians and appraisers wear latex gloves as they carefully examine each page and a sophisticated sonic device is used to seal the books up in the sturdy plastic containers that some collectors call "coffins."

Depending on the age and pedigree of the book being appraised and "slabbed," CGC charges from $12 to $1,000 for its services and, in upcoming months, the 7-year-old company will slab its 1 millionth comic book. That book may be a 60-year-old issue of Detective Comics that costs as much as a Porsche but it could also be the latest $3 issue of World War Hulk -- about half of the books that come to CGC now are fresh from the printer and probably 80% of them have never been read.

All of this seems like heresy to many old-line comic book purists.

"It's changed the nature of the hobby, it's turned comic books into a medium of exchange instead of a medium of entertainment," groaned James Friel, who works at Comic Relief, the longtime landmark store in Berkeley. To Friel, who has been collecting comics since 1958, "it makes these books a sealed-up commodity. You can't read them. It makes me sad. Some of these books will be sealed up forever."

But As the article goes on to say it is nice bit of protection from fraud

Now, "doctored" books get a purple label in their CGC slabs, the funny-book equivalent to a scarlet letter to a significant number of collectors.

There’s good and bad about slabbed comics. The bad being that people aren’t reading comics and it brings back the investor quacks that only want to make money. The Good is that it keeps sellers honest as fraud and doctoring can be detected. Me I actually don’t care. I couldn’t afford the high priced comics before and I can’t afford to get them CGC-ed now. What I really want is to read the stories. With the trade paperbacks collecting old adventures I’m satisfied.

-Swinebread

Spidey for Breakfast!

While shopping at grocery store yesterday, I came across the new limited edition Spiderman 3 cereal. It’s got bright red and blue corn nuggets and a ton of sugar. You know a film is on to blockbuster status when it is part of nutritious breakfast (ah ha ha ha). So I thought, hey why not indulge with an impulse buy, since it was on sale and I’ve never bought a promotional cereal. But you know what, after doing a little research online, I’ve discovered that there is a collectors market for this kind of stuff. Wha… Now if I just save this box of Spidey cereal for 20 years, I’ll be able to pay for that island I’ve always wanted. Check out the cereal collector guy from this article

During my research I came across 2 other fascinating sites. So, check out this guy’s collection of superhero food here and this interesting blog of food and grocery reviews here.

-Swinebread