Zap Art

Up for your viewing pleasure is the cover to the latest Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D book I purchased and what a beauty it is...Just like #1 which I bought last month it's one of the best covers I know...
Jim Steranko is a true master, he used cinematic techniques and perfected and adapted the style to suit the comic book medium. Think of him as a true Renaissance man, combining the traditional comic book art styles of Jack Kirby with the surrealism of Salvador Dali.

I didn't read comic books at the time, oddly enough this very issue here came out the month I was born, but I can imagine what a breath of fresh air it must have been to the young reader to see this totally new style of storytelling...Steranko not only introduced or popularized in comics such art movements of the day as psychedelica and optical art (using art-illusions, to fool the eye)but also borrowed heavily from the then reigning popular culture (James Bond-type heroes, go-go girls, sensuality...etc)
Sadly Steranko wasn't too good with deadlines (this issue, except terrific Steranko cover, was made by a different fill-in team) and he drifted out of comics, only to return now and then to work on projects he could hand pick..
Oh and for you younger readers who didn't have a clue who this master of the Silver Age was, the style of the movie "The Incredibles" was based on Steranko's often imitated but never bettered style....

Because it's there

Last week, I remember it well..it was late, hot and I was lazily lurching over the keyboard, I made the next step in the evolution of Collectosaurus Rex....and I'm not proud of it

I bought a very nice issue of Avengers #4 (first Silver Age Captain America)...loyal fans of this blog (that's you and my mother)will now scratch their heads in unison as you know I completed the entire Avengers series in 2004...that's including #4...

So why did I buy it...well it's a better copy than my current one. It's a pretty expensive issue, and at the time I was just hungry to finally finish the series (it was one of the last books I needed) and maybe, just maybe I got a copy that wasn't that nice. I didn't pay the moon for it, but it always kinda bugged me...so now I've "upgraded"....I've moved on and become one of those people that buys another copy of a comic even though he already has it.....

Made me think of British climber George Mallory who, when asked asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, replied "Because it's there"

Mixed Feelings

I've had mixed feelings all week long about a sweet deal I pulled off...somehow it doesn't feel right.
Let me explain, two weeks ago a dealer I'm on friendly terms with had a few Silver Age books for sale including two of the 11 ASM's I still needed.
They were lower grade than I normally take, but one of them was ASM #28 which is prolly the most difficult book to collect due to the almost entire black cover.
Even the slightest little crack or fold messes up this book bigtime, meaning that the true high grade books go for an insane amount...
So I was thinking to myself, why waste a lot of money on a FINE when it will still look like donkey kaka ?
So I decided to go for a low grade beater at a low grade price.
Now, I asked the seller how much he wanted for the #28 in GOOD together with #34 in VG-...he wanted $100 for it...now I'm not 100% sure that I would have taken them at that price, but I never got a personal reply back. What the seller did was post the asking price (directed at me personally) in his "For Sale" topic....and I never saw it :(
A week later I check that topic again and see that he replied to me 7 days earlier and that the books are now on eBay.
So I place bids on both of them and win them....for $33.00...
So in the end I got them for 30% of the asking price, but somehow it feels wrong...maybe I'm in a oversensitive mood with this current heatwave...I dunno