The Summer of the Lay-over.

I should have called this "San Diego Comic Con 2013" or maybe "This Summer's comic adventures" would have been more apt but after spending so much time at airports all over the world this Summer I'm officially burying the word "layover" with this entry. To give you an idea I spent over 24 hours waiting in various airports...not boarding, or sitting in planes...but waiting. It was awful, tedious and mind-numbing..but to be honest it was all worth it.

 I was lucky enough to get my same job back at San Diego Comic Con, being a signature witness for CGC. I had a lot of fun again, interacting with all the creators, watching them sign people's comics and trying to keep a straight face when some fanboy was so nervous he dropped all his comics and then kicked them while they were on the ground. 
A nice bonus was that I had to witness the David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson signing, the Ex X-files stars were reunited and were doing a limited signing at SDCC. Duchovny was a little surly, although I did talk to him a little and Gillian Anderson was radiant as a blond and very friendly. 

A personal highlight was the Sam Kieth signing..although the "MAXX" creator looked like he would have rather been on the beach, he was a delight to talk to and made a lot of time for the fans...It was truly wonderful to see how he graciously answered every single question even after he was asked for the 5th or 6th time. 

But of course, it wasn't all work...I was there as a fanboy as well and spent hours and hours digging through comic boxes and looking at portfolios filled with orinal art. O picked up about 100 comics, nothing really earth-shattering, as my comic collection has been complete for a few years and I just go for upgrades these days. 

But I did manage to get some really nice pages of original art that have been on my want list for years. I made a few videos of some of the stuff I brought back... click on the vids twice to go to my Youtube channel so you can see them in High Def. 





San Diego Comic Con 2013 Comics Haul Part 1
San Diego Comic Con 2013 Comics Haul Part 2

San Diego Comic Con 2013 Comics Haul Part 3
 

And this year I did something I swore I would never do...I actually stood in line for some San Diego Exclusive Toys, my wait wasn't that bad, but I know some people stood in line for 4-5 hours to get a My Little Pony toy or an Angry Birds Star Wars action figure set. It was an interesting experience, but I'm not sure I would do it again.

A 1000 comics...April overdose.

April 2011 came and went and brought a lot of nice, sunny days. I'm happy to report that at least 30% of the comics on the list this month were read lounging in the garden, enjoying a beer (or five).

You'll also probably notice that I went completely overboard and read 235 comics this month, or an average of about 8 comics a day, every day. May and June will seem like lean months compared to this. Anyway I'm at 743 comics now after 4 months, so the new total of 2011 comics even seems feasible at this point.

Here's what I read this month :


Strange Adventures #205-216 Deadman
Brave and the Bold (vol.1) #79, #86 and 104
Aquaman (vol.1) #50-52
Challengers of the Unknown (vol.1) #74
Criminal V1 #6 - 10
Criminal V1 #1 - #7
Amazing Adventures #1-6,
Amazing Adult Fantasy #7-14
Amazing Fantasy #15.
Creepy #42 - #45
Elephantmen - Man & Elephantman #1
B.P.R.D. The Dead Remembered #1
Fear Itself - The Homefront #1.
Infestation #2
Kick Ass 2 #2
King Conan The Scarlet Citadel #2
Logan's Run The Last Day #6
Marvel Zombies Supreme #2 + #3
Sir Edmund Gray Witchfinder Lost And Gone Forever #3
The Boys #53
The Mission #2
Chew #18
Captain America - Hail Hydra #4
Eerie #28 - #31
I kill giants #1 - #7
Infinite Vacation #2
Fear Itself #1
Hellboy - Buster Oakley Gets His Wish One-shot.
Ultimate Avengers vs New Ultimates #3
Love and Capes - Ever After #3
First Wave Special #1
Catwoman #1-#18, #32 & #50
Catwoman Secret Files and Origins #1
What If Karen Page had lived
What If Jessica Jones had joined the Avengers
The Pulse #1 & #2
Flinch #2
The Losers #1-#8
30 Days of Night Bloodsucker Tales #1 & #6
Dark Days #5 & #6
Black Dragon #1-#6
Lucifer, the Morningstar option #1-#3
Alias #1 - #28.
Captain America Comics #1 - #4
Wolverine Logan #1 - #3.
The Uncanny X-men #151 - #175
Tales of the Crypt #7 - #12
Captain America #43 - #50, #600/#601
Captain America Reborn #1 - #6.

Cancel Christmas ?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I like to give myself presents... and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Especially at Xmas time I really like to indulge myself and buy something "really nice". Last year I bought my JIM 83 and my Batman 11. The year before that my ASM #1 and in 2005 my present of choice was Fantastic Four #1. So what's the big book I'm giving myself this year ?

Well to be honest there isn't going to be one... and no art page either. The main reason is that I haven't been able to find anything that :

A) fits in the budget.
B) Is a grail or close-to-a-grail.
C) Is of acceptable condition to me.


The budget-clause is a given, I'm looking for something around the $1250 range...which should get me a good selection. But it's clause B that's giving me the problem... there isn't really that much out there anymore. Top of the list is a nice Tales of Suspense #39 in 3.0/3.5 with at least Off-white pages, next up is a very nice looking X-men #1 in 4.0/4.5 again with the same pages...and then there's.. well to be honest that's it really.
Sure I could take the money and buy 4-5 books from my want list and complete a series...but that wouldn't be the same. My Xmas present should be one single knockout book which I normally only can afford around Xmas. So I guess it's not going to happen this year

But all is not lost, for once I did manage to get into the Xmas present thanks to a cool gift I got from my German friend and fellow collector Rudy. And here's me wearing it in all its monochrome beauty (and I'm not talking about the hat)
Just click the pic for a higher res version and Merry Xmas to all and thanks for reading my blog from time to time :)

My box of orphans

Loyal readers of my rambunctious rambling (yes I'm channeling Stan Lee again) already know that it's all about the complete picture for me. The alfa and omega of my collection (and my collecting) is to complete series or very large runs. In fact I pride myself on doing exactly that ; starting with a single issue and then work my way up (down ?) to the very first issues. I hate stray books, books I own accidentally. Got them as freebies, got them when buying a larger collection or stupidly bought them on a whim. And even though I hardly ever look at them...I know they are there, waiting in the night and defacing my otherwise perfect collection of books that "belong"

So what I normally do is give them away as freebies myself. Lots of people I know are very happy to get a single issue of a series, as a means of introduction or simply just to own another comic. I never bother to sell these as I can't be arsed really to set up an auction for a single book...besides who would bid on it ?

It's safe to say that I've almost completely purged my collection of these misfits, put them out to pasture, sold them down the river...basically got rid of them. Except for one single box. The box of orphans I call them, books I can't really give away (honestly because some of them are worth a fair amount of coin and others because they're basically cool). So there they sit, snugly between my Avengers and Fantastic Four series.

While I was dusting my comics cabinet (yes I turn into a woman twice a year for 20 minutes) I pulled the box and took a look. Much to my delight I was able to take out another few books to put (hide !) in my "freebie" box..but at the end of the day a fair amount remained and I thought it maybe would be an interesting read to see what lurks inside my darkest of secret possessions.
So I pulled about half the books and maybe you'll see a book you've never seen before or heard of...

Ok the first batch


There are some oddball books in there like "The Impossible Man Summer Vacation Spectacular" from 1990. No idea when I bought this, but as I didn't buy comics from 1986 through to 2000 I must have picked up up somewhere probably for the cool Doom cover... From the period where Marvel did special Summer books to cash in some more, gotta love the 90's.

More interesting is the "Logan's run #6" in FINE from 1976. It's a $10.00 for the sole reason that it has a backup story featuring Thanos in his first solo story (shortly after his cameo in Iron Man #55. Loved the TV series and I picked this one and #5 at a local con about 5 years ago for about 50 cents each. Still haven't read them

The 'Marvel Triple Action #2" from 1972 is a killer book which reprints Fantastic Four #58 where Doom steals the power cosmic from the Silver Surfer (hey just like the second FF movie). Very precious book to me as one of the few Marvels that I picked up as a kid (I think in 1976 when I was living in England) and still have today. A book I'll never sell...but have no idea where to put either. And just look at that fantastic cover

While writing this I tossed the Black Panther #2099 in the freebie box as well, paid full cover for this about three years ago...I blame alcohol.

"New Mutants #87" is the only New Mutants book I own and luckily it's the only one you should own. It's a $20 - $25 book in this condition. Picked up a new mutants run years ago and this book was in there twice. Kept the best copy sold the rest.
Edit : Just saw a little blemish on the back cover...it's a NM- . . . crap.

Another book I picked up in England is "Moon Knight #1" from 1980 ...a few years ago I bought the entire series, read and sold it again. This one remained and will probably end up as a freebie as well. Cheap Batman clone

And saving the best for last... "Captain Marvel #1" from 1968 in VG+. I got this book as a freebie with a purchase a few years ago. Ashamed to say I don't remember who sent it to me and I really should as I just looked it up and it's a $30.00 book

Well this was quite fun for me, I'm off to read the Captain Marvel #1 and maybe, just maybe I'll have a stab at the Logan's run books as well.

Next time I'll dig out another batch of "orphans"

be well.

Annual Report

As a kid I used to love comic annuals, they were often double-sized (at least) and were chock full of "extra" material that the monthly series lacked the space to publish. All this for just a little more money, too bad they only came once a year.

Originally they were nothing more than reprint vehicles, a good way to sell the same stories to a new public (or to the same public who were fooled or just had to get everything Marvel/DC published). What also was very profitable to the publishers is that they have to pay the artists as under the work-for-hire regime all the art and all the rights belonged to the company to reprint ad infinitum.

But after a while common sense prevailed and most annuals got new longer single stories and multiple stories in a single annual. There still was the odd reprint, but at least for much of the 60's and 70's the balance was perfect between new stories, epilogues to stories published in the regular comics and reprints of older stories now unavailable (or too expensive) for the everyday comic reader. Also popular among the extras were biographical information on featured characters, full-page pin-ups of characters and "back-up" stories.

Later annuals often featured stories with greater importance to the characters featured than in the monthly publication, reflecting the "special" status of their once-yearly publication. Annuals also sometimes featured the finale of a multi-issue storyline running in the monthly series and became unmissable.





The publishers started seeing dollar signs when they realized that if a regular story concluded in the annual, everybody was forded to buy the annual.
But the publishers smelled even more money and they wanted Joe Collector to buy ALL annuals. Now annual were usually released in the summer of the year,and became more and more unified and thus the much maligned crossover storyline came to be. Marvel and DC thought it a good idea in bringing many of the characters in continuities together for a single overall event.Sounds like a good idea on paper right ? Well not quite, this meant that writers and artists were very restricted in what they could do as everything had to "gel" and each issue had to end on a cliffhanger so the public was forced to buy all of them. A lot of the stories in the annuals of the mid 80's through to the 90's seem very convoluted and are oft riddled with inconsistencies. Artists had to draw characters they were uncomfortable with or unaccustomed too so the art was lacking too.

Annuals started to die out in the late 90's due to the near-collapse of the comic book industry in the wake of the speculator boom. After the recession, they were reinstated but sparingly but by no means as regularly as before the "bust", when numbered series of annuals had reached the teens or twenties, indicating over a decade of regular publication. But the good news is that if and when an annual hits the stands (ok, the comic book shop) it's never a bunch of reprints anymore or part of a crossover...it's a proper annual again.




I bought the pictured annuals a few weeks ago, all from the early 60's and all cross-over free (but some do have the odd reprint)

FF Annual #2 from 1964 has that iconic Dr Doom cover and is a key book because Doom's origins were finally revealed here, more than two years after his first appearance.
Annual #4 & #5 started using the wording "King Size Special" instead of Annual, but #6 uses both "Kings Size Special" and "Annual"... Marvel was always experimenting during the Silver Age. But don't you just love those (Kirby) covers ?

I still need #1 & #3...but I'm working on it.

The ones that get away...

The old adage "lose some, win some" seems to have been invented for online auctions. It's the nature of the best, nobody expects to win all the stuff they bid on (thank god) but now and then you can get lucky. I'll ramble on a bit today about the other side of the coin, the stuff I didn't win and which in hindsight should have turned out differently.

Like a lot of online-buyers I'm guilty on lowballing a lot of auctions. You see an item for sale that you wouldn't mind owning and you bid (or snipe) a really low amount. Very well knowing you have 99,9% of losing, but hey you might get lucky, everybody else might forget about it, some freak electrical storm might render all PCs (except yours) inoperative and you end up winning a $500 for $62.86 (the 0,01% at work). Ok, I know this never happens...I know people that bid on 100s of auctions each week using this method and I've never heard of somebody getting a super deal this way, sure you might get books way below market value if you are tenacious enough, but that's about it.

No, what I would like to talk about is missing something you really wanted (you really, really wanted) by a few dollars and not being able to put it out of your mind for weeks. (if I only had bid more, if I only had...). I work with "want-lists". One for my comic collection and one for my original art collection and try not to buy anything that isn't on one of those lists and I have a set rule, I only offer/bid/pay a certain percentage of guide and always stick to it. If I don't get it then the only reason is that it went for more than I was willing to part with, and I'm fine with that.
But I also have a few "grail" pieces, books or art that I just NEED to have (just like air, water and Cadbury Cream Eggs) or my life will have been a wasted one. Once I have a chance to go for one of these pieces, I throw all caution to the wind, lock all my common sense in a little velvet box and let emotion take over and bid, bid, bid.

But sometimes there are higher forces at work and you still don't get what need.

Probably at the top of my comics grail list is a nice low-grade Amazing Fantasy #15. I traded my copy last year and the wound just won't stop bleeding and then only thing that will make me healthy again is a new copy. Alas prices have shot up at 15% for low grade copies (even higher for mid graders), which means the $2500 copy will now almost cost you $3000. So finding the perfect book at the right price is getting harder and harder.

All my key books have been bought under the same circumstance, I go for lower graded CGC'ed books that look better than the technical grade. What I mean by this is that I go for books that have defects that don't jump out at you. Books where the main damage is on the back cover and not the front cover, books that take minutes of studying before you catch the blemishes. I'd rather have a 2.5 book with a bigger piece missing from the back (or from the first page) than a 3.0 book with three little pieces missing from the front cover.

These are not easy to find books, especially since I'm after off-white to white pages. So check all the major dealers and auctions sites every day. Two weeks ago I thought my quest for the grail had come to an end (sound of clapping coconut shells slowly fading) as I saw a 2.5 Amazing Fantasy with OW/W pages up for sale. Front cover looked a lot better than the grade, almost no Marvel chipping and a little moisture damage on the back cover, my ideal book.
The seller wanted $3000 which was a bit steep, so I took a chance and offered a lowball offer of $2200 (yes, I am a cheap bastard sometimes). Less than an hour later he countered with an asking price of $2800..I went to sleep thinking about the offer and when I woke up the seller had sent me a second offer of $2600. Now in hindsight I should have taken it, it was a decent price for a rare book, but I was thinking that the seller probably wanted to sell it fast judging by the speed of his counteroffers so I re-counteroffered (is that even a word ?) with $2400...Now I was pretty sure the seller would split the difference and come back to me with $2500...well he doesn't and counters with $2550. So my turn again and this time I offer $2500, now I was sure he would go for this price, if you follow the back-and-forth on this you see it leading to this price. Trouble is that it was getting later, so I went to bed, expecting an acceptance of my offer when I woke up. No such luck, sometime during the night the seller got back to me with $2525...read it again $2525 ??? What a weird price. So I wake up and see I have a few emails, the first one is his $2525 offer, I said to myself, "ok, I'll accept it, don't want to fight over $25" and then I saw a second mail, sent three hours after the first one...retracting his offer of $2525...and then a third mail saying the item was sold for $2600...WTF ?
Looks like while he was waiting for my reaction to the $2525 (I was sleeping !) somebody else offered him $2600 and he took it...Aaaaaaargh.
Now if he had accepted the $2500 the auction would have ended and we would have set up the deal...or if I had decided not to sleep that night I would have been mine for a lousy $25 more.

Moral of the story, don't try and squeeze the lemon until there is no juice left anymore...oh and don't go to bed...ever

The Golden Path

I remember a few years ago I was having an online conversation with some (modern) comic fans and someone referred to me as the "Golden Age - Silver Age Collector". Well I objected to this "term of endearment" and corrected him. Mainly because I always considered myself to be a "Silver and Bronze Age" fan and secondly because I didn't even own a single GA book and frankly wasn't interested in this segment of the hobby at all.

But how times change...In the past year or so I've come to appreciate certain Golden Age books or titles and even started collecting them. I have a big fondness for EC pre-code horror (which, frankly are among the best comics ever made)and Shomburg-cover Timely's (even thought most of the Timely interior stories are a little "innocent").

And a few months ago I decided to go with DC's best character and try to collect a full run of Batman books with Joker covers. Maybe one day I'll try and complete the full Batman run from 1940 to 1990, but the Joker covers are a neat way to start.

But this is old news as I blogged about this in the past, but today I received this little beauty. Agreed I already bought another GA Batman/Joker cover in 2007, but this is the first that cost me serious coin. As a Xmas present to myself I went out and bought the very first Joker cover in the Batman series, Batman #11 from 1942...now the oldest book in my collection.

This book has one of my favorite covers of all time, I think it's just fantastic. Batman knocking out the joker with a firm right-handed punch, the magnificent deck-of-cards background and Robin almost out-grinning the Joker himself.
Truly an early GA masterpiece with all the credit going to writer/creator Bill Finger and artist/creator Jerry Robinson. The most work that Bob Kane did on this book was probably sign his name on the cover, if he didn't have Robinson do that for him as well

And to think the original cover art to this book actually still survives to this day.
Here's Heritage's Ben Samuels who discovered the art a few years ago, before it was sold for nearly ...$200.000.

Little Series part 1

What's next after you've completed FF ? What's next after you've completed ASM ? What's next; what's next...Well for some reason something is always just around the corner to tickle my fancy and I hope something always will be. But it has to be something I'm 100% committed to, I could never collect something I'm not passionate about. And that's what I also collect the "little" series.

Now let's get some thing straight first, "little series" isn't really the most fitting name for the following titles, but it's the best I could come up with on the fly.I don't mean it as a disparaging or pejorative title, all of these series are excellent and some are even better (in certain runs) than the "bigger" series I've collected. I chose this particular moniker because I'm not going for the complete run this time. I have no desire to own everything from the first to the final issue, I just picked a certain (long) run to collect/complete and I thought today I would give you an update on how everything is working out so far.

I've confessed my love for old greenskin before, both comic- or original art-wise. There's just something about the Hulk I really like. I started out with the intent to collect Hulk #250 - #550, but this changed to #200 - #550. At the moment I only need three more issues out of the 350 to complete the quest. So I guess I can't really count this as a "little" series any more. A few weeks ago I bought Hulk #102, first issue in the series and like always lost my self control and have now decided to go for #102 - #550 and complete the entire series. Sometimes it's just stronger than me.
Of course this means I'll have to get another copy of that horrible, horrible overrated (but most expensive of all the Bronze Books) Hulk #181. I've owned three copies over the years and was always happy to sell them and buy better books with the money, but nobody said being a completionist would be easy.


Probably the fastest series I have ever (nearly) completed. I started collecting old winghead in March 2007 and now 7 months later I've collected 297 of the 301 books I was after. Meaning for those of you that read playboy during maths class that I just need 4 more issues to complete #100 - #400. I should finish this before the end of the year. From start to finish less than 9 months, I don't know what this says about me , but I'm glad I did it. It might sound strange, but with 300 issues I still consider this to be a "little series". After all there are about 180 more books (after #400) that I don't want/need/collect. So basically this is just a run, a big-ass run, but a run just the same



Ok, this might classify as the closest to a real "little series" possible. JIM counts 125 issues, but only the last 43 issues are of interest to me because Thor "starts" in Journey into Mystery #83 and ends in #125.
When I started collecting Thor last year I started at Thor #126 (which is the first issue in that series) and continued until issue #400. Deep down inside I knew one day I would go for the first 43 issues and this year I made a modest start. Modest because these early Silver Age books aren't exactly cheap. I still need 14 out of the 43 books, and alas the four most expensive ones aren't in my possession yet, but on the bright side, I did manage to get almost 30 books this year.



Stay tuned for Little Series part two..."the DC connection" in a few days time, including rants about Batman, Weird War Tales & Brave and the Bold

Silvio !

Even when I was a kid, I always was more interested in story rather than art, and there were only a handful of artists I would recognise by their style alone...Sal Buscema was always one of those. Don't like everything he did, but when I saw this action page with the typical "Sal Buscema Hulk face" I just had to go for it

Sal Buscema is, of course, the younger brother of John Buscema. He started his career in the mid 1960s, inking his brother's work but pretty much came into his own a few years later.As a successful penciller at Marvel he was one of the fastest pencillers and inkers working there and was one of their top artists for the next 35 years.

Now even though I seem to keep buying Sal Buscema pages, I'm not a googly-eyed fan boy, some of his work I'm really can't get in to. He is one of the very few Silver Age artists who's style evolved to meet the grittier, sharper-edged look of the 90's and not for the better.
Because of his speed, unfortunately he was often overworked and overused and some of his work shows this.
But when Sal loved a project or a character like The Hulk or Captain America he really aced it.



I picked up this latest piece on eBay and like it very much, lots of action, lots of Sal Hulk-love going on and do I really have to rant and rave about the villain in this page ?
I need to check the time lines on this, but isn't the Brood warrior a dead ringer for the famous Aliens from the same-titles movie franchise ? I wonder which came first ?



Oh and the weird title of this entry ? Sal's real name is Silvio

There's a riot going on

The Summer was quite uneventful when it came to major purchases, in fact I hardly bought anything at all. Normally Summertime is when my spending increases because I'm home from work and get to be on-line more (yes even more) and let's not forget there are bargains to be had during this period.

Lots of people sell off their excess stuff at lower prices because they need money to go visit all the cons. And last but not least, a of of people are on holiday, away from the computer or just outside more and there are less bidders for stuff on eBay. But like I said, I didn't buy a lot of books this Summer, but what I forgot to mention is that I did spend a lot of money this Summer...just not on comics

Ever since the punch in the stomach I got from my AF15 splitting I have taken a step back from collecting, this happens to me about once a year and never seems to last, but this time it lasted three months.
I just wasn't interested in hunting down books or looking at auctions. And I certainly wasn't about to spend even more money, not knowing what my AF15's fate was. So I turned to the side-street of comic collecting and picked up where I left about four years ago. I started buying original art again.

Back in 2003 I bought a John Buscema page with Doom/Superman/Spider-man and a Dave Cockrum Cover recreation of X-men 145 (Doom holding Storm). I was planning to collect Silver and Bronze Age pages featuring the good Doctor, with the crowning piece a nice Kirby Doom-FF battle page.
But at the time I was also very busy completing the Marvel Superhero titles and you can only stretch a dollar that much. I did check eBay every week for a nice vintage Doom page, but the pickings were slim and when I did spot something I liked it was a bit too expensive for me.

The art collecting kinda drifted to the background, but has now resurfaced. The sad news is that due to the increase in price (even in the last few years) a Kirby FF/Doom page will probably be out of my league for a while....we're talking $5000 just for a starter page. The good news is that I've decided not to concentrate on Doom and only Doom any more.
I'm going for published Marvel Superhero art up till around 1985 with the emphasis on Doom, Captain America and Hulk pages.
But if I find a page from a later date which I like (a Sean Phillips Zombie Doom ) I won't turn it down.

I've bought a few pages this month to start me off, and this is the first one I'd like to share.




It's a Sal Buscema splash, majestically showing Captain America going fist-first into a full blown race-riot.
Can't get more dramatic than this.

I decided not to frame my art, but to keep it in a special portfolio, secured next to the comic page with some info attached.

Unchained !

60 days....done and gone. This is the day the shackles come off. Sixty days ago I made myself a promise, after spending way too much in a very short time, to not only cut down on spending, but also not to buy anything for the next 2 months. While I was in the middle of my "down-time", I got overexcited and proclaimed, I'd not only do the 60 days, but extend it to 80 days, to have the first day of being able to buy comics again to coincide with my birthday. Well it was a nice idea, but enough is enough. I officially declare "buying-time" is here again.

The first week was pretty hard, but it got easier along the way. Some obstacles were thrown at me, a few dealers had interesting sales, one collector friend was dumping a large amount of Silver Age on the market and there was a virtual comic con that I attended, but I held on. The last weeks were the easier, in fact apathy set in. At one point I wasn't even interested in following discussions on comic boards any more, along with the thrill of the hunt of finding/buying new books, some of my interest inthe hobby waned as well. I even started wondering if the whole thing was still that important to me.
Happily when the final date approached so did my passion and the last few days of waiting were pure hell as there were so many things I was interested in buying again.

So did I really not buy anything ? Well....no (sorry), but I did stick by the rules. During that virtual Comiccon I bought a couple of dollar books, that's all I spent, a dollar per book (and they were all from my want-list).
This was one exception that I had made to the rule, very cheap books that were on the want-list were okay. The other rule was that if I found a treasure for a really low low (stupidly low) price I could buy it. Alas no Action #1's for $100 came my way.

With less than a week to go I also bought some other stuff, but I arranged so that I didn't have to pay before today (in fact I still have a few days before I have to pay). I haven't received the books, (they haven't even been sent) and haven't paid for them...I just kinda pre-ordered them, so I don't think I cheated. Of course your mileage may vary, and if you think I did break the rules, don't hesitate in letting me know.

I pre-ordered an Absolute Edition from Amazon Germany which was heavily discounted and I should get it next week or something. The other item I pre-ordered was a CGC 9.8 of Amazing Spider-man V2 #36 (the 911 issue). It's the book that brought me back into the hobby (I bought it in a shop and the next day I decided I had to have the complete Amazing Spider-man series) and the only comic that I keep buying multiple issues

I have about 10 now,6 raw NM copies 2 CGC 9.4s, 1 CGC 9.6 and soon a CGC 9.8. It's also the only comic book I would be stupid enough to buy as a perfect "Gem Mint" CGC 10.0 one day.

So what next ? Well, I don't have any plans at all to buy expensive books for the moment, I'll try to leave my Golden Age Batman run for next year.
For now I would be content if I could complete the following runs :

Captain America #100 - #400 (need about 50 books)
Hulk #200 - #500+ (8 more books to go)
Batman #200 - #300 (9 more books)

And of course a couple of smaller series...but more on those later

Golden Years

About three weeks ago, I went into unchartered territory, I boldly went where I had never gone before..I crossed a bridge I never thought I would cross...I went to the Golden Age of comic books.


Wikipedia describes the Golden Age of comic books as " a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought as lasting from the 1930s until the mid-1950s during which comic books enjoyed a surge of popularity, the archetype of the superhero was created and defined, and many of the most famous superheroes debuted."
It was also the period where a number of books sold over a million copies per issue, a feet never repeated during the last 50 years.Every kid was reading comic books, which is alas also the weak point of Golden Age comics.
You see, they really were a kid's medium...Most stories are very childish and simple, art is weak and static most of the time and they were simply regarded as throwaway literature to keep kids busy for a while.
As I'm nearing the completion of my Silver Age collection, I have often thought about going back even further in time and start collecting Golden Age books...despite of what I just wrote.
You see the covers of Golden Age books are generally the best of all ages. Most of them are wonderful, dynamic, colourful and show a real artistry. Then even more than now, the cover was everything as it was a means to get the punter to buy the book.
A lot of collectors I know agree with me about the quality of the stories and (interior) art of most GA books, but they persist in collecting GA because of those magnificent covers and hardly take any notice of the contents of the book. But I just couldn't do it, I've always been more partial to story than to art, so I needed something extra.

Of all the GA books I've read over the years (as reprints) two series stood out, Pre-Code EC (Horror) Comics and Batman comics. Both were just written a little better than their contemporaries, art was a little more dynamic and characterization was well thought out. So if I went Golden Age, it would have to be through one of these books.
As I've nearly completed Batman #200 - #400 it seems the more logical approach to go with that title. Trouble is that as a completionist I HAVE to get all the issues and most Silver Age Batman books (from #100 to around #200) just suck, which is the reason I decided to start my Batman run with #200, the tail-end of the Silver Age and continue into those wonderful Bronze Age Bat books.
The other drawback was money-wise. Even if I did bite the bullet and collect #100 - #200, I would also have to dig down and get Batman #1 - #99...
Granted most of those issues are better than the Silver Age run, but Batman #1 in VG is at least $10.000...which I don't see me handing over just yet.

So what to do, what to do ? In the end I came to a decision, I'm going to start collecting Golden Age books as well, Golden Age Batman books, but only the ones that have a Joker cover appearance. I feel it would make for a nice collection as well to have Batman #200 - #400 complete + all the preceding books that have Joker covers. The first Batman issue with a Joker cover is Batman #11 from 1942.
Still a lot of expensive books in that bunch, but feasible over time.
Concluding,here's a scan of the first Golden Age book I have ever bought, it's Batman #37 from 1945, the oldest book in my collection, a very cool Joker cover and hopefully the start of whole new adventure in comic collecting.

Oh and I haven't gone back on my word about not buying books for a while, this book and the ones in the upcoming blog entries were all bought during that week of madness I had a while ago.
I'm at day #10 of not-buying-comics-for-60-days and it hasn't been that hard to be honest. Let's see if I last the whole two months

Oh my God, they killed Kenny's books

Collecting Silver and Bronze age books in a tiny, remote country isn't always that easy..in fact it's pretty hard. There are no dealers with any stock, no comic shops that sell back issues older than the 90's, no cons...and most important, almost no other collectors. Now I don't want go off on a tangent and lament about my poor poor situation, but I thought it important to state it up front.

So my only option is to buy overseas..America that is, the US of A, the home of the superhero comic book. After half a decade on various comic boards I've build up a large network of friends and contacts and I've imported over 8000 comic books this way. Thanks to these people my collection is ever growing and I don't feel all isolated on my island of Franco-Belgian style.
Comics collectors like to build their collection, that's a give,but what I have noticed is that also like to help others build their collection as well, sometimes being geographically challenged has helped rather than hindered me, lots of people have given me sweet sweet deals, partly because they know they are helping and partly because they know there's only a small chance I'll immoderately (flip) sell the book they gave me a huge discount on.Nothing is more frustrating than selling a book to somebody and giving them a break and then watching them sell the same book for a lot more only a short time later. I'm not saying that I'm Saint Chromium or anything, but there's just nobody for me to sell to. Nobody here wants the stuff, most US collectors won't buy from some collector in some miniature country (and why would they when they have all the books they'll ever need close by) and shipping to the US is so expensive that nobody would even bother.

And so the "s"-word has fallen...shipping, the great barrier, the black hole that just keeps sucking money. The good news is that US shipping prices are among the cheapest in the world. The bad news is that it's still a lot of money. I used to keep data on shipping costs...just for fun, calculating how much I was spending on shipping alone. I stopped doing this in 2005....when I reached $5000...I couldn't believe I had spend the same amount a nice VG/FINE copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 would set me back on stamps...stamps, brown paper and boxes. I just don't want to know anymore how much I've spend on top of that 5K the last two years. If you're looking for me, I'll be next to the ostrich, burying my head in sand.

And next to the cost, there's also the stress, will the books arrive ? And if they arrive, will they arrive in good shape ? Will my $500 NM book be turned into a $120 FINE book because some bored postal employees decided to play "package-frisbee" during their lunch our ? Yes I can insure the books, but that's another lose-lose situation. As long as I import my used comics (back issues are second-hand) as literature, customs leave me alone. If I declare that I'm not a business and these books are for me and me alone...it's all golden and they float through, but once I insure them they have to take another avenue and tax, tax and tax me until I bleed out of all orifices. If I have a $600 book delivered to my house insured, I pay roughly $200 in tax (33%) each and every time. Meaning that even if I lose one book in three it would still be cheaper than to have them sent insured.Lucky for me 99% of all packages have arrived, big package, small ones, cheap books, high dollar books, all have arrived almost always in perfect shape.

Three months ago I would have proudly put 100%, yes even 5 years of importing box after box of comics from overseas, each and every package had arrived..but somehow I knew this kind of luck couldn't not last forever...you can't beat the odds.
So my first "loss" happened a few months ago and it was a very strange one. And this is how we get to Kenny from this topic's title (not that Kenny is strange hehe).
Kenny is one of the good guys, an eternal optimist, proud father and family man and a really BIG comic book fan, interested in all ages, all publishers, all types of books and even in the fringe side like restoration detection..in short the perfect comic-buddy and a very reliable source to deal with. Kenny had some books for sale that I wanted and we quickly made a deal, a deal being the optimum word as he gave me a very healthy discount. We traded some info and he sent me the package. It never arrived. Kenny was very sorry and offered to refund me the money, which he was under no obligation to do, but he did it anyway, coz that's the kind of person Kenny is. Now I didn't want Kenny to suffer any monetary loss because the post office dropped the ball this time,so we agreed that he would send m some replacement books for roughly the same amount. We both were happy and package #2 was sent....it never arrived.

At this point we both agreed that something fishy was going on, the first package not arriving could have been karma finally kicking me in the nuts for always having gotten my packages, too bad it happened on Kenny's deal...but that's Karma for you. But the only two packages out of 100's in 5 years that went missing, coming from the same town ? And sent close to each other ? Coincidence ?? We didn't think so.
We started looking at what could have happened and decided that somewhere en route from me to him somebody was swiping international packages... We wrapped our brain around all of this and then suddenly one of the packages turned up....the second one....and it was returned to Kenny and it looked like this :



The postal label read that it was never picked up (by me) and was then returned to sender...which is impossible. I assure you that I claim my packages each and every time, I get the xmas feeling every time I see a you-were-not-at-home-so-please-pick-the-package-up-at-the-PO slip in my mailbox.
No way any note was left, my mailbox is large and built-in into my house, so the elements can't touch anything and I'm the only one that gets the mail (my wife knows I love mail, so she leaves it to me )

Dunno what happened, maybe it was delivered to the wrong house (and a slip left) and that person saw it was not for them and never bothered to pick it up
Pretty sure it wasn't delivered in my neighborhood, as I'm the only one to receive (large volumes of US packages) and both my neighbors have at times accepted packages for me and then brought them round when I got home from work.

This is what the books looked like :


Box #1 is still somewhere in limbo...address on the label was correct (mine) but I think that the first box was delivered to the wrong address and the people just kept it. Second box was again delivered to the wrong address, but nobody was home and the postman left a slip to come pick it up at the post office. The people at that address probably knew that wouldn't get it at the PO, so never bothered to pick it up and it was returned to Kenny (after somebody used it as a chair for a few weeks) Just for the record, I'm not angry at Kenny at all.... this was in fact the make-good box he sent me...he still is a friend and we can laugh (a little) at this misadventure...oh remember how I said that Kenny was also interested in restoring books ? Well today he told me he sent me another package with the books that were returned and this is what he did to them :


Never change Kenny, you are one hell of a guy...now let's hope box #3 arrives

Gothic

Remember about half a year ago I decided to make a side-step into late Silver and Bronze DC and try and collect a Batman run ?
Well it's been working out quite well for me and I'm making nice progress. I'm with issue #200 and ending the run at #350, at the moment I'm about 15 books short..So it should happen before the Summer

The really fun part has been, the lack of pressure...I've never had to actively seek Batman books out, I just bought a few when I was dealing on other books. When somebody had one or more books that I needed for
one of my Silver Age marvel runs, I always asked them if he didn't have any Batmans I was looking for...
Nice and easy way to collect.

I never dreamed it would be so easy, seeing as the start of the run is nearly 40 years old, but it was. Most books were very reasonably priced and easy to obtain. Of course once I get down to 4 or 5 issues left, I'll have
to let go of this free-flowing collecting vibe and actually start actively looking for the last books...

Anyway, I got no less than 22 issues the last two weeks..from various sources. I included some of the better cover scans to see what you are missing if you never got into Bronze Batman.






This is batman #227 and is the only difficult book to get out of the run, reason is the fantastic cover by Neal Adams. Adams went back to September 1939 and swiped the cover to Detective #31 and made his own
homage. Both covers have a wonderful gothic tone and thanks to the fact that the cover to Batman #227 is considered the best overal DC Bronze Age cover prices have gone out the window.
Guide for a VF/NM is about $44.00....You wont even be able you get a decent FINE for that price. Expect to pay about $200 for any copy that's even close to NM...it's a much loved book