F For Fake

Been a minute since i bought any books, but picked up a few things this week. First up, a couple of slabs from Bay. I've been looking for that Gotham Knights forever, there are only a couple of 9.8's in the census. One of my all time favorite pervy/kinky Bollands, happy to finally land one, and remove that long-suffering eBay alert! Next was a book for my Aliens and The Thing collection.

Beautiful, and definitely hits the nostalgia zone, particularly this time of year.

What terrible news to find upon logging in after a holiday break. Like many of us, I didn't know him personally, but he was definitely one of the first boardies that I started paying attention to when I joined up, and I always enjoyed his sense of humor and eclectic taste. Sharp guy, this place will be less interesting without him. Condolences to his family.

Thanks, stupid autocorrect on the phone thwarts me again!

Jsa-wh-co Immediately after winning, contacted me to let me know his son had bought the book, not him, and obviously he wouldn’t have bought it due to the condition. I hear this lie about kids and accidental purchases a few times a year. Maybe it’s the same kid? Anyway, block away.

They've been doing random price drops, several books have hit 60% off, so hopefully we'll see a few more of those in addition to the discounts. Fingers crossed!

Thank you, was coming in specifically to post this. This series was a ton of fun, and surprisingly gory!

IST's Black Friday Week sales start today. Not a HUGE deal, but if you're already ordering, every bit helps, plus they're boosting the repeat buyer discount to 3%. HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM ALL OF US AT INSTOCKTRADES! AS A THANK YOU TO ALL OUR GREAT CUSTOMERS, WE HAVE PLANNED AN AWESOME WEEK OF SALES! All sales included in this email will start and end at 12pm Eastern Standard Time on their specific dates listed below. The following publisher sales may exclude current sale items (Deals of the Week, Manga sale, Red Tag Sale, & Clearance) Start Date – End Date Tuesday, November 21st – Tuesday, November 28th DC up to 45% off Image up to 45% off Dark Horse up to 40% off Marvel up to 42% off Tuesday, November 21st – Wednesday, November 22nd Kodansha up to 40% off Vertical up to 40% off Viz Media up to 35% off Yen Press up to 30% off Wednesday, November 22nd – Thursday, November 23rd IDW up to 40% off Boom! Studios up to 35% off Thursday, November 23rd – Friday, November 24th Fantagraphics up to 35% off Dynamite up to 35% off Friday, November 24th – Tuesday, November 28th Loyalty Discount, which is normally an additional 2% off, will be bumped up to 3% off! How do I earn the loyalty discount? Place one order during the promotional period! Each order placed after this order will qualify for the loyalty discount as long as each order is placed within 8 days of the previous order. You can have a string of orders with the loyalty discount. For the qualifying order, there may be a delay of approximately an hour before you will see this discount reflected on our website or in your cart during the checkout process. The loyalty discount is not effective until it is reflected on our website. We will not honor price adjustments for the interim period. The extra discount is added to each book in your cart. For example, books that would ordinarily be 40% off will be 43% off. If you are not logged in prior to checking out, the extra discount won’t appear on the site or in your shopping cart until after you log in. Once you are logged in, the extra discount will appear on every book on the site and in your cart. The extra discount does not apply to gift certificates. Just a quick reminder that with the holiday season upon us, please be aware that order delays are possible. Also, we ask that emails pertaining to order inquiries be limited to one per order. We understand the need for a speedy transaction at this time of year and will be doing our best to ship orders and quickly as we can. Thank you for your loyalty and understanding!

Nice! I bought the Absolute Danger Girl when it came out, and eventually sold it, thinking "Eh, they'll eventually reprint it like everything else." This turns out to have been a dumb idea on my part.

Same. Classic version would be an instant buy, this one is a big maybe.

Oh, and to answer the disintegrating question, yes, it's true that the vintage o-rings have a habit of drying up or dry-rotting, but with their more recent o-ring offerings, Hasbro claim to have changed the material that the rings are made out of, so they are supposed to be much more durable. Of course, time will tell on that count.

1. I'm pretty sure it started in October, though someone else can verify. It's a pretty long run up, which I guess makes sense considering this is the holiday season and all, and Super 7 charges you up front for these crowdfund/preorders. Give people plenty of time to plan and budget. 2. O-Ring figures are the classic rubber-band styled GI Joe figures that Hasbro made for decades. "ReAction" is Super7's brand of figures that have only 5 points of articulation, in the classic Kenner Star Wars style. They've made countless different licenses under the ReAction banner, starting with Alien, but expanding to pretty much any pop-culture property you can think of, from real life music acts (Run DMC, Ghost, Slayer, and so many more) to classic brands like Transformers, Universal Monsters, Godzilla, etc. Similar to Funko Pops, ReAction takes all of these disparate brands and unifies them under one classic, simple retro style with very basic articulation. The problem is that they also have the GI Joe license, and while they do a tremendous job of capturing the classic Sunbow animation style with the ReAction figures, your typical GI Joe fan is used to a lot more articulation and a lower price point. Since Super 7 is a boutique brand, it's assumed that they're making much smaller runs of figures than Hasbro would, so Reaction figures generally cost about $17 a pop. Many Joe fans balked at that, as you're paying more for much less articulation and usually zero accessories. I didn't really mind, because I always looked at the ReAction figures as being more like an art object than a toy I would "play with". But I understand the complaints. At any rate, I don't know if it was ever established as fact, but the general assumption has always been that Super 7 probably didn't have the rights to make Joe figures with classic/o-ring articulation, as that has always been Hasbro's bailiwick. However, with Hasbro canceling their retro line, and no more o-ring or otherwise articulated 3 3/4" scale figures being offered by them in a year or more, the fact that Super 7 is now suddenly offering articulated O-ring figures with this newest project makes one wonder if perhaps Hasbro is really, truly done with anything other than Classified scale figures, and Super 7 may now be allowed to go forward with something other than the ReAction style 5poa. If they were able to blend their terrific animation acurate sculpt with better articulation, I'd buy everything release. Just speculation, but it's interesting for sure. So, it's not really an o-ring vs modern articulation situation, it's a five POA vs more articulated situation. I personally always preferred the o-ring figures because the modern Joe figures had weird long torsos and the articulation could be wonky. By the end of the retro line, Hasbro seemed to have finally gotten it more or less right with non-oring figures that had great articulation and sculpt in the 3 3/4" range. Particularly that last gasp wave with the Cobra Trooper and Grunt, those were beautifully done. If they'd made more figures like that, I'd have bought more, o-ring or not.

That's for the best! My wife doesn't actually care, but she's not really a "stuff" person, so she doesn't understand the impulse to accumulate things. Except money. She likes to accumulate money. So in her mind, why would I like to have this junk, when I could have money instead? Sometimes I think she may have a point, but I haven't fully come over to her side yet.

My wife used to just walk into my office/library, look around the room, and then say "Sell this." I didn't ,so I guess she's given up.

The struggle is real! I have a couple of small stacks of omnis that need to be filed into the collection, and I'm thinking I may have to let go of a few things to make room, or else they may just have to stay in stacks!

Oh for sure, it's every bit as addictive as collecting individual books, and also takes up a lot more space as well! Even though I really love looking at my library, I sometimes think "Am I seriously ever going to read that book again in my lifetime?" In these instances I choose to believe I'm going to live an unnaturally long time, so it's sane to hold onto them!

I still love comics and have a few boxes of them, but it eventually dawned on me that I was unlikely to ever return and reread all of those individual issues, which were stored away in boxes never to be looked upon again, in all likelihood. At least with a hardcover or trade, it's there sitting on the bookshelf where I can see it, and easily pull it down to leaf through if I want. There's no right or wrong way to collect, but these days I'm definitely a collected editions guy. And yes, the price was a big motivator as well. With Batman I was a completist, which meant grabbing every cover. There was a period where they were publishing the title twice a month, and each issue had (at least) two covers, so that was about $20 for two stories which would take me about 5 minutes to read, only to be stuck in a box and never looked at again. The math just didn't add up anymore. I still buy back issues here and there, some slabs, some raw, but the monthly floppy just isn't for me anymore. The one exception is my Alien collection, which I keep going even though I haven't cared for the Marvel books much at all.

(The secret is that I don't communicate clearly at any point of the day...and it's always morning somewhere. Probably?)

It's too early in the day for me to be expected to communicate clearly!

I was a hardcore Bat guy most of my life, and had a complete run of all of the titles, including one-shots and minis, from Year One through Rebirth. I eventually realized that I just didn't care anymore, and stopped buying new books, and sold the collection in favor of hardcovers, as most of that material has been collected, with a few notable exceptions. Still love the character and have great nostalgia for big chunks of the run, but there's just too much content to keep up with these days, and I no longer care to chase it all down.

Always loved that figure. My first two Super Powers were Flash and Darkseid, both a Xmas gift from an aunt. Loved that guy.

I am still on the fence. I had more or less stopped buying Joes, but this ship was my #1 single most wanted fantasy vehicle as a kid, so the fact that it is now going to be a reality may be too much to resist. But $500...oof. We'll see. I find it very interesting that they're offering a set of O-ring figures as well, makes one wonder if Hasbro isn't totally done with O-ring for the foreseeable future. I like the designs of the Reaction figures, as I'm a Sunbow cartoon Joe guy, and if they were to start making more o-ring figures in that style, I'd be totally onboard.

Last year I had good luck with Burlington, but this year all I found was a handful of Legends (luckily, they were figures I was looking for.) It can be boom or bust for sure, as the shipping/stocking seems at random. So you may get lucky and be there right after they received a shipment, however they may have only gotten one or two cases of the item in question. I feel like most of the big shipments came in October, but I’m hopeful that things will keep trickling in throughout the season. We have three Ross stores here, though none are super convenient. I have an Ollie’s and a Burlington that are sorta kinda on the way home from work, so I check there more often.

Yeah I hedged my bets on that one maybe getting discounted further, paid off this time, but it doesn’t always! At least you’ve got it in hand and don’t have to worry about it selling out!