F For Fake

Went to the flea market today, and I'm glad I did. I'd considered skipping it because there was also a gun show AND a car show going on at the fairgrounds, meaning a big crowd, no parking and a bunch of crazy people, but I still dragged my butt out there. Nothing terribly exciting in the bargain bins, though I was happy to find a Rai 0 at pre-hype price, since I apparently sold all of mine too soon. But oddly enough, the best buy I made was this collection of Marvel Age's for $25. It was sealed up so I couldn't be sure if the hot issues were included, or even tell what the condition was. But for $25 I took a flyer on it, and scored! All of the "money books" except for 41 (the Stan Lee cover) were present and around VF or better. And yes, I'm as surprised as the rest of you to use the words "Marvel Age" and "money books" in the same phrase. Its surprising how many $10-$20 books are in that run. When I was a kid, Marvel Age was synonymous with garbage. We basically threw them away. But then again, we had the same attitude towards second (and later) prints, so what did we know?

Found it pretty hilarious that a 14 year old thread got locked. The "Dust Ups" thread was started in 2005. Guess it just took a little while for it to gather steam!

I mean, it's bold, right? That is an insane amount of money to charge for a tiny strip of paper with printing on it. Unless they're paying some insane licensing fee to Marvel to use the images. But even still...five bucks? That's, like, an obscene amount of money for what you're getting. But if people will pay it, CGC should laugh all the way to the bank. Free market and all that, more power to it. I've spent five bucks on dumber stuff, to be sure.

This is it precisely. We currently live in a world where superhero movies are the dominant form of entertainment, where they obliterate box office records and also gain Oscar nods. Back when X-men came out, its greatest accomplishment was that it DIDN'T TOTALLY SUCK. And this was a VERY big deal. It had been accepted for so long that making a good X-Men movie, or any kind of good superhero movie, was impossible. At that point we had two decent Superman movies, two arguably decent Batman movies, and that was it. I rewatched all of the X-Men movies with the missus recently. The first movie isn't very good at all, but it was competent, and at the time, that was enough to get the foot in the door for superhero movies. Spider-Man followed, and eventually we got Iron Man, and the rest is history. As actual FILMS, I think the second one is probably still my favorite, and I think DofP is a lot of fun as well. We watched Apocalypse this weekend, which I hadn't seen since it was in the theater. My recollection was that I hadn't liked it, but I actually liked it quite a bit last week. Bryan Singer has made BILLIONS of dollars for movie studios. His name is not one you associate with great art, but it certainly one that producers have long associated with profitable movies. However, looks like his creepiness has finally caught up with him. Hollywood turned a blind eye for a long time as he kept bringing in $$$, but it looks like he may finally answer for the stuff he's done, money or not.

I don't see a problem with it if people like it, but charging $5 for a tiny strip of ink and paper is brilliantly devious.

YES, Sinister is another one I never understood at all. No idea what his deal is. I'm a simple man, I like easy to identify rogues galleries like Spidey's, Batman's and The Flash's. "This dude has a cold gun, he's Captain Cold." "This guy dressed up like The Mad Hatter? He's The Mad Hatter."

I can't believe people are still falling for it, but it's pretty amusing to watch.

That was the first Spider-Man book I ever bought, I remember riding my bike to the convenience store at the end of the street and buying it. Congrats on completing your run!

Perhaps! I've just never really had a handle on it. He shape shifts? He grows really tall? We rewatched X-Men Apocalypse this weekend (the wife's pick) and his power set there appeared to be evolving other mutants, which I guess he does in the comics too? I've never had a handle on it, really.

Fun Fact No One Asked For: X-Factor #6 was the first X-related comic I ever read. I got it as a giveaway while trick r treating at the local zoo. I couldn't make heads or tales of it. At the time, the only comics I liked were GI Joe, Transformers, and Uncle Scrooge. The world of mutants seemed too serious and dull to me. But within a few months I was a die-hard X-men fan. Funny how that works out. Anyway, Apocalypse has always been kinda dumb, and his power-set has never made much sense to me, but he makes for a cool figure.

The Cap of my heart is BRIGHT blue, circa Secret Wars and the corresponding figure. So, like I said, I'm good with the vintage wave cap, that's the coloring I like best. Would love it if somone made a Kirby-style Cap at some point, like the Kirby New Gods figures that DC Direct made. Those were gorgeous.

Cool, thanks for the link! It's in my cart, but it may be a while before I pull the trigger.

I don't like the darker blue on Cap. I'll probably just stick with the Vintage wave as my go-to Cap for now (I also have Cap Wolf here on my desk at work!). I also don't like the gold color on Iron Man. To me he will always be red and YELLOW, not red and gold. That's what the comics looked like, so that's what I want. To that end there are a few options out there.

I have some affection for the blue Archangel, as that was right in the heart of my 80's/90's childhood X-fandom, and Simonson was drawing X-Factor at the time. Had the poster on the wall and everything! So i think the set is a good buy at $30, since it has the figure, the beautiful wings, three headsculpts AND an extra piece for the Apocalypse BAF. I will probably go back and pick up the Vintage wave Hawkeye, Wasp and Vision, just haven't pulled the trigger yet. But I wanted to get an order in before the end of the week to get in on the free shipping deal for the year, so Archangel seemed like a good choice. Gambit represents everything I came to hate about the X-Men, but I will probably pick one up at some point just to complete the display. I don't like him, but I can't deny his presence in the team.

The single figure that I am most excited about is the 80's dazzler in the blue outfit. I've been waiting for that figure since I was a little kid. If I could get a punker Rogue (seems possible since they made one in the 3.75" line) and a classic Shadowcat, I'd have everything I ever wanted out of this line. I'm stoked about the classic Colossus/Juggs pack, will definitely pick that one up, as well as the Classic Wolvie/Hulk, as that Wolverine mask sculpt is SWEET. Probably onboard for the entire Vintage X-Men and X-Force waves, along with that Magneto three pack. I'm not an Alex Ross guy, so I don't really care about those, but the Thor is probably a pick-up for me as well. Zero interest in any of the movie figures, as I don't collect them. So, all in all, a mixed bag for me, but the highlights were very, very high!

Don't get me wrong, I have Netflix (and Amazon Prime, as the wife is a subscriber) and it is nice to have content right there at the click of the controller. I'm not a hardcore physical media only guy. But I definitely lean that way, primarily because most of the movies I want to see aren't readily available for streaming. Netflix has tons of stuff, but almost nothing I care about watching. I'm not a big superhero movie guy, I usually see them in the theater once and then never have any interest in watching them again. It's rare that I go to Netflix looking for a particular movie, and actually find it. Amazon's selection of obscure horror flicks has greatly improved in the last year or so, I'd almost call it impressive. Otherwise, it's hard for me to find streaming options for the kind of movies I like, for the most part. So, I buy discs. With Criterions, B&N has a 50% off sale twice a year, and 50% off sales for Arrow as well. Scream Factory rarely has good sales, but you can find discounts on their stuff if you dig. Hamiltonbooks has been my go to for deep discounted new discs, they've had some terrific buys on Kino releases. For mainstream Hollywood releases, you can get most of the newest stuff on Black Friday online at Best Buy, Target or Amazon for $6 or less. Buy a movie for $6, sell the code for $3-$4. It's great! And if you don't mind buying used, HPB has discs dirt cheap. I like having a library,I love my movie shelf. Movies are my first love, more than comics, more than basketball. So I don't mind them taking up some space in my home. Plus I never have to worry about buffering, I never have to worry about lower resolution, I never have to worry about network outages. It's all there waiting for me when I want it. So, getting back to the thread, yes, the HasbroPulse site has me excited. They didn't have much I needed right now, but I went ahead and picked up the Archangel figure. At $29.99 and free shipping, that's the best deal I've seen on the set so far. Was interested in the new Prof X set, but it has already sold out. Wonder if they'll put up more before the wave actual hits stores? They've also got the new X-Men wave up for preorder, but Beast has already sold out. But I agree, with no shipping fee, this may be a competitor with BBTS for my ML money going forward.

My understanding is that most of your digital movies should be available through a partnered account like Vudu, etc. But I agree with the sentiment, this is precisely why I buy physical movies and don't do streaming. Unless you have the thing in your hand, you don't actually OWN it, and it can disappear at any moment, be it movie, tv show, music, etc. Plus, physical media is dirt cheap these days. It's a great time to build a film library.

We had a similar situation when my uncle passed. My aunt asked for my help is selling off his "collection". He had a TON of those collectors plates from Danbury or Franklin or some such company. They were all still sitting in their original shipping cartons, never touched. We couldn't give the things away. Couldn't sell them on eBay, no antique shops wanted them, couldn't even get rid of them for 25 cents a piece at a yard sale. A friend of the family ended up taking them, which was great, because I was afraid they'd now be sitting in MY basement for decades on end. The only thing that we were able to make money on were die-cast model cars. I can't recall if they were Danbury or who the manufacturer were, but they were a larger scale die-cast replicas on nice little bases. I'm not a car guy so I didn't know much about them, but those moved pretty quickly on eBay, so at least we got something out of it for my aunt. He also had a vintage Pac-Man coin-op machine that I vividly recalled playing when I was a kid. We offered it to several coin-op collectors and kept getting lowball after lowball offer on it. It was in fairly rough shape, but it was still a vintage Pac-Man, complete and working, so I know it was worth more than the $100 we were being offered. You could sell the original joystick and marquee for more than that, alone. So, I told my aunt that if we were only going to be given lowballs, I'd offer more than any of those offers, so I could keep it in the family. She then gave it to me as a birthday present, and I spent a few months restoring it. Now it is nearly nice as new, and lives in my house, a nice reminder of time spent at my Uncle's house. Anyway, I'm telling you all of this because these metal comics are dumb.

Wow, the Canadian flag thing is new to me, what a cool variant!

@followtheleader would love to see pics of your stuff too! I'm all about living vicariously through collection pics!

Killing it left and right!

I currently only own a measly 4. However, over time, I HAVE owned 58, in addition to those 4. I have a hard time hanging onto stuff. I get interested in something new and I sell off something old to get it. I...really should have held onto some of those books.

Yeah, this looks ugly as hell to me, but hey, one less thing I have to chase.

Which is saying something, because every cover in that run is a winner! I recently picked up a super sharp set of 2-8 for practically nothing. Need to find a cheap #1 to go with it, but I haven't checked prices in a whlie. Hoping/assuming they've come down from the pre-movie hype, especially considering that the movie didn't do very well (though I loved it, personally.)

To me, these are true "variants". "Variant covers" aren't variants, they're a totally new book. So you're speaking my language here.