F For Fake

Thanks guys! I have a big place in my heart for those early single digit Marvel books, but I don't often get a chance to pick up several at once in my price/grade range. These worked out perfectly!

Oddly enough, I myself AM an expert, and am more than happy to set these up for any of you fine folks at a BARGAIn rate of $199 per unit. I'll even throw in the holder!

It's also cool that the upcoming Professor X figure set (with the wheelchair) also includes a Shadow King head that you can use on the Kingpin body. I think it's great that they give us new character options with these simple little bits.

Yeah, i also picked up the vintage set from BBTS for $60. The Wolvie and Spider-Man alone will set you back that much on the secondary market, so for the price it's hard to beat. I like the vintage waves because they employ creative re-use of parts and repaints to give us classic characters. The second wave is really snazzy, I need to pick it up. Looking forward to the X-Men vintage wave this year.

Not only that, it looks like most of the images are copied, if not traced, right? I mean, I could justify paying a lot to even an unknown artist if I felt their stuff was original and exciting, but this stuff I figure most of you guys could trace for me.

So, a bittersweet story! Last night around 9:15 I hop on Instagram, and find that my LCS is advertising a huge original owner collection they'd just put up. Tons of keys, including ASM 1, X-men 1, Avengers 1, Daredevil 1, etc. Of course, they all sold before I'd even seen the post. On one hand, I'm bummed I missed them, because knowing my LCS, they were priced below market. On the OTHER hand, I'm kinda relieved, because I don't need to be spending that much cash. So, as a consolation prize, I stopped by this AM and picked up some books that are in my "beat but complete" wheelhouse, including a nice little run of low grade early FF's!

Wow, that looks really cool, great idea!

Thanks! I use these, or something very much like them. Cheap but useful! https://www.amazon.com/Comic-Mount-Shelf-Invisible-Adjustable/dp/B00GP1HJQG

Cool! I need to break down and buy one at some point, but I keep thinking I'll eventually run across one in a 25 bin somewhere...

Love both of those as well. I've got the artist's edition of Robo vs Terminator, with Simonson's beautiful art. Great stuff. I'm also a long time Bagge fan, and was still surprised by how great Apocalypse Nerd was!

My pride and joy.

I have nothing useful to add, except I think that it should be "Torpedo Comics spreads its fins". There, I said it.

I pick up NA #4 when I find it for a buck or less. First appearance of Maria Hill and a nice Finch cover, seems like a winner.

Definitely! I think I paid about $2 a pop for a huge collection of low grade pulps just a couple of years ago. Lots of great stuff still floating around out there cheap!

This thread is useless without Boris the Bear. Hop to it!

Of course, this is just my anecdotal evidence, so it should be taken as such, but I don't see kids buying new comics, like, ever. However, when there are 50 and 99 cent back issue sales, I see tons of kids buying comics. Kids like these characters, kids like to read comics. But new comics are too expensive and their publishing too convoluted. I think it's possible to get a new generation reading the books, and digital is likely the answer, but again, the price has to be right. I have bought tons of digital books, and indeed, it's my favorite way to read them these days. But I only buy sale books and Humble bundles and the like, because I'm not going to pay full retail cost for a physical item when I don't get the item itself. Like it or not, when you buy a physical comic book, the price you pay is for the story, sure, but it's also for the idea that the item you just picked up is "collectible" and may have some future value. So, to my thinking, digital comics should be half or less the price of a physical book. But then THAT is a problem because you're undercutting retailers of physical books, who can't match that price on new material. So, again, I don't know how to solve that problem. There has to be a way to grow readership without punishing retailers. Kids love superheroes, kids love collecting stuff. Look at blind box toys, Pokemon cards, etc. Comics have superheroes AND they're "collectilbe". It should be an easy sale. So, to me, the obvious reason for low sales has to be the cover price. But that genie is out of the bottle. How could you do a line-wide cover price reduction without killing the shops who now expect that $3.99 a pop for Batman every other week? Cutting the price to $2 may increase the readership over time, but would the stores survive in the meantime? Doubtful. I also like the idea suggested above that the big two need to cut their publishing schedule WAY back to just the essentials. I've liked the idea for years. But like the cutting cover price scenario above, I believe the problem is that the stores have come to expect x-amount of sales each week from all of these titles due to the ever dwindling pool of dedicated readers who are keeping this whole industry on life support. Cutting the slates back may grow readership in the long run, but that initial cut to weekly income brought in by all of the extraneous "completist" books would likely be a death blow for many comic retailers. I don't know what the answer is. But I know there is one.

I know we mostly talk about action figures here, but for nostalgic purposes I'm also a big fan of electronic games and toys from my youth. I'd been searching for this thing FOREVER. For many years, I had no idea what it was called, I just had fond, fuzzy memories of an eletronic "bomb" game. As a kid, we never actually played the game, we just liked to pretend that it was a real bomb and we were secret agents, GI Joe, superheroes, whatever. So, after several years of digging, I finally found that it was called "Le Boom" by Lakeside. And so the eBay waiting commenced. After a couple of years, one finally popped up on eBay, complete with the box, and the stickers had never even been applied. Apparently it belonged to someone who'd been a rep for the toy company. BUT, it disappeared from eBay before I could make an offer. Fast forward to yesterday, my birthday, and what do I receive from my wife? My Le Boom! She's a sneaky gal. I haven't had a chance to fire it up yet, but I lurv it. Now I still need a nice Digital Derby in the box, and a Major Morgan Chorus Organ, and I'll be cooking with gas!

Always loved that Amazing Stories cover. I bought a big lot of low grade pulps a few years ago, and that was one of the few I held onto, though mine didn't look quite as nice. I loved "giant ladies" covers!

Yeah, the C64 wasn't great at "action" games, even with a controller. And this particular game wasn't easy to play regardless. As a game it was a bit of a dud, but as a piece of childhood X-fan wish fulfillment, it was the best! It's also a world better than the first NES X-Men game, which really is a turd...though again, it has a place it my heart.

First up, a little bday present for myself: a minty copy of the X-Men Madness in Murderworld C64 game. This game was HUGE for me as a kid, as I was obsessed with X-Men as a kid, but until this game was released, there was no X representation in video games. The game itself kinda blows, but I don't even have a C64 to play it with anymore, so I don't mind. I'd been looking for a nice copy for a long time, and finally found one with a like new box as well as super crisp booklet and all of the inserts. That cover image is burned into my brain (Guice, I think) and I'll never forget the comic that came with it, which I believe was Bagley's first pro work? Anyway, a pure hit of nostalgia. As for the Carnage books, I'm not a fan of the character, but ran into these at the LCS yesterday and figured the smart move was to pick them up.

There must be line-wide delays. I can't even remember, did Aliens: Dust to Dust ever finish up? Seems like it was months between issues.

It's an all-timer, for sure.

Awesome, thanks for the pics. I was fence-sitting this one for a long time. Huge Swampy fan, but man that is a pricey and large statue. Not sure where I'd put it even if I decided to spend the $$$. But your post has me reconsidering...

Awesome, congrats!

This is still one of my all time favorite threads/dumb ideas.