F For Fake

No problem, good luck, and come back and show us what you end up getting!

For a reading copy, VG to VG+ seems about right to me. It's not going to fall apart in your hands, and it doesn't look (or smell, hopefully!) like total garbage. You can read it without worrying about "hurting it", but you won't be ashamed to own it either!

Hmm. Well, Sideshow did a series of gorgeous 1/4 scale Premium Format statues of the Hulk, one each of the Classic, Grey, and Red, but they are sold out and now sell for a premium, usually somewhere in the $500-$700 range. Here's a green one (I do not know this seller, I just picked them because they were the first green PF Hulk I saw): Green Premium Format Hulk In the smaller scale, Bowen did a few really nice Hulks, and you can probably get one of those somewhere in the $150-$300 range. Here's one (again, don't know the seller, just found while searching) that I always liked: Bowen Classic Hulk And I used to personally own one of these, and I thought it was a BEAUTIFUL piece in this scale. Bowen Smackdown Hulk! The good thing about the Hulk is that he's a flagship character, so there are TONS of pieces out there to choose from, and those individual pieces are often done in the Grey and Green flavors (and sometimes Red...or Bronze...or Planet Hulk...Or WW Hulk, etc.) Personally, if I bought Hulk stuff, I'd probably save up and get one of the most recent Sideshow Premium Formats. They are massive, beautiful, and tend to appreciate in value. But Bowen definitely made some nice ones. I'd just search "Bowen Hulk" or "Sideshow Hulk" and then sort it by lowest price, and see if there was anything you liked in your price range. I'm sure there's a match out there somewhere!

yeah, Sideshow can do some really nice stuff when they put their minds to it!

Precisely. I mean, 9.8's may be relatively tough...but why would anyone want one? Regardless of what the census shows (and I'd wager that the census, while important to a lot of folks on these boards, doesn't mean anything at all to the average comic buyer) I'd suspect that the overwhelming perception is that this book is so plentiful, there's no reason to sub the book at all. That may not be the reality according to the numbers, but I'd still guess that the regular comic buyer's perception of X-Force #1 is that it's practically worthless, because there are simply too many of them out there, therefore it's not being subbed in any large number. I'll fully allow that I could be wrong about all of that, but that's what my gut tells me.

Facial sculpt on this one turned out great.

This pretty gal finally showed up last week. Now I need to track down the Newmar piece, as I missed it when it was in stock.

Love the deathstrokes. I pick them up when I see them, but I have NEVER found the 58 Joker cover in the bargain bins, in all of these years. Nice pull!

Nice, lots of stuff I love to pick up in bargain bins there! That Tomb Raider Journeys book must be the largest print run of all of his Tomb Raider covers, because I have amassed a STACK of those things from years of box diving, but otherwise only a handful of his other TR covers.

You know, a couple of days ago I was listing some auctions, and when I listed them, they came up as auctions but WITH "Best Offer" option, just like this. I assumed that this was because I'd incorrectly used an old template from a previous BIN listing, but they continued to show up that way. When I started from scratch, the Best Offer option went away. I wonder if there's a glitch, or if it's something they're rolling out (auctions with best offer options?)

I feel the same way, I always pick up high grade Batman main-title run books when I see them dirt cheap, because that is THE blue chip, flagship character. Someone out there is always going to be putting together runs of those characters.

Yeah, I mean...yeah. There's just no way, right? Please tell me there's no way. I don't want to live in a world where this sort of thing makes sense.

Hmm. ... ..... ....... Yes. Yes it does mean that very thing. Please turn in your comic buying badge.

The sticky threads aren't stuck any more. I've decided that I don't like it. Meh.

Steely Dan insult in user name + Zippy the Pinhead related cultural one upsmanship = my favorite newb first post ever! Welcome aboard!

Love Zippy. Tenuously related, my only Mickey Rooney story: For some reason, several years ago, Mickey Rooney was a guest at DragonCon. I was walking the rows of the "celebrity" area and saw him sitting at a table, alone with his handler. The handler was actively haranguing passersby, "Come meet Mickey Rooney! One of the biggest stars in the world!" Something to that effect, but no one was stopping. Mickey seemed sad and angry, and finally he yelled at the handler, "Stop it, you're embarrassing me." It made me sad. And that's my story. (No, I didn't go talk to him either.)

Sight unseen, with literally no visual indication of the average condition ("good shape" doesn't mean much) or what the makeup really is, I'd start at $20 a longbox, with an offer to pay more if the books are decent.

I'm not sure why people are surprised, the Demon Bear storyline was essentially a horror story. The vibe of this teaser seems in line with my recollections of those spooky Sienkiewicz-covered New Mutants issues. Who needs another cookie cutter superhero movie? I'm 100% onboard with this.

Well that just means that you've fortunately not run into the issue, so I hope you continue to have good luck with your discs! It stinks when you're all excited to watch something you haven't seen for a few years, pop the disc in, and the player won't read it anymore. So hopefully that means you're in good shape, because if they haven't started rotting yet, you may be safe for the foreseeable future!

I've been fortunate in that I haven't run into many DVD's with the problem, but it was a HUGE problem in my laser disc days. I count myself lucky on the DVD front. I know that Warner discs from a certain era are particularly prone to the issue, which would make sense with my Batman tv set. If it was also affecting a lot of your TV seasons, it makes me wonder if one factory in particular was handling the production of tv sets? I guess we'll never know, but it's an interesting issue.

The first you've heard of disc rot in general, or in regard to it happening on this particular title? In general, disc rot is the instance of a disc becoming unplayable as there is some sort of oxidation that occurs in one of the layers of the disc, causing a physical deterioration in the layers of the disc itself. I'm sure a smarter person than me can explain it better, but that's the basic idea: oxidation occurs, layers start to break down, the media can't play. It has happened to a lot of laser discs (we used to call it "laser rot"), as well as some cd's, and also DVD titles. It seems to only affect a small percentage of titles, and is likely related to whatever circumstance certain batches of discs were pressed in. Therefore, there are certain titles that are notorious for rotting. As for my BTAS discs, I'd never heard of any instances of rot with this particular set, but I noticed a couple of years ago that the later discs in my set were getting "cloudy" and would no longer play properly. I never bought a replacement set, because I was worried I'd just run into the same thing.

Same, give us the Dave goodness!

Yeah, pretty annoying. Seems smoother right now. How long will it last?

Super excited that this is finally getting a BD release. I know there has been a lot of uncertainty over the years, whether or not such a thing was even possible, as it seemed like the show was likely edited on video. But I'm assuming the original film elements must exist somewhere, in order for them to complete this project. They'll probably have to redo the outro credits or whatever, no great loss there. For my money, BTAS is still the best translation of the character and his world to any medium. The perfect mix of pulp, superhero, crime/detective, and sometimes supernatural elements that make the character so rich. I'll still hang onto my DVD box set, because it's such a purty box. The discs started rotting a while back though, so I'm glad this thing is finally on the way. Hoping MSRP will be under $150, but I'll buy it at any price. And unlike the recent Mask of the Phantasm BD release, this one is coming out of WB proper, instead of Warner Archives, so we should be getting all of the extra features from the old sets, and hopefully some new ones as well.

Also (and we've beaten this horse to death, but why not bring it up again) Marvel wouldn't force any sort of diversity if they didn't think they could make money off of it. They are a huge business, owned by another huge business (one of the hugest, no doubt), and they don't make any decisions simply for altruistic purposes. They thought they could expand their demo, appealing to different and more diverse audiences, and increase sales. If they managed to get some positive headlines along the way, and actually make some under-represented minorities happy along the way, all the better. Makes sense, but it doesn't seem to have really played out in sales, because at the core, the average comic buyer is a middle aged white dude who is resistant to any sort of change in his nostalgia hobby.