F For Fake

Gotta love an estate auction that wraps up in the middle of the week! Just got back from picking up my wins. Not much to speak of comic wise. There was a set of Spawn 1-5 that sold for like over $30...I refuse to believe they're worth that much, even if they actually ARE worth that much. The only other comics were some 90's Image drek, and this stack of old Overstreets and price guides that I got for about $5. The treasure was in toys. This estate was a former antiques dealer who either was a kid in the 70's and 80's, or had a kid in the 70's and 80's. There were gobs of D& books and manuals which I had to pass on due to unfamiliarity with the market. However, I did come out with a -ton of Star Wars, and a sprinkling or random lines like Transformers, Starriors, Zoids, and more. And I did manage to land a personal grail as well, which you MAY be able to get a glimpse of in these pics. Lots and lots of pics to come to the Plastic Crack thread in the coming days, but I thought the overhaul haul belong here. Gotta love spring, garage, yard and estate sales are coming back!

Just seems like he's flying close to the sun with those "cosplay" variants. Not sure how long Disney and WB would turn a blind eye to some of the more trademarked elements they're playing with here. That's pretty hilarious. I have completely reversed positions, I need these now!

Ok, so I was not familiar with this publisher, but it looks like they publish...several dozen variants for each issue??? I wonder how many copies they're selling, to make it worthwhile? Very odd. I'm sure there's an audience, and I'm not one to yuck someone else's yum, but it seems like a weird AI prono pyramid scheme! Edit to add: I dunno, having done more research, I think I'm going to have to buy a couple of these...

Browning were on a double-bill with Yellowed Bags. Not a good night out.

Yes, definitely MCSS! First Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark), Blade Runner, Dark Crystal, so many more.

I remember waaaaaay back in the days of working at a LCS (we're talking 25 years ago) we would pay 10 cents a piece for Spawn 1's, and sell them for $10 each, and we never ran out of copies coming into, or selling out of, the shop. it was the easiest and fastest flip imaginable, with a seemingly never-ending supply to go with a never-ending demand. Price them above $10 and they'd sit, but at 10 bucks, they'd move all day long. Going forward, I had a hard time paying more than $1 for a copy, because I'd seen so many of them over the years, I just couldn't justify the cost. Eventually that bumped up to about $3. Nowadays, I might be willing to spend $10 for a really sharp copy, but that would still make me grit my teeth. I walked into a LCS this weekend, and they had a raw, standard copy on the wall asking $60??? Looks like eBay prices are $20-$30, which seems crazy. 9.8 slabs are selling for under $150 these days, why not just go that route? Crazy stuff.

I noticed my GPA portfolio jumped a bit! I've said it a few times, but it bears repeating: we have an Alien movie coming this summer, which looks like it could be a real winner; and shortly thereafter a new Alien tv series with a pedigreed show runner is on the way. Alien is going to be more visible than ever very soon. I don't know what that will mean for the value of the comics (and I don't really care much, since I've already got mine), but the franchise is going to be in the spotlight for a minute. Based on the trailer, and the track record of the director, I have high hopes for the film, and similar hopes for the series. Tons of new, quality Alien content suddenly being released certainly can't hurt the overall visibility and desirability of the property. Will prices creep upward again due to FOMO (collectors wanting to nail their copies down before a potential spike) or spec brought on by those projects? Should be interesting to see. Like I said, doesn't matter to me, I don't sell my Alien stuff, but it could be a wild ride.

Agreed, if this is dreck, then I must have terrible taste!

Target's B2G1 sale on book is on, as well as Amazon's copycat sale, and they both apply to certain comics/gn's as well. Have to say, pickings are pretty slim, didn't find anything I could use even at that price, but your mileage may vary. Happy hunting!

Wow, good on you for having the foresight on the 9.8 Primer! I bought my raw several years ago, and always thought it had a shot at 9.6, which would have been good enough. Finally got around to subbing and it came back 9.4. Probably should have been looking for a 9.8 those many years ago, but they don't exactly grow on trees! Grendel is the best. Of course, I clearly don't need to tell you that!

I bid! I just didn't bid enough! I have seen the error of my ways, and will never again underestimate the power of The Bunch.

Star Comics are great! Of course, the bigger titles like Thundercats, Ewoks, MotU, etc have always had a collector base, but there are a lot of books under the imprint that are a ton of fun, especially if you grew up in the era, which I most certainly did!

I'm not optimistic about my dedication to completing the set. ha But I always liked the Star books, so if I can find them here and there at a reasonable price, I'll grab them. At the end of the day, I may have to break into @greggy's stronghold, I'm sure he's got the goods! I'm also salty about having not gone after Hugga Bunch #1 a bit harder. Sold for $65, could have slapped myself!

There were also several great Star Comics in this most recent round of auctions. Thought I'd take a crack at building a set. Got absolutely blown out of the water, came back with these two consolation prizes. The Star fans are alive and well!

My upgrade plan was a success! This is one of my all-time favorite books. I had a nice raw that I had graded a couple of years ago, paid $360 for it several years back, and it came back 9.4 when I slabbed it. Prices kept going up and up on this book, and then went really nuts when it was announced that a Netflix series was in the works. A short time later, the market started to cool, and then the announcement came that the Netflix show had been scrapped. Suddenly, prices were in free fall. So, I decided to sell my 9.4 for what I could get (turned out to be $1100, well short of the heights it had hit, but considerably more than I'd paid for it) and wait for another copy. Won this 9.6 at CLink for $900-ish. I'm pleased. I'm never going to pay what a 9.8 would cost, so this will be my keeper copy.

Houseroy gonna Houseroy.

Oh wow! Well, you sold me. I quit collecting MotU Origins a while back, but this will get my money. It's a great line and I like the figures, but I can't afford the cash or space it takes to follow every single line that I "like", so I had to cut it loose. But I will find room for this, this is terrific!

Ugh, what a terrible ending to an already miserable story. Sad for every single person involved in any way. Edit to add: hopefully it HASN'T ended. He hasn't been found, so hopefully that means he's not "gone". Hopefully someone was able to get to him before he did anything permanent. No matter what actions lead to this point, no one wants anyone to die. How messed up. Holding some hope he may still be out there.

Oh sure, why not?

Pogs were also after my time, so I can't help you there, but those movie buttons are fire! The Mad Max and Brazil are particularly awesome. Probably only worth about $5-$8, but very very cool!

Sometimes the best time to find comics is when you're not looking for comics. Made the annual trip to the arcade expo this year, and in the vendor area there was a guy selling video games who also had a single short box of comics. Picked out a few things worth bringing home. He said it was his childhood collection, and he didn't know if anyone would want them or not, but he figured he'd bring them along. Considered going back to make an offer on the whole box, but ended up spending the rest of my cash on an XBox 360 and some games and other random stuff. Fun weekend! The McBat is a third print, but at the rate prices are going up on that issue these days, I'll pick up pretty much any raw copy I run across, which isn't many.

Strikeforce Morituri 1-31 This series was a favorite as a kid, but I never finished it up, and was curious about what I'd think of it nearly 40 years after the fact. So, I picked up the full run on eBay, as it's much cheaper than trying to buy (if you can find them) the three out of print trade collections. And really, I'm glad I read it this way, as it is SO much more nostalgic, smelling the newsprint, seeing all of the ads that were burned into my brain as a kid. That era, from 86-89 or so, is the nostalgia sweet spot for me, and this really took me back. So, Strikeforce Morituri was an odd duck back in the day, as it wasn't tied into the Marvel universe (except for a couple of tangential connections down the line), was borderline mature readers, and featured a crazy sci-fi concept: Earth has been invaded by an alien Horde, and in response, humanity creates their own superheroes. However, the Morituri process that gives them their powers also shortens their lives, meaning they will explode spectacularly in a year or less. It's a simply but very effective hook, and over all, this series feels much more in line with what Epic was doing at the time, than a regular Marvel comic. I'm happy to say that the Peter Gillis run, issues 1-20, held up much better than expected. It's a pretty great comics series. It's a mid-80's superhero comic, so there's plenty of that post-Claremont melodrama and soap opera writing, but the concept is a winner, and the stories are suitably grim. You truly never know who is going to die and when, and you grow to care about the characters for the short time you spend with them. The aliens are baffling and amusing, with their scrotal neck-sacks and penchant for adorning themselves with American pop-culture items. The whole thing enterprise is idiosyncratic enough to make it stand out from the pack. And of course, there's Brent Anderson on art (except for a couple of fill-ins by the likes of Whilce Portacio), many years before his seminal run on Astro City. He's still finding his sea legs here, but the work is still pretty fantastic. Well composed, naturalistic, great use of shading and dimension. Gillis and Anderson together really make this book sing. So, yes, I highly enjoyed, and very highly recommend the first 20 issues of Strikeforce Morituri. Unforunately, the series continued for another 11 issues. Ugh. Written by James Hudnall, with art chores by a rotating cast of bland nobodies (though a young Mark Bagley does some credible work in the run), it doesn't take long for the book to be completely stripped of all of its charm and intricacy. This is some truly abysmal writing. The nuance and depth are completely jettisoned, as are most of the major plot-points. The alien Horde are dismissed casually in favor of some sort of story about assassins and a shadow government. You can practically feel the writer's eagerness to jettison everything that came before, to make way for the story he actually wants to tell. It makes no sense given what we'd read up to the point. Characterization is as flat as the bio on a baseball card. This is bad, bad stuff. Do not engage. Still not sure if I'll ever get around to the five issue miniseries follow up, Electric Undertow, as Hudnall is the writer on that one as well. Feels like I should for the sake of completeness, but...eh. Anyway, Strikeforce Morituri 1-20, if you haven't read them since they were published, or have never heard of them at all, give them a chance, and find a series that was way outside of the norm of what Marvel was publishing at the time. This is a sad superhero alien invasion soap opera, written ably and illustrated lovingly. Good times. Avoid 21-31 at all costs. My total is now up to 56 for the year. Yeesh, and it's almost April. Not looking good! Meanwhile, I keep buying hardcover comics like they're running out of paper. I have an illness.

Congrats! What kills me about the way that he does these chases is that some people don't even WANT the variants, because they don't like the decos, so you have people who don't want them receiving them, while the people who DO want them can't seem to get their hands on them. Crazy way of doing things.

Because Roz signed them, I'm assuming.

Huh, I did NOT know that! Dave over here dropping the knowledge!