F For Fake

I believe it! Spawn/McFarlane have a very loyal fanbase, and it seems like it continues to pay off. I have digital versions of the trades, bought them in a Humble Bundle a couple of years ago. I couldn't really get into it, but maybe I should give them another shot.

So you're telling me I shouldn't have let that platinum go for $75 a few months ago? Of course.

When we get the final Uncanny X-men Omni's, whether that's one big "Volume 5", or a split "Volume 5/6", I'll be done, more or less. I stopped subscribing/reading UXM with the relaunch of issue 281. That's when Portacio started, and 282 introduced Bishop. That was the last issue of my sub that arrived in the mail way back then, and the point where I stopped reading the first time. I then started up again with Age of Apocalypse, and stayed with it through Morrison's run, then stopped again. So, for me, UXM 1-5/6, then Mutant Massacre (if it's not rolled into those volumes), Fall of the Mutants, Inferno (+ Prologue), and then Claremont/Lee 1& 2 and X-Tinction Agenda should represent everything I HAVE to have. Then I have the AOA Omni & Companion, then Morrison, Whedon, and Uncanny X-Force/Avengers, and then Hickman. Those are the must haves for me. IF/when they reprint or rerelease the material from Phalanx Covenant, Operation Zero Tolerance, Fatal Attractions, Onslaught etc I MAY buy them, depending on how much they cost and my mood at the time. But I'm ok with not having them, and I'm definitely not paying secondary market prices for them. I sold all of those for good money the first time around, and haven't missed them at all. So, yeah, unless I get a sweeheart deal when/if they release them again, I'm not sweating them. I'm super excited about the announced Excalibur Omni 2, as I love the book. By then it was pretty thin soup, but my affection for the characters still justifies the purchase. I might also sample a Peter David X-Factor if that happens, because I've head so much about it over the years. But otherwise, I'm pretty close to caught up on my X-needs, hardcover wise. If they eventually release the Silver Age X-men in Omni, I may be tempted for the sake of the bookshelf. But I'm currently rereading the series again since I got the Children of the Atom set, and honestly, I think that's plenty for my needs. Silver Age X-men, aside from a couple of inspired early issues, aren't so hot.

One assumes that Kirkman really cleaned up when TWD was at its height. As you note, I'm sure that includes trades, and there was a time when it seemed like every mainstream bookstore I went to had an endcap with TWD compendiums, trades, etc. The books were everywhere. I'm not sure what his deal is with Image, but I'm sure he did very well. I have no insight as to the ins and outs of tv negotiations, but one assumes that he got a much better deal with Amazon, if just because AMC is notoriously cheap and stingy, and Amazon seems willing to spend a lot on their programming. And by the time the deal for Invincible came along, Kirkman was already the famous creator/producer of one of the last true pop culture phenomena with TWD. Have to think he did pretty well upfront.

I've said it many times, but DC's can be had for a song in comparison to Marvel's. You can get many low-grade SA DC 1st appearance for a couple hundred bucks, sometimes less. Metal Men, Atom, Hawkman, etc

Ha, you know, she genuinely likes the Marvel movies and shows, and some of the DC stuff, and we've watched nearly all of the MCU flicks at least three times by this point. But sometimes her memory is just BLANK. I'm going to blame it on too many recreational pharmaceuticals in her college days...

Looks more like Todd "The Goo" McFarlane. No one wants to be "The Goo". Not now, not ever.

Ok, this thread confirms what I suspected, which is that the show just introduced Madripoor to the MCU. I couldn't recall if it had shown up before anywhere or not. So that was pretty cool. When they announced where they were headed, I told the wife "Ooh, Madripoor! That's an X-men place." She didn't care. And still doesn't. And will not. She won't care. But I care. I care enough for both of us. This show is still pretty fun, though this was probably my least favorite episode so far. I do like Zemo much better in this incarnation, he's much more fun than he was in Civil War. I've like Daniel Bruhl since I first saw Goodbye Lenin in the theaters, so it's fun to see him have a chance to make Zemo interesting. The character was such a nothing in Civil War, I can't recall what his deal was. That movie already had one villain, Iron Man. Zemo was just overkill. So, it's fun to see him with his hood and fur-lined collar and having a good super villain-ish time. I guess SHIELD babes are given standard issue batons for some reason. Bobbi/Mockingbird had them on Agents of Shield, and Black Widow had some as well, at least in one of the flicks, right? So now Sharon has them. My wife didn't remember Sharon Carter at all, and I was like "She was, like, a big part of Winter Soldier! Remember?" But she didn't. So I sighed. :

I, uh...I'm gonna need that Hee Haw book.

I never hated Kirby, but as a kid I definitely didn't GET it. It was too chunky, too strange, for me. I grew up in the 80's, so I was all about Art Adams, Dave Stevens, Marc Silvestri, Paul Smith, folks like that. So Kirby was just, like, ALIEN to me. Then, when I was 19, I was working at a comic shop, and the comic buyer was a big Kirby guy, and he'd show me stuff. And one day it just CLICKED. Suddenly it was beautiful. Those huge square fingers jutting out at you, the panel-breaking compositions, the thick, chunky lines, THE KRACKLE!!! IT ALL MADE SENSE. And I never looked back. Bought reprints, subscribed to Jack Kirby Collector, the whole nine yards. Kirby is King. I'm not sure which exact piece broke the dam for me, but this was one that I recall as being pivotal in my re-appreciation of the King.

Seems like this topic pops up pretty regularly, so I can only say what I usually say: while I find his art distasteful now, when I was a kid, it was certainly exciting and new. When I saw What If 7 (...Wolverine was an Agent of SHIELD) on the stands, I had to have it. Even at the age of 12/13, I knew that there was something shaky about the anatomy, but the ENERGY of the images, it really blew me away. What it lacked in foundation, it made up for with stylization and kinetic action. It was big, it was wild, it was crazy looking. I loved it. I followed over to New Mutants, X-Force, etc. By the time he'd split off to Image/Extreme, my infatuation had ended, as by that point everyone else was drawing like him, and without Marvel/DC inkers or editors to restrain him, it seemed like his stuff got even sloppier. But I'll always love that early stuff and the nostalgic zip it gives me. I can't speak to his business dealings, I have no idea what is going on there. Maybe he's a genuinely bad dude? I have no idea. But I do feel like he really loves comics, and the comic world is more fun with him popping up here and there with his latest insanity. I won't be buying it, but I'm still glad to know it exists. And there have been tons of hacks over the years who got away with a whole lot more than Liefeld ever did. He has his limitations as an artist, but a lot of folks just seem to enjoy kicking the guy because they can. I don't like his stuff now, but I don't see the point in mocking him for it.

My buying patterns really haven't changed at all. I don't have much in the way of plans or goals, so I don't have to worry about chasing down the few issues I need for a set or whatever. I just take whatever comes locally, and it's a lot more fun that way. One shop prices stuff right about FMV, and they get a lot of "hot" moderns books, so there's a lot to choose from. Another shop still uses Overstreet, so they don't pay as much (meaning they don't get as much recent hot stuff) but when they DO get a collection in, the books are very affordable, and tend to be the sort of mid-grade Silver, Bronze and middle/high copper stuff that I prefer. And there are several other comic shops, second hand stores, peddlers malls, antique shops, etc to keep me busy. There's always something to collect, something new and cool to buy. Some new collection just came in, or there's a garage sale, or a FB listing, etc. There's not shortage of fun books to buy at a reasonable price. If I collected 9.8's of key issues, boy, I'd be hurting, for sure. But since I don't play that game, and just hunt locally, buying what I like, the hobby is still affordable and fun for me. There was one run of books I wanted in 9.8, and I finished that off several years ago. Since then, I just buy local, buy raw, and never run out of stuff to buy!

100%. You can't really overstate just how popular Spawn was in its heyday. That was a monster book. Then the toys, the movie, the tv show, Spawn was a big property. That sort of interest doesn't just go away entirely. It may lay dormant for a while, but eventually the rule of 25/30 kicks in, and people remember "Hey, I used to really love Spawn!" and decide to start looking for the stuff again, only to find there aren't many of those "lean years" issues to go around. I'm not a big McFarlane guy, but I admire how he stuck with his creation, saw it through the choppy waters, and is once again reaping the benefits.

Yeah, that's one you don't see every day, for sure. Those last couple of DHP Aliens appearances are fairly scarce.

Finally had a chance to get down to the shop and pick up my books, so I just finished the first issue a few minutes ago. I can't say the story is "bad", as we're only one issue in, but it's definitely lackluster. Took about three minutes to read, which I guess is standard for a Marvel book these days. Maybe it will take an exciting turn, but so far I'm not overly optimistic. The real crime here is the art. I'd read about Larroca's penchant for Greg Land-sequel photoshop tracing, but it's really egregious. It renders the conversation scenes completely static, and the one big double page spread of the actual ALIENS is pretty clearly full of photoshopped pics of NECA action figures. What a joke. Just terrible, ugly, lazy stuff. My favorite cover was the blank. Simple, black, elegant, like Alien should be. None of the others really do anything for me, though at least the Momoko has some sense of stylization. Not usually my thing, but at least it's something.

My computer helpfully decided to double post, for some reason.

It's so difficult to predict these things these days. When covid quarantine first hit, from spring into the summer, pretty much everything sold out instantly. Then it seemed like in the fall, things were starting to level out. A lot of books would hang around for weeks, even months. But with X-Men, the audience must be massive, because they tend to sell out in days, if not minutes. A couple of volumes (Jim Lee/Claremont, for example) hung around for a few weeks, but everything else is blink and you miss it. I think Inferno was one of the more hotly anticipated reprints, as it has been OOP and selling for $200-$300 for a few years now. Whenever they get around to the rerelease of Fall of the Mutants, I'd expect that one to sell quickly as well.

Please send all misaligned copies to me for disposal. Happy to take these eyesores off of your hands!

I feel like auctions have rebounded a bit, in this new age of wild speculation, and influx of new buyers. I also think it very much depends on what you're selling. For individual books, like single flavor of the day issues that have recently popped, I still think BIN with BO is the way to go. But if you have a collection of things you'll be selling individually, and they've got some heat, and you maybe aren't certain where the market is, auctions can work. For instance, in February I put up a large collection of Star Wars stuff, and a nice chunk of Thor God of Thunder books. With the SW books, I didn't have much money in them, and more importantly, there were a couple dozen newsstand variants which had no sales data to compare to, so I genuinely had no idea how to price them. The Thor books I had a little more money in, but nothing crazy, so I rolled the dice and listed them at the same time. The Thor books sorta got to where they were going by the day before the auction ended, and didn't move again. I wasn't thrilled by the results, but I didn't lose money either, so that was fine. But I probably would have made more with those books had I set them up as BIN But the Star Wars books absolutely EXPLODED in the final seconds, and went WAAAAY beyond where I would have priced them at, had I taken a stab at BIN pricing. I would have left several hundred dollars on the table. So I'm glad I went the auction route. Auctions CAN generate a lot of excitement, competition, and thrill bidding, and that can be really good news for the seller. But I wouldn't use it unless I was pretty sure that I was selling stuff that would get people excited. As always, it's a gamble. But gambling can be fun.

Yeah, that's where I'm at. Personally wouldn't resub just because you never know what may happen in transit, but I could see taking the risk if he thought it might be worth it. Personally, I love low grade beaters, so I'd be ok with leaving as is.

Playing devil's advocate, as far as a resubmit goes, it's certainly not going to go any LOWER than a .5, so there's not a HUGE risk there. It's one thing when someone resubs a 9.6 hoping to get a 9.8, or what have you. This book is already in the basement, I don't think it's going to go below ground ha That being said, there's also no guarantee if it would go up to 1.0, so you could potentially be out the grading fees, plus we have to admit that anytime we put a book in the mail, there's some degree of risk that we're never going to see it again, or that it could be catastrophically damaged. So, a resub isn't risk free, but the risk isn't as great as it would be for a high grade book. Is the potential reward worth that risk, is the real question. It may look like a 1.0 to me, through a slab, via a picture on the internet, but what does that really mean? That's a lot of layers of qualifications, you know? I'm not holding the raw book in my hands, like the graders did. There's a lot of woulda shoulda coulda when looking at a slab, but the graders had their reasons for calling it a 0.5, even if they didn't explicitly mention it in the notes. Me personally, I'd keep it as is, because you knew what is was going to be when you got it. But if you ever decided to resub, I'd understand the reasoning there as well.

To be honest, it’s fairly convoluted, as the story attempts to tie up all of the Cyke/Madelyne Pryor/Jean Grey business, while tying in Limbo, S’ym and Mr Sinister. So...there’s a LOT going on, and it’s kinda silly. But if you like the more melodramatic/soap opera elements of Claremont’s writing, and some great Silvestri and Simonson art, it’s a real treat. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that stands up on its own as a story, but I loved it as a kid, and enjoyed my revisit a few years back.

This beast arrived today, and I’m pleased. Of all of the X-Men hardcovers I sold, I regretted letting go of the Inferno and Inferno crossovers volumes the most. That was really the height of my teenage X-mania, right in the sweet spot. Jim Lee was exciting when he showed up, but Silvestri will always be my guy. This new volume helpfully contains the contents of both of those OOP books, which is handy. It’s big, but not terribly so. I do regret picking this cover, which is the DM variant. I liked the artwork on the regular edition better, but the collector mentality told me I should get the variant as it would be likely sell out and be harder to find down the road. Joke was on me, as the regular cover sold out in minutes, and this one was available for a few days. Oh well. It’s fine, but I still should have gone the other way.

If the cover is brittle at all (looks a bit brown around the edges) I'm afraid a press would do more harm than good. And if there's a reason they didn't include in the notes which would explain WHY it was a .5 rather than a 1.0, i don't think those bends would really help the grade. Usually a .5 means something is missing, or it's just a complete rag. This looks better than that to me, but I don't know that pressing is going to help the things that got it at that grade to begin with, and may cause more damage. Just my two cents! I'd call in one of the experts around here!