Define999

Are you ready to have your mind blown? peep this! unfortuantley this secret wars 8 is a fan translation? A damn good one though from what I can tell! I do know there is a miller daredevil chinese trade that I saw somewhere, but for the life of me I cannot remember where?

Quite a find I must say! Pretty amazing! God Tim, the color pop is really somthing..... I bet being bound helped keep the page quality so nice....

Mas fina bro! Muy excelente! (thumbs u Also, now I know which title ended up with the Mr. Miracle stuff... it was Marvela!

No problem. Comic industry here is not developed at all. We have some publishers who translate Marvel Ultimate titles, classic stuff (like Sin City, Sandman and Watchmen) and publishes them in the form of single issues or TPBs. But other than that you won't find anything here. Most comic book collectors like me prefer to buy the original editions of books over the internet, rather than wait for some publisher to finally print them. Oh and a few months ago a new publisher appeared, which is called Bubble. Each month it publishes original stories about russian superheroes they created: Demon Fighter (Бесобой), Major Thunder (Майор Гром), Inok (Инок) and Red Fury (Красная Фурия). This is their site - http://bubble.ru/. As for Star Wars, I never really got into reading SW comic books, so I'm not familiar with the subject. And I've never even seen the ones you found god knows where If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Man those Russian books look like they have pretty darn good art! How are the stories? Sucks they dont have more Marvel/DC stuff... So you have never seen the Russian Star wars stuff uh.... interesting...

Nice. I only have the #10, but in high grade

I have always liked Warlock! Very nice books.... and getting them all in a lot is dare I say it "lucky"!

I'm from Russia, and I can assure you that russian version of Spawn doesn't exist in print. Spider-Man is published here, but only the Ultimate one. No ASM keys or something like that. You sir are going to be bombarded with PM questions. Ahhhh man! No Russian Spawn! No other later spidey keys like a 300 either uh? Thanks for letting us know! (thumbs u Could you shed some light on the Russian comics scene and any American stuff that could possibly exist over there? What about those Russian Star Wars I dug up? What was th first Star Wars stuff to make it to Russia? Thanks in advance!!!! (thumbs u

Yes, you are correct… (thumbs u Liam is also correct in that we use the term loosely. The official term should be if we are going to be absolutely correct “foreign language edition, first printing” but yea….. its boring! Trust me calling them foreign variants as a classification is more about a cooler/sexy sounding name than anything else. Also, Trust me no one is making huge money on foreigns whatever the few collectors that tread in these waters call them. Also just like I stated in my article, the traditional idea of 1st edition/variant/reprint doesn’t fully take into account a foreign books exposure. It could be considered black and white. But I have always tended to think in greys…… Now you could say I am splitting hairs here but the traditional classifications make sense in the American point of view. The idea that any story or artwork printed after the first exposure of a comic are reprints. And the way we add a value equation to that makes sense…… But again like I stated in my article, for many foreign countries pre-internet their first exposure to these stories were their countries first printing of said stories. Now I will admit that some foreign hunters tend to call any book even if it is a countries later printing of the book “variant”. But still….. I am perfectly willing to call all reprints variants… like you said they all are if you think about it. The collecting culture decided on reprint though, and along with the reprint classification a negative connotation is associated with it. This is the culture that was created and has been agreed upon by the general comic book collecting community. Funny little thing though….. the subculture of foreign book collecting in comparison to the traditional way of collecting is relatively new. That means that the early adopters can lay some of that cultural groundwork. And in this early culture no one feels the need to get that crazy with our classifications…. I tend to think in greys, so it doesn’t bother me. That doesn’t mean it cannot change. In fact I have started to tend to call them simply “foreigns”…. As more collectors get involved maybe people will start calling them “foreign language edition, first printing”? But I wont, I also will not call them reprints…. For whatever reason I don’t feel traditional comic book culture’s classification of 1st edition/variant/reprint and the associated value equation doesn’t give foreign books a complete justice. Now my justifications to why I call them foreign variants are not meant to change your mind or change anyone’s mind, they are just a window into my mode of thinking when I wrote the article however flawed I realize. I appreciate your views and thanks for checking out my article! (thumbs u

Ok guys.... this is my first run-in with Russian comics...... Probably for alot of us, looks like the Books are Russian language variants of the Star Wars, New hope, Dark Horse series.... very cool! And I like the way the Russian language looks, kinda reminds me of the Cyrillic of Greek or something.... A comparasen I find these pretty cool... I have 4 total..... Could there be a Russian Spawn? Or a Marvel series with Spidey keys? The neat thing about these is... they are comics! Not trades.... gives us hope theres more out there.... (thumbs u EDIT: The other three..... I guess one of the things I really like is the way the Russian character set seems to look alien or somthing out of the Star Wars Universe itself..... very interesting...

Those do seem to be well drawn....... Ok Claudio... I am not interested! THere, ya happy! Its ok, I have my first Russian book coming hopefully soon... cant wait to show those off!

They were only $1 apiece. a steal man....

Funny you should mention this, as I just received today my first foreign editions. Namely, two issues of the Mexican Sgt. Fury series by La Presna, which are among the dozens and dozens of original Sgt. Fury stories they apparently published in the 70's after Marvel stopped producing new Fury stories. I mean, how could I possibly pass this up when I saw it on ebay? A hot Spanish spitfire, with a hairstyle and a micro-skirt straight out of 1970, attacking Fury with a giant sword? C'mon, how great is that? The story turns out to be a thinly veiled rewrite of Sgt. Fury #5, only with this female sword-wielding assassin in place of Baron Strucker. Which is a fantastic change. I don't speak or read Spanish, but I speak the universal language of hot women with swords. Ya cannot pass this up.... This is comics history and wow, I knew they did it for Spidey, not Fury... Too cool, and one of the littel quirks that make collecting foreign variants sooooo "freakin" cool! This book looks so nice page quality-wise I think I know just the "collection "this came from! Nice rack on ole girl I must say, La Prensa sure knew what worked and sold copies off the newsstand didnt they? and no pesky comic code authority to dash thier style! (thumbs u

There is a exhaustive one for French Heritage books in French... as well as a site by a boardie here! There was a UK pricing one at one point in time I think... but as far as other countries? I know that the Germans have a grading standard as well as the Dutch.... But, an organized printed book where you can learn all about one countries specific releases both licensed or not? I just do not know.... I know you can often find info for foreign publishers on that countries specific wikipedia language site, but an easy place to find this info..... no I don't think so? Websites exist often... but again they are usually small and not very well researched... online databases do exist that often are very well researched and contain tons of info but more often than not they are in the native languages of those countries, and difficult to find. EDIT: Boardies from other countries should chime in on this? Id be curious how many individual countries might have had a price guide? Lots and lots of data probably exists in Marvel and DC's old licensing paperwork but both those companies didn't give much of a damn about foreign licensing as long as the foreign licenser's check cashed. How else could a DC villains artwork appear in a Spidey book? So the chance that any of that data escaped the trash bin is probably pretty rare. Also Take into consideration that some foreign publishers from the silver/Bronze age are long gone only adds to the problem. Now I am sure its different in todays modern times... I bet the foreign license holders now have to show the American companies the artwork before its published. Or at the very least, have to abide by very, very strict standards of what they can and cannot do with the artwork, translation, continuity, etc..... but back pre-internet/global economy, no one at Marvel or DC probably ever fathomed that anyone would care what a publisher was doing with Spidey on the other side of the world. The bottom line mattered not the brand.... Those guys couldn't have imagined Americans interested in what the Filipinos were doing or any other far-off country! Who cares... they can't access(to buy) or read them anyway was probably there reasoning for not giving a sheeeet...... Maybe the higher ups at Marvel or DC did care about the brand, but did the guys working in the licensing dept. care? The stewards who were in charge of protecting the brand and artwork.... No, they were to busy listening to ABBA records... (I am speculating of course) In fact some Mexican publishers were allowed to write their own stories and artwork! Thats pretty loose and free with Spidey as a brand... makes for some cool, sexy, collectable covers though I will give La Prensa that! I sometimes wonder if Marvel even knew about this? Or did some enterprising editor at La Prensa just say ok guys... are artwork is late from Marvel! Go hog wild! The presses must run! Who knows, maybe licensing data could be mined from Marvel or DC or the foreign companies themselves if we had access? Things I would be curious about... Id like to know print runs for specific countries if they had that info, how the artwork was sent, who decided how the material was collected, which countries had artwork sent to them, etc.... sheeet just knowing how many possible countries licensed a specific issue would be HUGE help to some of us on "Key based hunts". But really who knows..... EDIT: there is a Arabic book about American superheros in lebanon I think... but I havent seen it and its probably written in Arabic!

Polvora grande'. Muy grande! Puro sólido!

Eternally grateful for sure.... (thumbs u Highest conditioned Italian 129 I have ever seen... That Claudio is the man!

Unfortunatly, it's not NM. There a very tiny tears (1-2mm) under Punisher foot and a hairline crease at upper front cover. But it's the best copy I ever saw I thought mine was a solid 7, it came back 6.5, I should have pressed it hu... lol ..... is there even one graded over 8?? I think mine have a chance for 8.0, but I will never get it slabbed or pressed I'm with you on this. Well... partially. I do sub foreign books for SS but pressing holds no interest for me not even when I was still buying US editions. Im in the no-pressing camp as well.... high grades just dont matter so much that I need to spend extra money to squeeze more value out of a book.... I would rather use that money to be getting more foreigns, sheeeet shipping from overseas is expensive!

Love your vids Liam.... will check them out! (thumbs u

Unfortunatly, it's not NM. There a very tiny tears (1-2mm) under Punisher foot and a hairline crease at upper front cover. But it's the best copy I ever saw Dude, that stash of FH's is "freakin high grade" man.... (thumbs u Im lovin the whole thing..... your punny is a absolute beaut too! I have a higher grade French 129 but mine has a small 2-mm tear as well.... along with some very small non-color breaking creases.... I would hope mine would grade out in the upper f+ maybe a vf if I was lucky? But who knows....

I agree! That whole group is crazy man! So high grade my eyes hurt!

Beautiful sir! Absolutely stunning!

Damn nice looking silver and bronze! Im curious though.... I get the bronze age is a pence copy.... but whats the d on the silver? Sorry for my ignorance...

This book is just crazy cool! A def jewel my friend! (thumbs u Speaking of jewels those foreign Vampi's were pretty cool too !

Well, in general they are a lot less delicate than the american originals, but they have also been collected for years without paying too much attention to higher grades, so it’s quite a gamble to find them. The fact that there is no huge price difference based on grade requires some luck to find them in higher grades. Of course, there is difference, but usually a high-grade book doesn’t go for more than the double, or triple, of a lower grade one, unlike in the US where there can be a lot of difference. The windows also have serious problems as well. Building is probably going to collapse. Yea... what shoddy construction! Thanks for the lowdown on the Italian market Vaillant!

This is what I got to end my week.... : And the crazy cool Novaro DC variants continue.... love how sparse and geometric this cover is.... Also in comparsen to the Phantom Stranger American I like how the brown top of the Mexican one it gives a more interesting contrast to the pink sky.... super cool... (thumbs u

Just got these in from TheAmazingR.J.S..... A Christmas gift! I am lovin them.... The foreign variant community here is so "Freakin cool" its a real pleasure to be a part of it! I also got this in from Greece.... I love how they omited the Cloak part of the title!