Whisper

Got mine back a couple days ago. I was nervous, as they're not huge high value comics, but they're sentimental to me. I unboxed them in front of my wife, and all three came out 9.8. Such a relief.

I've been wanting to get some of my Darkness comics signed, and when I saw that Garth Ennis was doing a private signing I decided to jump on it. I get the impression that this isn't really the kind of writing he likes, and The Darkness isn't really the series that comes up when people think of his work. I've got three books I am sending in, but one in particular was the main reason for me to try the signature series for the first time. I mainly collect vol 1, and have decided I'll send in two #11s. One is a holochrome, and I'm curious if those have any issues when being signed. Anyways, the main comic is a Darkness #1 platinum edition. This is where the story comes in. I had been looking for a nice copy of this for quite awhile, and found someone here on the boards that had one. He wanted to sell it with the entire lot, and I can't recall exactly how many there were, but it was somewhere between 10-20 I think. I didn't have the money for everything, and we had discussions back and forth. If a recall, he was in Portugal. He ended up not selling me the books. He GAVE them to me, and not only that but he paid the shipping which wasn't cheap I'm sure! This is one of those random acts of kindness that still blows me away to this day. So, this book in particular has a special place with me. One of the other 11's was also from this lot. These were all going into my PC, and likely to my kids when I pass.

I contacted customer support, and they were great. They answered all of my questions, and corrected the issue. I’m not sure if the inner box was swapped out with one from a normal shipping kit, but it did get resolved. And they have no issues with you making your own window bags.

Thanks, I was worried they wouldn't accept the order if I wasn't using their bags.

I just put in my order for the signing, and unloaded the shipping kit. What I got was some backing boards, and regular mylar but non of them have windows?? Is that what the kit looks like now, or did they ship me the wrong one? I doubt they'll get a new one shipped to me in time.

Another question: I’ve seen videos where people indicate you get to select the color the signature is signed in. Is that a thing? I’ve got a platinum variant I’d like signed in Silver, and a black and red variant where it would be nice if the signature was in red. It’s a black cover, so not sure how opaque the markers are that they use. Was just curious how much flexibility I had was.

The videos I had watched weren’t specifically about poor quality or service. Most were unboxing and grade reveals. I do get what you’re saying though. Doing a quick search, there seems to be quite a few sites out there that do cleaning and pressing. On future orders, I think I’d like to have some books cleaned and pressed. I’ve got a few older books from my childhood that I may want to get graded. Thanks

I was looking through the events, and noticed Garth Ennis was going to be doing signings. So, I've ordered the shipping supplies and have been going through my collection to see which ones I would want to send. The comics are from the 90's, with a few recent reprints of the original comics. Most of the comics I've had graded have come back in the 9.4, 9.6 and 9.8 range. My dilemma, is whether or not to have my comics pressed before sending them out. I've watched several Youtube videos of people having the comics pressed in house, and more often than not, I get the impression that the comics went down in grade and not up. To my eye, the comics look pretty immaculate as they are. But, I always seem to get get back a few with surprisingly lower grades that I expect. Do I bother with a press, and if so, should I be looking for a reputable third party? If so, do I even have the time to get these back in time to get them to the February signing? Lastly, I have a couple holofoil variants. I'm assuming there's no issues with adding signatures to these. The surface being a bit different I wasn't sure if there were issues with the ink transferring to the inner well or anything.

Got this one in today, my first DC piece. Really cool Alex Konat pencils from Batman/Superman annual 3, which I believe was instead printed in vol 6 Universe’s Finest. Page 35.

This part of the hobby is so new to me, I’m just getting started. In December, I picked up my first OA ever which turned into 6 total and 1 more in the works. I blew all of my saved up fun money, so going into 2022 I’m going to be a little more selective and try and focus. Squirrel! My goals are: 1. David Finch art (cover or interior) from The Darkness. 2. Add a cover to my collection from one the books I collected in the 90’s. 3. Obtain pages from all the different artists who worked on The Darkness. 4. Optional, focus my collecting to the Darkness series, and character pieces for Venom and Archangel. Maybe Magneto, and Apocalypse, or Mr. Sinister. Oh, and any piece that really sticks out to me that I can afford. Focus, focus! edit: 5. I’d like to add a colored piece to my collection.

I really liked this piece, Archangel, Magneto, Nightcrawler, and small X-men. Uncanny X-men #6, page 3 by Yildiray Cinar.

I got two more pages in this week. The first is Venom #2, inked by Marco Galli. I’m not sure which volume it’s from. Lots and lots of bats. The second page is sentimental. It’s from X-men Icons: Nightcrawler #2, page 9. I did the flats for Brian at Hi-Fi on this one. No Nightcrawler, or key events, but still a page I will be keeping. Pencils by Matt Smith and inks by Mark Morales.

My official first pieces of OA arrived today. Still have more on the way, but couldn’t wait to post. The Darkness #27, pages 14 and 17 pencils by Clarence Lansang, I need to verify the inker..

I feel lucky, in that the first several pieces I grabbed were all under $100. Panel pages, and not the key action sequences. Two were from The Darkness, which I collected heavily in the 90’s, and one from a Venom #2. The Venom page was mostly scenery, so this may be my first questionable purchase. They were like the free sample dealers give you to hook you on the drugs they’re selling. Then, the next night, I was out on the prowl, hunting for art. I was looking for some good examples of the characters I enjoyed, and ended up spending quite a bit more. I got an Uncanny X-men (Vol 5) which had some classic Archangel shots in it, and a more recent Venom (#161), which also had some great action and venom panels. I’m not sure about the story, looks like Spiderwoman kicks his butt in later pages. Then I figured out how to use the comic art tracker… I didn’t really think I’d find what I was after, but BAM. There is was, a page from the X-Men Icons Nightcrawler mini series that I had worked on. Thankfully, this one wasn’t too bad. Was like $75 with shipping thrown in. I did come clean with the wife this morning. I saw the panicked look in her eye when I told her I spent a lot of money. But ultimately, it was money I had set aside so she wasn’t mad or anything. Now, I need to build that back up so I can start hunting for a cover! For now, I’m going to avoid looking at any site that sells art. I just don’t trust myself. I’m going to look into some storage options, and watch as many videos as I can. (Thanks for the recommendations). Read as many threads as I can, but it’s hard to find specific topics. I’ve seen some great framed examples were people display the page, next to the comic page, and in some cases the cover. I would love to do that, but I may have to learn how to frame and matte the work myself. The money involved in buying a custom frame is money I could spend on more art! It never ends.

Archangel is still WIP, haven’t had much time to finish it. This is actually based on an earlier Archangel I did, that I wasn’t particularly happy with. Looks like I’ll need to tweak the image, just shows up as black. The other is just a digital painting I did for an in game character. I sculpted the dragons head, then ended up turning it into a digital painting.

I can see how easy it is to let things get out of hand. I think I just grabbed one of the pages from Nightcrawler #2 that Matt Smith/Mark Morales did. I’m going to have to grab the comic out of the box to verify the colors were mine, but I’m pretty confident. I’ve already eaten through most of my play money. I need to just stop looking,

I’ve always known the original art work was out there, and just figured it was to hard to find and far out of my price range. Well, some of it is, but I didn’t realize how easy it was to search and locate pieces by artists, or by keyword. Now, I’m in trouble with my wife (she doesn’t know if yet, but it’s coming). Not only did I purchase my first OA, I ended up ordering 3. Then two more the next day… It was hard enough on my wallet with collecting comics, and now this. There has to be a support group of some kind for this addiction. Now, I’m going to set a goal to find and acquire some of the pages that I actually got to work on when I was doing flats for Hi-Fi. These are likely still in the artists hands, or long since gone to a collector since it was probably in the early 2000s when I was doing this. Wish me luck. Now, to figure out how I want to display this stuff. Frames are not cheap.

I appreciate the response. I figured rather than chasing gaps in my current collection, I’d try and get back into some new books I’ve never read. The LCS I’m using now doesn’t really do back issues, so I started doing some pre orders, then just started up some subscriptions. Looks like a couple new Venom books are out, so its real confusing what the difference is. Got pre-orders in on 4-5, grabbed 1 and two as they were in stock, but not seeing 3 anywhere. I started a Carnage, but not sure when that comes out.. Picked up a BRZKR to read, to see if I like it. King Spawn as well, but Ill have to find some back issues there. The comics I thought might be candidates were ASM 298, 299, 301, maybe some of my Alpha Flight which I think was really early 80s. Couple of vol 3 Silver Surfers. That reminds me, I was trying to enter a book into my app, and they didn’t have the newsstand edition, so I started to add it. It was a volume 1 based on all of the other entries, but the first page said volume 4. Is that an error, and if so, how can you tell if it’s rare, or if the whole print run had the error. I get the feeling my Darkness vol 2, #3 error was pretty much the whole print run and doesn’t impact the rarity of the book.

I haven’t been collecting in years, but caught the bug again. Started subscriptions at my local LCS (not really that local, but there hasn’t been a comic shop in 30 miles for years). I started to look for an app to catalog my stuff, and went to work going through everything. It’s like Christmas early, because I had no idea I had some of the books I did. I’ve never sold a comic, and still have all the ones I collected in the late 80’s early 90’s. Because of the app, I found all the keys I had and didn’t even know it. Many of my comics were straight up readers, and I was too young to really know better about handling and care, but I do have several that are in fairly nice condition. I want to preserve these, and maybe get them slabbed. They’re probably not big value books, but they’re part of my collection so I have a connection. Now the questions… How would I go about finding a local source for people that know how to clean and press? Is it even worth doing? I tried searching for forums, but the only forum I’ve really ever found and participated on is this one. I kind of want to learn more about the issues I have, and see if any of them are worth displaying, and just generally chat about comic stuff. I wouldn’t even know what series are out these days, that would be a good read and worth adding to the collection.