DougC

I will be there for at least one of the days, but this is looking worse than last year. I just don't see how anyone setting up is going to make their money back let alone eek out a profit.

As someone who does a lot of contract and consulting work every year I receive 1099's after I have filed my taxes (as late as June! despite the law). After 15 years of this I stopped stressing about it and simply file them unreported with the rest of the tax info in case one day I get selected for an audit. I am not making light of properly doing your taxes as that would be a legal concern, but it is what it is.

Since X-cutioner's Song has been mentioned here are some of my favorites from the 90s Operation: Galactic Storm Rise of the Midnight Suns Siege of Darkness Age of Apocalypse All of these can be found in the cheap bins for readers and some have cheap TPBs.

CGC has become very restrictive on sketch ops and only handful of people are even allowed to post them currently, this in addition to most artists skyrocketing pricing for blanks (to the price point of what their 11x17 commission was) and the diminishing returns on the actual art. What has dis-waded a lot of potential buyers is the entire lack of value for an unknown artist, I think 40 is fair depending on what the art looks like but in no way do I expect to be able to sell it at a future point. If I commission or purchase a sketch cover, I do so with the complete understanding that if I am lucky I will be able to sell it for 50% of what I bought it for. I have sketch covers in CGC holders that I can not even give away at this point. Personally last year I switched from sketch covers to getting sketches done in a sketch book as it was becoming to much hassle and money dealing with CGC and facilitators, this year I will be doing the same.

This was going to happen eventually with the parties involved and how they choose to operate. It is in everyone's best interest that this came to light with a police report instead of a personal interaction that would have devolved into he said/she said. This is only my opinion and based on my personal interactions.

Didn't DJS Adventures have something like this called the Showcase Sealer back in 92?

Found a new update for this set. Set Type: X-Men #1-#275 (1991) Including Variants X-Men Legacy #246 (Second Print) Certification #1052471021

I will add to this from my experience. I live in a very small town of 9k people the closest place to buy anything comic related is over an hour away. When asked for advice on opening a comic only focused shop here I strongly advised against it. Last year a couple a gave the advice to opened their coffee shop/comic store on main street in the town square between a bar and restaurant. As of today they are drowning in debt with only the coffee shop keeping them afloat. The actual building they are in is an amazing three story brick store front with the coffee shop on the first floor, comic shop on the second, and the third is currently inventory storage. The coffee shop is great and caters to a robust and returning customer base. Given the low overhead for product it prints money. The comic shop is a sea of new manufactured pop culture that is a cancer. I have been asked and given advice over this year on why it seems to be failing and here is the short of it. Comics are too expensive! New single issues are $3-$5 cover price and out of the range of anyone just looking to get into them. Trades where priced to high. While the shop stocked hundreds of trades they were priced at 90% of cover when anyone can go on amazon and pick most up for half that. They were buying to many "toys" From Q-Figs, Pop Vinyls and Retro-Action Figures that look pretty but never sold and cost to much. Nothing was older than the day they opened the shop Anything that could be confused for "vintage" was of the newly manufactured retro style The Customer base was either never defined or a targeted base was never realized Imagine if Hot Topic was a comic store, it has a lot of pretty stuff but after returning to the store a couple times it all look the same. The market was to small for the business. There just is not the foot traffic or inventory turnover for it to be a destination type store My best advice to him was to shrink the amount of comic material and branch into MtG and RPGs which is very popular in the area. A local pawn shop had about 1200sqf of empty space they put tables in and rented them out for gaming (and later began selling cards/books). This was very successful to the point where it became the business focus over the pawn shop. The owner passed a couple years ago during a tornado and the shop was never reopened (either portion) so there was an obvious hole to fill. Unfortunately this was deemed as undesirable and "not comic related" so out of the question. Overall this was a dream that was never thought out properly. All of the above issues are still relevant today with the same results. At this point I hope the comic portion closes and they focus on coffee or the entire business will go under.

I have had an unboxing youtube channel for while now, how is comic items doing?

I have asked this question multiple times and the answer (in reference to moderns) was that generally on 9.8/9.6 books the flaw is obvious and notes were not needed. I bought it at the time but my confidence in that statement is shaky at best.

It is going to be a long time before they get to mid 60's DC books (if ever slabbed).

The stripped down modern music in the show is great as well and gives just enough familiarity that you recognize something but just can't put your finger on it. Black hole sun in episode one and House of the rising sun in eight were my two favorites.

Stan Lee would sign himself if you paid him to.

There is a pretty big difference in the original hand drawn animation (which had its faults) and something created in flash trying to simulate the said animation. The part where beastman is running is pretty terrible.

Tom Baker has always been "my" doctor but David Tennant is a really close second. Unfortunately I lost interest after Gillan and Durvill left and Matt Smith was on his own (I actually preferred the Amy Pond show with the doctor as a side character). I have tried to watch the Peter Capaldi doctor but it is just not for me so I am waiting until the next iteration of the doctor.

Picked up a very nice raw copy that I thought was in the 7.5 range and had Ken Bald sign it. I have a 2.0 (signed by Stan Lee) and 2.5 as well.

There is someone local (semi-local?) that in the past has facilitated shows with enough submissions, though I do not remember their name. I am sure if there is interest someone will post up.

I must have missed his name when I last looked through the guest lists, thanks! And you do an awesome job considering the revolving door of conventions.

Anyone know which NY (area) convention Ken Bald will be at this year? I have a number of his signatures but nothing CGC'd and I would like to get one this year if possible.

I do not think the grim/dark edgy brooding superman that worked for Batmans rebooting is the face lift audiences today will see as relevant, just tried and tired. They also blew the proverbial wad of kryptonite and doomsday as relevant and in world dangers to killing superman. They are painting themselves into a corner where superman is not longer humanized so when they need that humanized emotion it becomes unbelievable. What is worse is that when suspense is needed that this superman is now supposed to be in a dangerous situation it is likewise not believable. WB seems at the moment to be willing to throw anything in a -script for a "pop" and by doing that it hurts any future movie scripts. They could have cut out the Doomsday/DKR items and saved them for a future when the JLA has been established with single character and combined character movies that would have a much more emotional impact on the rebooted superman character, fans, and other superheros. I really liked the character of Superman in the injustice comics as I understood his reasons, this movie felt like they really wanted that angle but didn't know how to do it so just said "screw it... kids still love edgy right"?

I do not really think I can any thing new that has not been said already; but I left the movie feeling disappointed. This felt like someone had 3 treatments of Death of Superman, The Dark Knight Returns (although he never left) and an old BvS -script then accidentally dropped them, stuffed parts of each in a single pile and handed it to the director who also had a couple pages of Convergence, Darkseid War, and Injustice fan fiction to film. The entire first half of the movie was a nice political thriller focused on the human element struggling in the face of "god". Then a switch flipped and the second half of the movie was just really pretty but completely disjointed action vomit with short bursts of "hey guys this character will have a movie out in the future". I really wanted to like this movie and while I do not hate it, I left the theater disappointed at what this movie ruined for any future Superman movie in the next 20 years.

I watched dark matter on Netflix sometime back and though I wanted to like it just felt like really bad Firefly fan fiction.

This movie was going to be a complete pass for me, but I will go see it some afternoon as a matinee. Something about Bohemian Rhapsody and watching Cpt. Boomerang sneak a beer did it for me.