Crimebuster

Black Panther is about the black experience. There's no possible way to tell this "same story" in Asia or Europe, or have it focus on another race, because it is about black people, and about Africa. Considering how obvious this simple fact is, I'm puzzled how you could have missed it.

Yeah, Marvel didn't steal the trademark from anyone; their version appeared over a decade later after the trademark had lapsed. They weren't even the first company to grab the trademark, either. This goofy dork appeared in 1966, with the amazing power to detach his body parts.

I have not seen all the nominees from 2008, but besides Milk, he most serious competition for me would be another film that should have been nominated for Best Picture but wasn't because of genre bias - Wall-E. The silent movie first act elevated Wall-E in a way that even the other great Pixar movies haven't achieved (and may not again, since as much as I love Pixar, they have felt safer and more formulaic since their merger with Disney). The snubs of both Dark Knight and Wall-E are what led to the Academy opening the Best Picture field to more nominees, which overall, I think is a good thing. One other thing working in Black Panther's favor - and again, I don't think it will win - is that unless something has changed this year, Best Picture voting works on a preferential ranked voting system, with the winner needing to get at least half the total votes. So the way it works is, each voter ranks all the Best Picture nominees. If no film gets half the total votes on the first ballot, the movie with the fewest votes is tossed out. Any ballots that were cast for that film are then recast using that voter's 2nd place choice. If no fiilm has yet to reach 50%, they do this again - the lowest film is tossed, any votes for that film go to the next choice on te ballots (2nd, or now in some cases, 3rd choices). This means it's entirely possible for a film to win Best Picture because it has the most 2nd place votes even if it has a smaller number of 1st place votes. In a field like this, with no clear frontrunner, if Black Panther is everyone's 2nd choice, it could well win.

Excellent movie, and deserving of the nomination. I don't believe it will win, but I wouldn't completely count it out. There have been many, many years in Oscar history when the Best Picture award didn't go to the objectively "best" movie, but rather to a good movie that was very popular, or a decent movie that had a great Oscar campaign generating buzz for it, or for all sorts of reasons beyond critical opinion. The people who votes for these things by and large aren't critics or film scholars, they are actors and directors and writers who often judge things through their own specific lenses. The fact that it was as popular as it was is a major benefit. Oscar voters get free screener copies, but a lot of voters don't have time or inclination to sit and watch dozens of films. I'd bet money there will be people voting for Best Picture who have not seen all the nominees — but they may have seen Black Panther because it was such a phenomenon. That gives it a leg up out of the gate. What it does with that advantage we'll see — Marvel has never run an Oscar campaign like this before, so it will be interesting to see what they and Disney do in this situation.

CA #7!

This is my favorite design era for DC covers, especially the "52 big pages don't take less" version. Love it.

I think I can only manage a top 5 - the next 15 artists could be in any order depending on my mood and what criteria I'm thinking about. 1. Harry Lucey 2. Alex Toth 3. Darwyn Cooke 4. Jack Kirby 5. Guy Davis

My latest production blog update includes Asking for Trouble part 2, the second part of my look at the process behind creating the series co-star Trixie Trouble. crimebustercomics.com/2019/01/18/asking-for-trouble-part-2/

They are much rarer after 1980, but I have some in my collection as late as 1987. I don't have this date, though - the only book I have from 1982 with a date is from December, and it's a pen arrival date rather than a stamp.

I actually just went trough the whole other Date Stamp thread to check if I had any of the ones on the want list, so it does happen! Having said that, I did just get in a small pile of comics with date stamps from the same collection. All of them are Charlton romance from 1973. This latest batch of dates: March 22, 1973 May 3, 1973 May 10, 1973 (two copies) May 29, 1973 July 24, 1973 August 8, 1973 (three copies)

I have a spreadsheet just for all my date stamps. Right now I have 99 books listed with date stamps, though it's slightly - sorry for the pun here - out of date, as I have sold off a handful of them. I also note on my spreadsheet whether it's a full date stamp, a partial, or a hand written arrival date.

I just got a small pile of comics from 1973 with date stamps. Thanks to this, I have now managed to bracket my birthday. I'm looking for May 9, 1973, and I now own comics with dates stamps of May 8, 1973, and May 10, 1973. This jibes with my research from Mike's Amazing, which correctly lists different publishers as having different distribution dates at this time. Mike's had Marvel coming out on May 8, and some other publishers on May 10, which ha borne out. The comics I have are a Sgt. Fury #112 with a May 8, 1973 date, and 2 different Charlton romance comics with May 10, 1973 dates. I think I will only find May 9 if it's from a store that received a May 8 shipment late or something.

Here it is! The big moment! After over 10 years, I finally completed my run of Boy Comics! Here was the last issue I need, no real surprise. This copy was bouncing around ebay for a couple months before I finally bought it. Like many copies of this issue, it's missing the centerfold, so I didn't want to pay too much for this copy, but eventually the price dropped enough for it to be in my wheelhouse. Hurray!! When I have a chance, I will try to get some group shots with the completed run!

In the latest entry of my production blog, I give a prgoress report and share some line work in progress for page 4, along with a discussion of some of my storytelling influences. Enjoy! https://crimebustercomics.com/2019/01/10/progress-update-steranko-and-the-soviet-montage-theory/ Here's a look at page 4, in process, which you may notices has a Steranko influenced layout with the sequence of small panels (which will be dialogue free when I get to that point).

Thanks for the help! Due to the Christmas holidays and Sunday laws, I wasn't able to get to any of these shops when they were open. I did, however, manage to get to the art shop NeuroTitan, which was completely amazing, one of the coolest shops I have been to anywhere. I finally managed to find what I was looking for (back issues of the 1970's Racher series) in a shop in Vienna.

I'm in Berlin for the next couple of days. Any recommendations for comic book stores? I particularly want to find back issues of the 70s German reprints of marvel books, like the Avengers reprint title Racher. Thanks!

Most of my buying this year was Bronze Age romance, which is where it's at! I got a lot of great romance comics, though I still have a ways to go to finish my BA Romance checklist. And then, of course, a lifetime of upgrading begins. Sprinkled in, though, were a few bigger, grail-ish purchases, which I am stoked about. It was a really good year for collecting for me! Here are my top three acquisitions of the year. 1. Boy Comics #3 Obviously, the big grail for me. This was a birthday present from my awesome girlfriend! 2. Jughead #89-91 original cover art This three-part series introduces Jughead's arch-frenemy Trula Twyst, and the original art for the cover of #89 was one of my major all-time grails I never thought I would see up for sale. When I saw this set on ebay, I snatched them up immediately! For non-Jughead fans, this would kind of be like getting the cover art for Iron Fist #14 or something. 3. Just Married #104 Hard to find comic, harder to find in nice shape. Still a bit of a sleeper, but for my money, one of the true romance keys, thanks to its provocative and fantastic interracial kiss cover, which I believe is unique among classic romance comics.

I'm still plugging away at the line work for #120. I'm currently working on page 10, and hope to have the line work done before I leave for vacation on Friday. I decided to bump my page count up from 28 to 30, so that has slowed things down as well, so I am currently looking at a mid-February date for finishing the line work for the whole book. When I get back from vacation, I hope to share a sneak peek at another page in progress, but for now, I have updated my production blog with a look at the process behind creating my new leading lady, Trixie Trouble. Enjoy!

I also saw this last night. I don't think there are any real spoilers in my review here but just in case.

So, I am working on my first comic book, and wanted to share the process with you guys here, especially since my series is a continuation of the Golden Age title Boy Comics. And lets by honest, the only people in the world who care about Boy Comics are here on these forums! My series is called The Crimebusters. I'm picking up where Boy Comics #119 left off, so The Crimebusters #120 is set in the fall of 1956, with Chuck Chandler — aka Crimebuster — returning to Curtiss Tech for his junior year of college. Even in a sleepy small college town, though, trouble has a way of finding Chuck. Trouble with a capital T, that is, as Chuck is reluctantly forced to team up with girl reporter Trixie Trouble to solve the mysterious death of a beloved professor. So was it simply suicide, as the authorities claim? Or did the professor bring back more than rare artifacts from his recent trip to Peru... like an ancient curse? The Crimebusters is my ode to classic teen detective stories, in the style of Scooby Doo, Archie's Weird Mysteries, and The Three Investigators. I'm drawing it in an Archie style, and the original Life with Archie series is another big influence on me. I the classic Golden Age tradition, this will be a stand alone story, though I hope to do more issues, with a broader mystery building in the background as the series progresses. For now, though, I'm just focusing on trying to make one comic book! Some of you may recall tat four years ago, I began work on a somewhat different version of Boy Comics #120, before ultimately giving up on it. A big part of that was the style - I was trying to emulate the style of the Golden Age crime comics, which just isn't really my thing as either a writer or an artist. This time, I am adopting a style that is more fun for me to work on, and, I hope, to read. I have also devised what I think is a more sustainable work flow than last time. At that time, I tred to complete each page before moving on to the next. This time, I am using a classic assembly line style, so I have plotted, laid out, and done full breakdowns for all 28 pages. I am now in the process of doing the line work for all 28 pages, and when I am done, I will then go over it again for an inking stage, then a dialogue stage, then a final edit stage. I expect the line work to take me through the first week in February. My hope is to have the book done by the end of March, do a Kickstarter launch in April, and then publish in May. But we'll see how it goes! I'll be updating things here as I go, and you can also check things out over at my website: https://crimebustercomics.com/= Thanks!

Wasn't there a warehouse find of this issue? I swear I remember hearing that prices were kept down because there was a large supply of high grade copies due to a warehouse find.

Here are a couple trivia tidbits people here probably know, but might not be easy to google stuff. Stan once said that when it comes to buying homes, he thought it was better to buy a small house in a nice neighborhood than a big house in a crappy neighborhood. He and his family often had the smallest home in the neighborhood they lived in, as he was more interested in a nice location than a lot of square footage. It's well known that Atlas nearly went out of business around 1957, and to stay afloat, publisher Martin Goodman directed Stan to fire everyone and just publish the big backlog of material he had accumulated. Less well known I think is an anecdote I read that said when Stan had to fire all his long time friends and employees, it upset him so much that after each meeting, he locked himself in the men's room to recover in private. The team of Lee and Kirby was almost divine providence. Stan's top artist at Atlas, and one of his closest friends, was the great Joe Maneely. On a Saturday in 1958, Maneely was suddenly killed when he was hit by a train. The story I heard is that a devastated Stan spent the weekend trying to figure out how Atlas was going to go on without Joe handling all the top titles. Monday morning when Stan went to the office, Jack Kirby - who had only done a handful of stories at Timely/Atlas in the previous 15 years - suddenly walked in the door looking for work after having a feud with his editors at DC. Stan hired him on the spot to pick up the workload Maneely's death had left, and the rest is history.

Several of the covers from the series are featured prominently in the opening credits. As each issue had variants - some several variants - I expect the covers that are shown in the credits will become the go-to versions for casual buyers and readers. #1 outside front cover: And when you open the flap, #1 inside front cover: Both images prominently used. The title screen image is from #2: #3: #4: #8:

This came out after Sabrina #1, so it is neither her first appearance (which was in Mad House much earlier in the Silver Age) nor the first issue of her own title. However, what it does have going for it is that it's serious horror stories, as opposed to comedy. And it has "Chilling Adventures" in the title. Both of those things make this a spiritual forerunner of the new TV series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (based on the recent comic of the same name), which is getting great reviews on Netflix at the moment. Sabrina is really just the narrator in these issues, but for fans of the show, this is a cool book.