Sideshow Bob

(worship) Duly impressed. :banana:

Excellent splash from #11.

+1 "Apology Ax-cepted"... there are so many laugh out loud moments in this book!

Very impressive month!

There is a slew of Comiclink auctions of Bronze Batman books (all 9.8) that are ending tonight. 24 books from Batman #271-300 (all 9.8) 18 books from Batman #313-400 (all 9.8) My favorites: Batman #281 9.8 absolutely perfectly registered cover Batman #287 9.8 Penguin cover by Mike Grell Batman #292 9.8 Riddler cover Batman #296 9.8 Scarecrow cover Batman #323 9.8 Catwoman cover Batman #353 9.8 Joker cover

Between tomorrow night (10/28) and Thursday night (10/30), there is an almost complete run from Batman #254-300 at auction at Comiclink. Almost all of those are 9.8 and its a great opportunity to pick up the best examples throughout that run. Since they are mine, I'll share that there was some real debate on whether to space this out over multiple months, or drop a big pile of them at the same time. At the end of the day, I went with doing this section of the run in the October auction, and my near-complete high-grade #201-253 run in the November auction. The trickiness in this approach is that sequential auctions like this are spaced like every 20 seconds (the higher priced auctions are spaced out a little more between lots), so if you're going to bid, its pretty difficult to time it right to the end. The unofficial Chicago motto of "Vote early and vote often" applies here for sure. Good luck! Hope they find home with boardies... -Bob

In 1987, I first walked into a comic book store and was instantly hooked. I went straight to DC, and picked up the #1 issues of Green Arrow, Spectre, and Suicide Squad along with the start of Batman's New Adventures on issue 408. A couple months later, the Millennium cross-over event happened, and I was blown away. Not the greatest cross-over of all time for sure, but my first big comic event. I saw the interlocking covers between Captain Atom, Detective, Spectre and Suicide Squad, and thought they were the coolest thing. In retrospect, it makes sense that I loved them as they were done by Jerry Bingham, the Batman: Son of the Demon artist on whose work I absolutely drooled over page after page. I don't know of an earlier set of interlocking covers, so this might have been the first of its kind... The last couple years as an OA collector, these were the covers I was holding out as my personal grail. I contacted Jerry, who said he had sold them as a set in 1989. And that was where the trail went cold. No results from Where are they now?... On a random scan of the CAF listing of ebay items, I almost fell off my chair on seeing all four covers for sale. But the link was dead; the seller pulled them once he realized they were likely going to be broken up. I contacted him separately, and several agonizing months later and multiple assurances of never breaking up the group, we got to a happy place. In a quirk of fate, they arrived on my birthday. I notified Jerry who was excited to see them again after all these years. Jerry and I almost grew up in the same neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago, and we've maintained contact during my (until now, fruitless) search. Having that extra connection makes owning these that much cooler. Here is the CAF link for each of the pages: Millennium interlocking Bingham covers (1988)

Went to NY Botanical Gardens today. All I could think about was how to stage a Manifest Destiny-esque photo with my daughter...might have to dress her as Sacajawea and give her a spear!

and...ta-da! Will have to get some natural lighting photos, but overjoyed. These interlocking covers were on the rack the first time I went into my local comic book store at 95th and Kedzie, and I never forgot the magic.

Picked up at NYCC, was supposed to be a little sketch of the Blues Brothers as ponies, but Andy Price took almost 15 months to deliver, so he upgraded me for free to a full-on painting. And a Pepoy variant for Afterlife With Archie...been sitting on this one for awhile.

I love the Pepoy variant for #8!! I've been sitting on the OA for months, waiting for this to come out! Afterlife with Archie #8 vairant by Pepoy

Loved the issue. Thought the art clearly shone with Matt's switch away from smaller paper. Matt said only page 2 of this issue is on the smaller paper; I checked, but it is a splash page so hard to discern that when side by side with the other pages. The line of "and this is for President Jefferson and for the Corps of Discovery, you c*$#nting five-tounged son of a whore" was something... Umm, yeah, a little over the top.

Had a great time at NYCC this year. Brought a coffee cup with a porcelain ink pen, approached some of my favorite artists for a sketch, and got myself an awesome mug for my morning joe! Here is the finished product, with special thanks to Dustin Nguyen (L'il Gotham), Chris Mooneyham (Five Ghosts), Terry Moore (Rachel Rising), Andy Price (My Little Pony), Roc Upchurch (Rat Queens) and David Petersen (Mouse Guard): Coffee Cup Project - NYCC 2014

Not a chance. Its a great painted image, and its a #1, but that is so aggressively priced that it deserved a double blink and a long pause when he said it. He said if it didn't sell, he'd be okay with that. On the forest stories, I was in the woods in the south suburbs of Chicago visiting from college playing with my little brother and sister in the fall, and we were climbing up and rolling down a hill over and over with great effect. I reached the top again for another descent, and was watching my ten-year old brother rolling to a stop near the bottom. That's when I saw the decapitated deer corpse lying a foot away from him (and where I had rolled down to probably ten times already that morning); in the leaves, it was invisible to him. Clearly not killed by an animal, and a fresh-ish kill that hadn't been found by the varmints yet. I yelled down to him to stand up slowly, take three steps back, and look down. He did, yelled back there wasn't anything to see (four feet away, it was indistinguishable from the forest floor). When he refocused, I've never seen him move that fast...we told the village police, but I've never gone back into those woods. Probably just an off-season bow hunter that took a trophy rack, but it still gives me the shivers.

Dustin Nguyen had the OA for the NYCC variant for sale at his booth in artists alley. $6000 was the straight-faced answer when asked about the price.

Excited to pick up the OA for the Murphy cover! Wyches #1 variant cover by Sean Murphy

I haven't heard of a way to see the pilot, other than the people that saw it screened at SDCC many moons ago. No YouTube, no torrent. If anyone does know, I'd like to see it too. The cringe-worthy factor here is that they compressed the entire first arc Welcome to Lovecraft into that one hour pilot, which boggles my mind with how much you would have to leave on the cutting room floor...maybe I don't want to see it actually...

I should have taken a picture of the horde when I boxed them up to ComicLink, but here is a nice representative sample!

There were 11 missing issues in my 201-300 run, and #255 was one of them. I think the one 9.8 I tried for a couple years back got snatched up by Greggy. Sorry to say that I can't help out on your search....

Yep, those are all mine. My collecting focus the last five years was to get 100% of the Bronze Batman run in the highest possible grade, and it was a difficult (and expensive) endeavor that I truly enjoyed. But recently my wife went to our coat closet to put the winter coats in from storage, and nothing could get in with all the CGC boxes. A couple of long discussions about apartment living and space constraints, and the decision was made to auction the Bats off (and my Spectre run too). Rather than trickle them out, ComicLink and I felt that making a bit of a splash with the whole lot would be more compelling. And ComicLink are happy to arrange time payments or offset with consignments if you want to go after multiple (or all!) books. The 201-253 run is going in for the November Focused auction starting Nov 19th. That's got the Adams 9.8s like 222, 227, 232, 234, and 251 (and the 9.4 #238 which is one of the three highest and impossible to find), among all the other magnificent books in the run. The 251 is absolutely perfectly centered, and I really considered keeping that one... The 254 -300 run is in the October auction starting Oct 16th, which doesn't have any Adams but is equally brutal to find in high grade. Also starting Oct 16th, there are a bunch of 9.8 books in the 300's, and a couple 9.8s in the 400's like Death in the Family, Year One, and Ten Nights of the Beast. So bid early and often, and I hope a bunch of boardies here pick up the majority. Bob

Happy to have picked up a sweet Mike Grell Warlord page at Comiclink. And a great pickup from the boards, a Y: The Last Man page that I was the underbidder on three years ago. Thanks Eric!

Completely agree with the blurriness this issue. I asked Matt about this yesterday, and he came back that this issue (and a few before it) he used smaller paper to help get through some deadlines, but that it really didn't speed things up for him and the details didn't scale properly. The loss of distinction in the line work is the result. He has switched back to regular size paper for issue 11.

This issue seemed a bit hindered by the plot wanting to move forward but the writer slowing it down in order to build up to the end of the arc two issues from now. Seemed like less opportunity for some of the great art we've come to expect, but still one of my favorite series.

Those are very impressive. Nice pickup! I like that they are not carbon copies of each other.