Alawson453

One of the best Small Press Comic Titles of the 80's I know a lot of you readers are strictly either Marvel or DC fans with a few Image sprinkled in for good measure. However Image and all the other non Marvel/DC companies would not be around today if not for the Small Press/Black & White Explosion of the 80's. I tend to journey back in time quite often with my journals (I hope you guys don't mind). This time our time machines destination is the year 1986 and a small comic shop owned by yours truly (My first venture before The Book Rack). I had been open for a couple months and business was ok, people were starting to find their way in to purchase both new and back issues. I had a small group of high school kids that liked to hang out and shoot the breeze (man those were the days). Well one day in walks this dude off the street and ask if I might be interested in distributing his book. Now I was always getting self published books from various artists/writer/creator's, much of which I would buy a couple copies just to help the guys out, but today was going to be a very special day. I ask the guy to let me see what he had, and when he pulls out his material I was floored! His book was already published, on high quality mando paper and the kicker the artwork was unbelievable. Ok, I thought this has to be a joke, no way a guy walks in off the street pushing a book and the artwork is as good as some of the major publishers. Just happened a couple of the high school kids show up take a look at the book and were sold on the spot! The guy's name is Ted Nomura he actually spent about an hour visiting with shoppers and signed a book for anyone that asked. That day he passed out copies of his number one issue of Tigers of Terra "Families of Altered Wars". The book went on to become a small hit with the small press and independent comic buyers of the day including myself. Not only was Ted great at telling his story but I simply could not believe how fast he was able to keep up with production based on the quality of his art (it was amazing). For anyone who had to live through the barrage of publisher's at the end of the 80's believe me Ted's book was such a treat. Ted was a regular at the shop up until the time it closed and always made sure I got signed and numbered copies of every book. Ted went on to collaborate with Ben Dunn of Ninja High School Fame and do many other great works. I keep in touch with him through Facebook and he is doing well today. If you get a chance look for some of the back issues of Tigers of Terra, Families of Altered Wars. They are very well drawn and entertaining (Black & White). Ted gave me a little keepsake one day out of the blue he comes strolling in with an original hand drawn/sketched and inked poster as a thank you for helping to promote his books. I thought I would share with all so you can see first hand how amazing his work really is. Enjoy To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

Betty's Budior Don't know how many of you know of or possibly collect artwork, comics or anything else from the late Dave Steven's of Rocketeer Fame. I was hooked the very first time I picked up a copy of Pacific Presents and saw the smooth artwork and great female anatomy that Mr. Steven's was able to with almost no effort make come to life. I swear you would think these were real people you were looking at pictures of only doctored up a little (way before photoshop was invented). My Crown Jewel of my Dave Steven's collection is "Betty's Budior". Betty was the girl of every comic collector's dreams not to mention she was modeled after the famous Pin-up Queen Bettie Page. I saw the advertisement for the litho knew I had to have it no matter the cost (lucky it was only $150 at the time). I never had the chance to meet Mr. Stevens but did manage to get what I believe to be one of his greatest works of art. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the Pic! To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

One of my most treasured moments as a collector! To all my fellow collector's that may not have had the chance to meet "The King" let me tell of my experience. The year is 1982 if my memory serves me correctly. The place is Friendly Neighborhood Comics which was owned and operated by a kindly gentleman by the name of Tom Heiner. This was the very first store in Las Vegas that was dedicated to nothing but comic books. I had made many a purchase at this store and seen many great books pass through its doors. When Mr. Heiner announced one day that Jack "The King" Kirby himself was going to be in the store for a day to sign autographs and talk comics, I almost lost my mind! What was I going to have signed (Jack was only signing 3 items per person). So here I had to make a decision on what I would take. Keep in mind that at that time I only collected mostly Silver Age Marvels so just about every title had been touched by Kirby in one way or another. Ok, so I settled on 3 books Tales of Suspense #40 awesome cover and 2nd appearance of Iron Man. X-men #3 Yeah, the cover with the team battling the Blob (most awesome) and for my final autograph candidate The Incredible Hulk #5 all of the books were high grade copies and I wished the limit would have been a little higher. Hey, I was happy just to have the opportunity to get them signed by the man that I had come to recognize as the single greatest icon the comic book world had! So the day comes, I get to the store wait in line (not very long). I make it to the front of the line and there he is....... the one who started it all, Jack Kirby! He was a very soft spoken man, not very tall (actually short) along with his wife Roz. I tell him how much I love his work and that I was trying to collect everything that he had ever done (did not accomplish that goal). He takes a look at my books and smiles, opens each one up and signs his name. I really like that in the old days artists and writers didn't sign on the covers of comics unless requested to do so. He asked me if I had any other books that I would like for him to sign? Ok, I was told the limit was 3? Had to think fast, Jack was actually at the store and making appearances to promote his new title that he was working on from Pacific Comics called Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers which happened to be on the spinner rack in the store. I leap into action whipping out the cash for a copy and run back over to get one more signature before I head home. Mr. Kirby says thank you for supporting the book and the purchase, and I tell him thanks for all of the many great stories and artwork. Later Mr. Heiner the store owner told me that he and his wife spent the evening with the Kirby's at dinner and dancing. Wow, I got to meet and shake hands with Jack Kirby! I have sense sold all of the great silver age books Mr. Kirby signed for me (needed the cash at the time) but managed to hang on to the Captain Victory (see pic) and treasure it so much that I will never let it go. Sidenote: This event takes place nearly 10 years before "The Book Rack" purchase. Thanks for reading To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

The Ring! I'm going to start this part of the story off going back a few years to one of my first trips to The Book Rack. I was about 13 years old and thought I would sneak out of the house while my mom and dad were at work. Keep in mind It was about 5 miles and I had to walk during this trip (the lengths I would go to for a fix). I'm almost there and as i'm crossing the street in front of Jerry's Nugget Gambling Hall I see something shiny in the street. Lucky it was early morning and not many cars on the road. I pick up the shiny object hoping it might be a quarter (I could buy another book or two if it was. No such luck, it was a stupid ring still I put it in my pocket and forget about it. I make it to the book store and get back home safe mom and dad are none the wiser. Well I ended up getting into trouble later that day and mom makes me empty my pockets (busted). She see's the shiny stupid ring and gives me the third degree. Finally I fess up and tell her how I came by it. Don't know why but I didn't get grounded. She tells me a couple years later that the ring I found was a solid gold 1893 one dollar gold piece ring and that my dad had it fixed because it was bent from being run over in the street but still in excellent condition. Believe it or not she gave me the ring a couple years ago and I have it to this very day. I thought some of you might like this story (it's totally true) I have the ring in my safe. But funny how in my quest to find comics at the age of about 13, before a true golden age I find gold Now you would think after acquiring what I considered the deal/dream of a lifetime the story would end, well it doesn't! I come to find out that the old guy I purchased the book store from still had more comics stashed in some storage facility! Yeah, I was shocked as hell when he comes waltzing in with one of the trademark brown paper bags filled with books and ask if I might be interested. I figure what the heck I already have the store and everything I wanted and more. We open the bag and the stuff inside was absolute primo condition books all 12 cent cover price marvel and or dc. Now I am confused as hell, did this guy just play me (yep) I think so but still I really couldn't complain. I came to realize that the paper bags once completely filled to the top would hold about 200+ comics (normal size silver age). The best thing about the way he stored his comics was that they were always laying flat and the pressure kept them that way. This was crazy there were 5 copies of each book the entire doctor strange run starting with #170 up to 183 also runs on strange tales, tales to astonish and tales of suspense, remember all of these were primo nothing less than 9.0 I kid you not. I ask where did he get these and he told me he also had a store up in tonapah in the mid to late 60's and this all was in storage. We worked out a deal for the entire bag remember I was pricing at 1991 overstreet prices and didn't have to pay multiples of guide. I asked if he had any more and he told he had about twenty thousand. Now i'm double confused, why the hell didn't he have the stuff in the store trying to make money in the first place? Oh well I ended up buying a couple thousand more books and told him I would have to stop for a while I was seriously out of cash and couldn't move the books fast enough. That's when I decided to start doing the LA Shrine Show. I never saw the old man after that and had dreams for the longest time wondering just what else I missed out on. I did score a vg spider-man #1 out of the deal as well. Now everyone has gone back in time with me on one of the most amazing rides I could ever ask for, and even though I have bought many more collections since. None have and I doubt will ever compare to the deal I made when I bought "The Book Rack". Thanks 4 Reading To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

What do I do with all these comics? Ok, so now that you have all hopefully read Part 1, let's move along. Now I have this store which was "The Oldest Used Bookstore In Las Vegas" at the time. But all I really wanted was the comics Now I had never really been in awe of much of anything in my life, but let me tell you guys I really didn't know what to do next. It worked out that after about 6 months I actually made enough money to totally pay myself back for the purchase price of the business. During that year I had to ask myself, what do I do with all of these comics. Keep in mind the year is 1991 and comic values are maybe about 10% of present day prices. So I was going to be lucky go get $150 for a near mint copy of Silver Surfer #1. My first order of business was to blowout all of my lower grade comics. So I started selling to some of the mail order dealers who were extremely excited to purchase large quantities of mid-grade 60's & 70's Marvel & DC. I would just pack a box up each month and ship them out to a couple of the ones I had built up a rapport with and they would send me a check lightning fast. This helped free up some space and get rid of books that I really didn't need to hold onto. Next, I decided to start selling at Los Angeles Science Fiction & Comic Book Convention. I packed up about 3000 nice books but not the best. I would start with my lowest graded books which were still nicer than a lot of the dealers in the room had access to. My first show was a huge success! I made a ton of money before the show was even half over and I also made one of my most important contacts ever in meeting Mr. Terry O'Neill owner of Terry's Comics. Terry made me an offer for everything I had left which was very generous. Keep in mind that I would be able to replace 80-90% of the books I sold that day with better copies and sell at the next show the following month This went on for the next 20 years believe it or not. And I still love doing that show when I have the chance, just to run into some of the guys that I have come to know and deal with over the years. On top of all of the comics there were also a ton of magazines that covered all genre's. There were runs of Creepy, Eerie, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Savage Sword, Savage Tales and Many more including a ton of the Eerie Publications Mags. All of the mags were in beautiful condition with multiples on many issues(80% of which I still have). I always thought the pricing on Mags were way to low so I held on to most of them. I was able to sell the FM #1 Fine condition to Steve Dolnick for what was a pretty good price back in 1991 Ok, so as the years passed and prices started to increase. I started to make more money selling fewer comics. I didn't jump in right away as I should have with having books slabbed (big mistake). By this time though I had already sold most of the key books from the store purchase. Hey, they helped pay the bills and that was more important at the time. Think I will stop here for tonight and try and wrap this up tomorrow. I'm throwing in a few pics of a couple books I had handy and will try and load more later. Enjoy! To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

What if all of a sudden you inherited every comic you ever dreamed of! guys for my 2nd Journal Entry I'm coming out swinging! This will give a little insight on part of my history in Comic Collecting. The year is 1990 and i'm visiting one of my favorite places to pick up back issue comics in North Las Vegas (The Book Rack). I had been a customer at this store for well over 12 years already since my early childhood. I would ride my bike over 5 miles down a steep hill while my Mom and Dad were at work just so I could spend hours sifting through the back issue bins of comics from the late 60's and 70's. It was commonplace in the mid to late 70's to find books like House of Secrets #92 (1st Swamp Thing) in high grade in the quarter box. I found a total of 6 copies one summer Part of the reason I always went back because you never knew what you might find. Now back to 1991, after talking with the owner one day he told me that he wanted to sell the store and I thought maybe he would blow out some of the leftover comics. Ok, keep in mind that this was first a used book store which specialized in trading paperback for a quarter. Well after talking with the owner he tells me that there are thousands of comics in the back room of the store that he had been just stockpiling. Ok i'm curious I take a look and could not believe what I was looking at. Over 20,000 books all stored in brown paper bags stacked up to the top of each bag with another bag over the top to make a perfect case, air conditioned for the last 20-25 years with 5-10 copies on most of all of the Marvel and DC Comics that had ever been published. Hell there were 8 copies of Silver Surfer #1 (1968) which ranged from vg to mint with 3 of the copies super high grade. Ok, I buy the store! I scraped and scratched every penny I could and pulled it off. The day I take the keys I go into the back room which was now mine! I had gone through each and every bag and stack of comics and magazines till I was just totally overwhelmed. I now had every book (just about) that I had ever wanted times five, but I also had the rest of the store as well and had to manage day to day operations as promised for one year so customers could use up their trade credits for paperbacks. I will pick up from this point in my next post. Hopefully this has been interesting (it's a true story). To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

It's a good thing to check first before submitting. This is my first Journal Entry and I thought it was necessary to share some valuable info with fellow collector's. I made a call this week to CGC to find out the status of a submission of mine that had been verified for Modern Fast Track on April 4th. Customer Service is very quick to answer/respond and I actually had the chance to speak with someone for about 10 minutes. I explained that I had concern over seeing my submission stuck in the Grading/Quality Control phase for a week and that it was fast approaching the 20 day mark more than double what is expected at least by me and CGC estimates for turnaround. I was informed that the all turnaround times are estimates even on Fast Track Had I realized this prior to sending in my books, I would have not wasted an additional $150 bucks I am not a very patient person that is why I choose to Fast Track most of my submissions. So back to my discussion. After speaking with the CS Rep he let me know that they were working hard to bring down the normal tier turn times, and since they were so high that everyone was submitting Fast Tracks. Makes sense to me but I believe that if my Fast Track submission actually exceeds the original non fast track estimated turn time which is 20 days for Modern Comics I should not be charged for my books being actually graded on time? As the conversation continues it was brought to my attention that even though the 10 day turn a round time had not been met my books would still be done in half the time that the regular modern tier books are turning (at present 90 days). Not very comforting So my advice to all if using Fast Track until turn times become more in line is to call first to check on actual turn times. They do not have time to load the actual times on a daily basis but you can get the info by calling and if your impatient as I am it helps to put you mind at ease while your chomping at the bit to see your grades displayed. I promise my future posting will be much more positive To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.