Doktor

Upper left corner has some damage 1/2" down the spine & it looks like some dirt/staining along top 1/2 of the spine too. Could press & dry-clean out But dunno.

Yeah. I saw that one the other day... Thank you though! If I had the spare scratch, I'd consider it. But I think I need to replace a toilet & possibly the floor in my bathroom.

That's actually a little backwards. Sam Jackson found out after Hitch had already used him as the model in the Ultimates & basically he said "as long as I get to play him in the movie, I don't care" when he was asked about it about 6 months after it happened. To my knowledge, Hitch didn't ask permission before loosely modeling Ultimate Fury after Sam Jackson. But that's just me being pedantic & trivial.

that's my thought as well. Anyone that's going to flip is going to probably want to slab & get either a legit yellow label by getting him to sign it via a facilitator or at least get a blue label. I know that's why I go for unsigned. When/If I grade and/or sell, I want either blue or yellow label.

I remember seeing some guy with 2 of these at exactly this same grade up on ebay about 3-4 years ago at around $1100 or so (I think it was each, but maybe it was the pair? I don't remember) & I thought it was kinda nuts. Now, I'd pretty much jump on that. And now I think I'm nuts.

Signed 4-pack lasted about 30 minutes. Unsigned lasted under 10. I got mine in under 2 minutes. I'm getting good at it. But I think I might take a break now.

That B cover is what's selling me this time.

This is partially the case. But it's got a lot to do with the forced nature of it all. Shuffling every single classic character off the stage at the same time to replace them with a cheap dollar store GoBots-esque replica, and drastically changing the tone/character/etc of the few remaining single characters (Pete is suddenly Tony Stark, Steve suddenly a Nazi, Inhumans suddenly replacing the X-Men as the hated & feared minority) all that the EXACT same time basically left a Marvel that was unrecognizable. Mix that with the Tumblr level fan-fic writers & the mid-grade DeviantArt level artists and a disregard for any continuity pre-Dark Reign or so and it feels like you're being asked to pay $4 for some generic knock-off "Morvel Comix (made by the makers of the hit Tweenage Alien Samurai Tortoise!)" instead of buying Marvel Comics and expected to buy that everything is the same or better. And when you refused to swallow the lie, editorial & creative tells you that you're a terrible person. Like, it feels like from about 2012 thru now, Marvel has been trolling its own readers; upping the ante every year & getting more defensive at the same time when anyone tries to point out that it feels like they're trolling.

I think it's a combination of Brevoort & David Gabriel.

I'm really surprised to see Lemire back. My understanding was that he quit on his exclusive a year or so back because he hated being there. So him coming back is a little surprising. Maybe it's the new boss.

I really want to make a joke about approximately 3 people on the planet buying it & everyone buying on eBay doesn't want to dig thru the quarter bin to find one. But I'll hold my tongue.

Every new movie/show had the chance to bring in new readers, but it's always been a question of "do any of them stick?" and thus far, the answer has been "almost none" Of course, that doesn't mean this won't be the time that that changes.

That phantom "new audience from [insert other media format]" has been the same story that's been bandied about by publishers since... oh... the 1st X-Men movie? The last time I think any cartoon/movie/tv show brought in new readers was MAYBE the X-Men cartoon in the early 90's. But even that was probably very minimal. These "new customers" apparently have never once gotten the memo about them continuing caring about the character(s) by reading a comic.

Can't wait for that cartoon that 9 kids will watch & will draw exactly zero new people into buying a comic!

Anyone else noticed that almost all of these assignments are identical to that intern post that ended up on BC from 4Chan back in the summer? Slott off Spidey to another big book. They thought it would be a Friendly Neighborhood Spidey book, but it ended up Iron Man. Then Coates on Cap, Spencer on ASM, Waid's run on Cap was only a stopgap, Legacy being a rush-job. Almost everything out of Fresh Start is exactly what was predicted there.

Yeah. I remember him showing that one, but I really wish he would have added that one. It would have been a great change of pace from the other ones & distinct enough without being totally out of the blue.

Thank you, sir! I realized recently exactly how much JSC stuff I had (it doesn't include my Black Cat Sideshow statue either) and I felt like getting a full accounting. I'm still missing a few big ones, but I can live with that.

And make damn sure that Priest's BP series is in trade & available.

I think it needs to be a little bigger lineup than that. There's too many X-characters for only 1 title. 1 "school" book and 1 "mutant adventures" book at bare minimum (but maybe that's because I'm an X-junkie.) And I think the line can handle another maybe 5-6 alternating solo B & C-list books. I'd also argue that Black Panther, though it's doing very well in theaters right now, has never historically been able to carry a solo title for more than about 5-6 years without needing a break. We'll see if the movie can bolster it out of being a C-list property.

I agree in principle to the "pick something & stick with it". The problem is, that the "tv season" model is built around the idea that 99.99999% of tv shows are essentially disposable. The shows. The characters. The actors. They appear, stick around for maybe 3-5 seasons on your average decent show (1-2 on an ok or bad show, 6-10 on a great show & 11-whatever-the-simpsons-is-at for a cultural touchstone that manages to be that that 0.00000001% show) whereas the core comic titles, at least from the big-2, are designed to be evergreen. They are need to last. They are the "tentpoles". This tv season model works on a Moon Knight or Scarlet Spider or whatever D-lister gets a book for 2 "seasons" before the nostalgia fades and then gets replaced by an Iron Fist or Defenders or Champions. They can get swapped out for one of the other replaceable properties & then "rebooted" 5-10 years later to start the cycle all over again. But this harms titles like X-Men, Avengers, Cap, Hulk, Spidey, etc. Those need to be evergreen & ongoing. Because those tentpole titles are going to always be in production, applying this model that ALWAYS leads to a downward spiral of viewership/readership, is a horrible idea. As I said, even some huge show that starts at 15-20M viewers loses a few million ever new "season" until they're a friday night deathslot show with a viewership of 5M by season 4 or 5. Now, if Marvel wants to become Image or Boom Studios or IDW or whatever low-tier, 5k-average-sales-per-issue studio, then that's their choice. Image & Boom and whoever else can put out nothing but 4-15 issues of someone's rejected screenplay adapted into a comic and then when that peters out, they can just swap in the next rejected screenplay turned comics -script. Hell, even Invincible, Walking Dead & Spawn realize this and keep their sequential numbering. Because they know they'll take a hit in the long-term if they relaunch with a new #1 that's nothing but short-term bumps. The new "normal/plateau" sales numbers will almost always be lower than the old one. But that's the inevitable end result of this model. At least on the tentpole titles. Because every new #1 is just as much a jumping off point as it is a jumping on point. And fewer people jump on as those that jump off almost every time. I can only speak for myself & friends when I say that I'm FAR more likely to buy a #25 after buying #24 than I would a #1 after buying #24. Every new relaunch, I (and I'd hazard to guess that a lot of others do this as well) re-think if they want this book on their pull list. I think we re-evaluate even more than we do when a new creative team comes aboard on say issue 194 or something. We think about it as a new purchase, rather than a continuation of an old purchasing habit. And you don't want your long-time customers re-thinking "is this a book I want to keep reading?" And sooner or later, customers get sick of asking themselves this question & just say "nah" and go spend their money on something else.

Just felt like posting this. I got the urge over the weekend to dig thru my boxes & find all of my JSC cover or variant cover books & get some pictures. Not the best pictures or collection but I realized after I pulled everything out how many of his covers I actually have & it's sort of absurd.

There's 2 changes that Marvel really needs to make and until they're done, I don't know if anything else can help: 1) David Gabriel really needs to be out of the sales strategy position. He's the one that came up with the ridiculously absurd ratio variant program that gets more & more convoluted every few months. I get that they're money-makers for retailers & can offset the unsold A covers, but all they're really doing is inflating order numbers (on top of overshipping) for books that are otherwise regularly dropping in sales. They're temporarily stemming the bleeding & are a bandage on a gaping wound, but even the variants are losing their luster. I've personally stopped caring entirely. Especially once the ratios got beyond 1:100 & they essentially became out of reach for a completest like me. And 2) get Tom Brevoort out of having his hands anywhere near the publishing division. He's the one that wanted to "solve" the problem of "new readers being scared off by high issue numbers" by deciding to treat comics publishing like it was a TV show. And each "season" gets a new #1 on ostensibly the same title just with a slightly new direction, a few changed cast members, and maybe a new creative team. And on its surface, it sorta makes sense to open the door to new readers like that. Except he neglected to realize that there's a reason most tv shows only last 3-5 seasons. And it's because the law of diminishing returns kicks in every "season premiere" and the audience shrinks a little more each time. And by the final season, it's a Friday night death-slot show. That seems like a very bad thing to happen when your company is built around keeping the same 2 dozen core titles as your major IP that you need to keep in the spotlight all the time because they carry your company as your "tentpole" titles. And why it can work for C-list titles just fine because they're not supposed to be "evergreen" properties that always sell. They just hired John Nee to be the publisher. Let him do the job & Tom can go back to doing what he does best: being a continuity cop & Marvel historian and staying away from publishing decisions. Both of those guys philosophy on sales & publishing is extremely short-sighted & the inevitable result is a smaller & less profitable Marvel going forward once the luster starts wearing off, which this past year showed is starting to happen. I could probably explain even deeper why these 2 guys, along with the creators they've hired in the past few years, are causing a downward spiral for the company but that's a long complicated thing nobody cares to read. I already wrote too much on this one.

Yes & no. The Law of Diminishing Returns has been kicking in on these titles for some time now & the pace will only increase the more often they go back to this particular well. Apparently tho, they're not entirely renumbering. They're "dual-numbering". They're going have that big #1 on the cover but still keep the "legacy" numbering too (I will forever just keep calling it "original numbering"). I'm guessing it'll be similar to the Heroes Reborn/Return titles that were relaunched & then got their original numbering back when they started approaching an anniversary issue & then stayed on the OG numbering going forward.

There's no grey area at all. Selling knowingly stolen goods is wrong if it's a day or a week or a month or a year after you get made aware of it. And until any sort of statute of limitations runs out, it's also a crime.

Based on the timeline here, the store knew when they bought the books that they were stolen (hence why the got ID), which is fine... sorta. It skirts the "receiving stolen property" laws because they were trying to be helpful & probably figured "I'll get my money back when they arrest the guy tomorrow/the next day" & couldn't just hold the guy or the books there waiting for the cops to show up. (or at worst, realized it shortly after buying the books) But it seems like, when the cop got in an accident & the investigation got delayed & the perp didn't get nabbed in a very short period of time, they started realizing "by now, he's blown the money & they won't be able to recover my payment for the books. I'm going to be left holding the bag" and figured he'd sell them & recoup as much of his money as he could. And that's when he's probably going to be falling into selling stolen good charge territory. I mean, I feel for the shop owner if he was just trying to do someone a solid & realized later he was gonna get screwed because of a cop getting into an accident & an investigation getting delayed/neglected. But that doesn't excuse selling books that he KNEW before he even bought them were stolen, was aware that YOU knew he had them, and was aware that a police investigation was ongoing on the matter. That's just trying to cover their to the point of near-criminal (or criminal) behavior.