matewan1990

Check out the two newest additions to my collection: http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?Order=Date&Page=1&GSub=18144 Dan Parent cover art to Archie's Double Digest 173 and Dan Parent's version of "bad girl" Wonder Woman. Everyone really needs to get a commission, page or cover from Dan. He's one of the best artists in comics and he's definitely one of the greatest Archie artists of all time. www.danparent.com Take a look and let me know what you think! Mike Browning

Here's the link to three Keith Giffen Hex pages I just received in the mail from Spencer Beck: http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryNew.asp?GCat=3650 Thanks, Spencer! Mike Browning

Check out the latest addition to my collection: http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?GSub=33383 It's the Ernie Chan/Mike Grell cover art to Karate Kid 5, Dec. 1976. Many, many thanks go out to Tom Fleming and Jeremy Mueller for making this possible. Mike B.

Here's the first two cover appearances for Wendy Weatherbee, the newest, hottest addition to the Archie Comics Universe. The two covers are by by Fernando Ruiz and Jon D'Agostino. My wife bought me these for our second anniversary. She bought me the Dennis Fujitake artwork also in my gallery for my birthday and, last year, she bought me the Carmine Infantino Flash drawing for my 33rd birthday. I've got the greatest wife in the world. I'm already looking to see what art she can buy me for Christmas. Take a look! http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?GSub=31168 Mike Browning

Here's my latest Jonah Hex commission: http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?GSub=30319 This one is by legendary comics artist Gene Colan. It's too bad Gene never got to draw Jonah Hex. I would have loved to have seen his art on my favorite western character. Mike B.

I love this WW cover. Thanks for the compliment! I was thrilled to get it in trade from Jim Cardillo recently. It's one of my favorite WW covers from the Byrne run. I thought he did a great job writing and drawing Wonder Woman. His stories are always good and his art is always beautiful. Thanks again for the compliment! Mike B.

I just picked up these two John Byrne covers. One is a Wonder Woman and the other is a Power Man and Iron Fist cover. http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?GSub=13044 Take a look and let me know what you think! Mike Browning

The thing is, those signature series comics were done by an outside company many, many years after Eclipse folded. So, what you have is a comic with a signature on it that's about the same as if you took your own copy to a show, got someone associated with the comic to sign it and called it a signature series. It's not the real thing, as if it were signed by creators through a deal with Eclipse, such as the case of the Golds and Blues. What you don't understand is My MM 17 is a CGC signature series 9.0. Not something some rip off company did. It is one of a kind. It is an authentic signature. All my SS books sell well I even sold 2 of my neil gaiman SS books. But this one will not sell. You're misunderstanding what I'm saying... Sure, it's an official signature series 9.0. But, it's not something done through Eclipse, therefore it's not an OFFICIAL ECLIPSE signature series copy (there were no Eclipse signature series comics, other than the MM Gold and Blue). It's a comic signed by a creator after the fact. The golds and blues were sold at the Eclipse booth at the San Diego Comicon the year MM came out and then sold through Eclipse itself. The books were officially endorsed and sold by Eclipse. The current signature series comics are nice, but if you were to take a signed comic, submit it to CGC, it'd get a knock down in grade because of the signature. But, if CGC has it signed, it becomes a signature series comic. Ha! What a double standard. What may actually hurt the comic is that it's a 9.0 and that's not a very high grade when there are higher graded copies out there. I wouldn't give you $70 for the comic, even though it's a "signature series 9.0." I wanted Miracleman to read, not to stick away in a box, hoping I can get back the $70 I spent to buy it (which I paid the $70 in hopes that it'd be worth a fortune later on and I could make a profit.).

I can't even sell my gold #1 for 300 bucks. Go figure. I've had trouble trying to sell mine, too. But, I'll sit on each and every one of them until I can sell them for more than what I paid. I paid more than $300 for one of my golds and I paid less than $100 for some of the others. I got a lot more out of the last one I let go than what I paid for it (I think I gave somewhere around $75 for it and got $1500 — not a bad little profit). I held onto that MM art, too, when no one wanted it, and got a lot more than what I'd paid for it. Some of my favorite pieces of art are in my collection all because of that MM art I bought for $1450 (total). That might sound like a lot, but, when you break it down, one Starlin cover, one Totleben cover preliminary, one Totleben page, eight Totleben sketches, three Deodato pages, it's not that much. I gave $1000 for the Starlin cover and got $4500 in trade for it.

The thing is, those signature series comics were done by an outside company many, many years after Eclipse folded. So, what you have is a comic with a signature on it that's about the same as if you took your own copy to a show, got someone associated with the comic to sign it and called it a signature series. It's not the real thing, as if it were signed by creators through a deal with Eclipse, such as the case of the Golds and Blues. I bought my Miracleman 15 in NM for $15 at a flea market in Knoxville, Tenn., way back in 2001. The guy had it in a locker that he stored boxes of his high end comics in. I found it and he said he had had it for a long time and it wouldn't sell. So, I bought it. Then, I went to the local comic shop there and found two NM copies of Miracleman 23 and several back issues. I also found multiples of 18, 19 and 22 and all were VF to NM. Another local shop had copies of 17 and several number 1s, 4s and 5s and I bought all I could get. Then, while still living there, I found a complete set of 1-14 for $20 and all were unread, NM copies. Also while living in Tennessee (a six-month, long, strange trip), I came back home to West Virginia for a three-hour interview with Beau Smith. I bought him lunch in Huntington and we talked about Miracleman, his work with McFarlane and why Miracleman will probably never be reprinted — at least not for several years. Beau even told me he had had boxes of Miracleman comics, but they burned up when his "Image Sales Ranch" home burned several years ago. He said he'd dig out his remaining copies of Miracleman and he'd give me some, but, later on, he started selling his stuff on eBay and I never asked him for anything. I bought a bunch of Totleben art, a Starlin cover and three pages of Miracleman Triumphant and then paid $162 for a VG copy of Miracleman Volume 3: Olympus. I needed No. 16 and, at that time, couldn't find it anywhere. So, I went ahead and gave way too much for the trade paperback. But, I took it home, read it and was through with collecting Miracleman. It was almost like I got it out of my system. Then, little by little, I started trading off my original art. First to go was my Miracleman 12 cover preliminary, which I got $300 in John Byrne art for. No one wanted any of the MM art at first. I couldn't hardly give those Totleben pages away and no one, I mean, no one, wanted to even look at my Deodato MM: Triumphant pages, even though they were the three best from the series. But, Tom Fleming took a chance on the Deodato pages and sold them fairly quickly. Eventually, though, I found my copies of the Golds and one Blue and did the story for Comics Buyer's Guide and finally, after several years of trying, got the Golds and Blues listed correctly in Overstreet. I did let a Gold No. 1 go a while back and got $1500 it. I actually started to do a story on the company producing MM signature books and those new "golds" that have the Totleben stamps, but I got sidetracked with my other projects at my newspaper and with my fanzine and it never happened.

I've tried for years to get this thing listed in Overstreet, but no one believed me nor ever used the info I sent to Bob. Here's what I know about it: Beau Smith, who was an Eclipse sales director, said he remembered there being about 200 copies printed of the 2D comic. He said they were printed for people with color blindness who would not be able to read the comic due to the 3D effects (red and blue lines overtop one another to make the images jump out at the reader). He also said he did not have a copy of the comic in his Eclipse office file collection. I, too, saw the eBay copy sell and wish I'd tried a little harder to win it. Heck, I'd give $500 for the comic myself, and I've long since stopped collecting Miracleman. This book is definitely rare, although I do believe there are more copies out there than just ONE. Copies are probably sitting in collectors' boxes without them even knowing they've got them.

I have no idea what those initials stand for. I'm not sure if I ever found that out when I was doing my research on these seven or eight years ago. I've always wondered how rare the Blazing Canadian edition is. The guy from whom I bought it said he believed it to be extremely rare, as he'd had it for years and years and had never found another copy. He said there might only a handful of copies, if that many.

Here's the American counterpart to my Canadian Blazing Comics No. 1.

Here's my Golden Age Canadian comic: Blazing Comics No. 1.

Here's my Edgar Church copy of Flaming Western Romances with my all-time favorite LB Cole cover. Although I love it, I've been thinking of selling it. Anyone interested can PM me. The scan is kinda bad and it should grade out at about 9.2 or maybe a little higher. Those wrinkles at the top lefthand corner are on the bag its in — not the comic itself. I've had this for years. It came from a phone auction almost a decade ago in CBG. This is also the copy used in the Gerber Photojournal Guide.