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matewan1990

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Everything posted by matewan1990

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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.
  4. 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
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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
  8. 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.).
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. Here's the American counterpart to my Canadian Blazing Comics No. 1.
  14. Here's my Golden Age Canadian comic: Blazing Comics No. 1.
  15. 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.
  16. And if anyone is interested, I'd consider selling both my Gold and Blue editions. PM me if you're interested. Mike B.
  17. I knew I had the sigs mixed up a bit. Thanks for clarifying. During my search, I did contact Beau Smith. He said a similar thing, but did not have specifics as to print run. I attempted to contact Cat (per his suggestion), but she did not respond to me. I believe that is the copy I was referring to. Sadly, no one I know had saved that auction. I would love to send that info to Tom Gordon if someone has it. Are these the different from the issues I've seen that are called the "Eclipse Archive Editions"? I know you say they were not authorized by Eclipse, so there is that conflict. I've seen issues as high as #23 with the gold-stamped Totlebon sketch that are called "Archive Editions". Thanks in advance. So, they're calling them Archive Editions now? Wow, how quickly they've changed gears since I spoke with them a couple of years ago. I wanted to do a story on them for CBG, but I lost interest in them when they continued to churn out Gold edition after Gold edition and the prices were around $79-$99 per copy. I spoke with the company producing them and told them they weren't the real deal, but that didn't matter. I called Cat and she wouldn't even return my calls. She ran a tantric sex web site or something and there was a phone number. I might be mistaken as to the subject matter of the site, but it was something weird. She's the one who sold the company mentioned above the warehouse stock that's being turned into Archive Editions.
  18. You are correct about the Gold Variant. The Moore sig and certificate are the only difference from the regular edition. Can't recall who, but there is another sig on there as well; one of the Eclipse honcho's. I don't think it's Cat Y. though. Other Rare Editions: The "Blue Variant" - same as Gold, but more copies. I think this one only has the Moore sig. 3D Special (2D Version) - this was printed by Eclipse at the same time as the 3D version. I have only been able to verify the existance of 1 copy (the MSU Library copy), but more have to be out there. Probably unkown to the owner as it looks exactly the same as the regular edition. There was one on eBay a few years back, so I guess that makes 2 actual known copies. The Gold variant has Alan Moore's, Cat Yronwode's and Dean Mullaney's signatures and is numbered with a yellow certificate. There were 400 and all had the wrinkle on the cover on the upper right side. The Blue variant has only Cat and Dean's signatures and no numbering. There were 600 printed and all had the same wrinkle as the Gold edition and many of the regular Miracleman 1s. According to what Beau Smith told me about four years ago, there were only a few hundred of the 2D version printed up. He said there may have been only about 200, because he remembered that there were very few of them. I saw one sell for more than $400 a few years ago on eBay. But, that's the only one I've ever seen for sale. I know Eclipse ran ads for them for a long time in the backs on their comics. The Miraclemans being sold today as Gold editions are NOT true Gold editions. They are from a warehouse stock owned by Cat Yronwode that was bought by New Dimension Comics (I believe that's the company). They had Totleben make a new Miracleman drawing, which they made into a stamp and have been stamping the warehouse copies with it and selling them for big bucks as Gold editions. The only true Gold edition is the one sold BY ECLIPSE when the first issue was released. Don't be fooled by the later "gold" editions. THEY ARE NOT AUTHORIZED BY ECLIPSE NOR WERE THEY CREATED BY ECLIPSE.
  19. That's nothing... the original John Totleben cover art to Miracleman 15 sold for $650 a few years back.
  20. You know, what's funny is that for two years, I tried every way in the world to get people to take those Miracleman pages off of me in trades and by selling them but no one wanted any of the MM art I had. So, I traded the art and then, everyone started saying "Man, I wish I'd have known." The Starlin MM 4 cover I traded, everyone told me it wasn't worth even the $1000 I paid for it. But, the guy who told me that got more than $3300 for it. The guy I traded the Totleben stuff to said he didn't think he could even get $250 for the page and its eight drawings. But, he ended up selling it for $636. The three Triumphant pages sold for exactly what I knew they were worth and for exactly what Tom Fleming gave me for them. He was the only dealer who was straight up with me on the MM art. THE ONLY ONE. All the rest told me that there wasn't enough of a following for MM and that the art would never sell for what I wanted for it. Heck, what I wanted was only, like, $10-$20 more than what I'd paid for each piece of MM art and that was to cover the cost of shipping and handling I'd paid when I bought them. So, I didn't make anything major off of the sale and trade of the art. The MM 12 preliminary looked almost exactly like the published cover and was probably the nicest of the pieces I had. It was super sweet. It and the Starlin are the only two pieces of MM art I'd like to have back. I know a guy who has a recreation of Olympus's cover. It's beautiful and it took Totleben two years to do it. The guy paid $2000 for it and it looks like it was definitely worth it. And that guy just sold off the remaining MM art he had. He had a Jim Lee MM drawing and a Matt Wagner MM and some other MM pieces of art. He used to have lots of Veitch and lots of Totleben. He had the birth pages from MM 9 and a lot of other, really nice pieces. But, he sold them all off to buy other things.
  21. I'd have to vote for Matt Baker or LB Cole. Mike B.
  22. I have a friend who he has the entire issue 25 photocopies from Mark Buckingham that would have finished out the Silver Age, so, yes, it was completed and was ready to go before Eclipse went bankrupt. I don't think there was an issue 26, though, because the story was wrapped up in No. 25, or so the photocopies would make you think.
  23. I can remember back after issues 23 and 24 came out that the price on No. 15, along with Grendel 40, were very high and all the retailers at all the conventions I ever attended said it was short-printed. That's been seven or eight years ago and the prices are still pretty stable on these issues. But, only four years ago, I was buying Miracleman 1-14, 16-24 for $3-$5 a piece and got my NM+ copy of 15 for $15. Because I had trouble filling in the No. 16, I did pay $162 for the trade paperback for Olympus, but I don't regret that. I read it immediately and still have that trade paperback on my shelf at home. Good stuff that Miracleman series. One retailer, when 15 was really super hot, said he had a lot of them and they were only like $3 each. So, I drove two hours to find his shop only to get there and find he had a stack of Mister Miracle 15. Arrrgh! But, I did find NM copies of 23 and several of the earlier issues for only $3 each. If you're an MM collector, the toughest issues to find are the Non-3-D, 3-D issue and the Miracleman Gold and Blue No. 1. Not the gold issues offered on eBay for exorbitant prices. I'm talking about the real Gold (400 signed and numbered by Alan Moore, Cat Yronwode and Dean Mullaney) and Blue (600 and signed by Cat and Dean, but not numbered), the ones with the yellow and blue cards. I've still only seen one of the Non-3-d 3-D editions and it sold for something like $400. I'd probably gladly pay that today if I could find one because that would make my MM collection complete.
  24. I've got a collector wanting to buy two 30-cent variants from me. How much should I sell my Uncanny X-Men 100 and 98 30-cent price variants for? The 100 is VG+ and the 98 is VF.
  25. As explained to me by a Burger King manager: These three comics are only given out as replacements for the regular, Shark Tales toys. Shark Tales is the current promotion at Burger King and the manager said they'll only sell the comics as replacements when they run out of Shark Tales toys. The manager said Burger King has been distributing comics for the past two years in this manner. The manager said the comics are sent to Burger Kings when the warehouse runs out of the toys and the comics are fairly limited. The Burger King at which I inquired about the promotion said the three comics are not even supposed to be promoted at all. Oh yeah, I got three copies of each because I was nice and paid for three kids meals and six additional comics. They're nice if you can find copies in good shape. The Burger King managers and workers, unless they're comic book collectors, don't really care a whole lot about comics' conditions, so they cram them down into the bags or get grease all over them or fold them and put them into the bags with the meals. None of the copies I bought are NM because of creases in the spine and on the cover.