VintageComics

I'm so sorry to hear about your cousin. My family has a history of mental illness so I've always been involved in some way. I have a sibling who committed suicide and another who attempted it. I have another sibling who lives on the streets for over a decade now (yes, that's 3 siblings) by choice, so none of this is new to me. Growing up, several females on my mom's side of the family experienced mental illness and one died in her sleep from excessive weight gain from anti-depressants. LA is in really rough shape these days. People who haven't experienced the homelessness going on there have no clue how bad it is. It's quite literally horrific although now those tent cities have spread to all areas of North America. A decade ago we were just reading about them in LA. Now these encampments are literally everywhere. Even in our little small town in Canada. Thank you! I prefer one and done as well but wanted to hear people's thoughts.

I'm looking to draw on people's experiences to see what works and what doesn't to try to avoid common pitfalls and streamline the experience. The plan is to ask boardies for comic donations and collect proceeds from the sales for the event. In turn, she would forward all proceeds directly to Midnight Mission. You can also donate funds or goods directly to the Midnight Mission if you prefer. They can offer you a tax deductible receipt for all donations, whether cash or physical donations. These are some of the questions that have come to mind so far: 1) I was thinking of running either a 'fixed price' sale or an auction style format. Is there an advantage / disadvantage to each? 2) I envision this being a total mess if lots of people get involved. How do you prefer to organize all the sellers / comics being offered in your sales thread? 3) Is there a preferred time period to run the fundraiser thread for? The event is on 12/12/23 4) Any other suggestions or things I may have not through about? Thanks for reading!

Some final details: Up until this year all operating costs have been out of pocket. Last year we had musicians from amazing bands like Goldfinger, Ministry, Green Day and Saving Ferris performing. This year we're working potentially on some even bigger names. I can't name names right now, but we are in talks with musicians who are near the top of the feeding chain. For the sake of transparency, NONE of the talent or help was paid to perform last year. They all volunteered their time freely and we plan to do the same this year so that we can keep operating costs down and send as much support to The Midnight Mission as possible. ----------------------------------------------- We are looking to expand the event greatly this year. We're currently working on securing sponsors and additional new revenue streams which is why I'm looking to start a donation thread here for her. A small percentage of the funds collected would go toward operating costs of the event so that we can make the event larger and more successful than the previous 6 years, but the majority of the funds collected would go directly to The Midnight Mission. My friend is a very well known, respected person in the community where the event is taking place and if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them either here or via PM. The Midnight Mission staff will also be in attendance at the event. You can follow Midnight Wonderland on IG at https://www.instagram.com/midnightwonderland_/

This is the promo video for the event:

This is a description of the event from the promo sheet. From its beginnings as a small backyard gathering of family and friends in December of 2016, Midnight Wonderland has grown to occupy the stage of the world-famous Whisky A Go Go. Our partnership with The Whisky, Creative Director Charlie Paulson of Goldfinger, and artists from bands like Green Day, Orgy, Circle Jerks/Bad Religion, Save Ferris, Ministry, Stone Sour, LA Guns, and Fast Times Band were able to raise thousands of dollars for The Midnight Mission to increase awareness for homelessness, addiction, and a better understanding of Mental Illness as a whole. Our goal: Midnight Wonderland’s goal is to empower The Midnight Mission’s efforts to provide awareness, education, and an understanding of the growing problems of the unhoused in DTLA and surrounding communities. Their mission is to provide a path to self-sufficiency for individuals and families who have lost direction. Midnight Wonderland facilitates this by uniting the universal languages of music and art with awareness and understanding of why addiction, depression, and homelessness are so prevalent in the United States. We intend to break barriers and erase stigmas by connecting those feeling alone in their darkest moments by showing them the path to a bright and inclusive future. How we do this: -20% of ticket sales go directly to The Midnight Mission. -100% of proceeds from raffle sales go to The Midnight Mission. - A collection of high-need items, such as water, biodegradable silverware, dinnerware, and other physical donations, will be collected throughout the night and shipped to the mission after the event. Join Us: December 12, 2023 7th Annual Midnight Wonderland Event Whisky a Go Go 8901 West Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood, CA, 90069 8 pm

Looking to crowdfund some advice on running a fundraiser. I know this has been a great community over the years to help out boardies in a jam. I've personally always been involved in some sort of social work. Over the last couple of years, I've been helping a friend run their charity event fundraiser. 7 years ago, my friend started Midnight Wonderland, which is a musical event held to raise funds in support of The Midnight Mission in Los Angeles. https://www.midnightmission.org/

I don't hang out with billionaires. Like ever. I was speaking in a general sense. I don't disagree that the middle class is hurting. I actually think it's by design, frankly. But in every economy when someone is losing money, someone else is making money. Ying / yang. There were trillions pumped into the economy. It had to go somewhere. I agree with @CAHokie that some chose to use their funds wisely and some chose not to. So where did all that money go?

While I don't fully disagree about downward pressure, this analysis is one sided. We ALSO saw a great expansion of wealth over the same period as people got (unnecessary) free printed money, had bills covered for them and also cashed in record Crypto profits etc. For example, the US printed and handed out Trillions but we also had nearly $2Trillion in crypto profits cashed in 2 years ago. That was all spread over a segment of the population. So while some are hurting others are absolutely not. In every economy there are people making money while others are experiencing misfortune and MANY people came out much more wealthy in 2022.

It's easy to sell in an up market or a bull market. Selling is an entirely different animal in a down market or a bear market.

If YOU crack the book, you are to blame. If CGC cracks the book, they are to blame.

There are two components to value...they are Price and Liquidity. Liquidity being the speed at which something will sell and the number of venues it can reasonably be sold on for something close to full price. Anecdotes aside, value will go in this order: Slabbed, de-slabbed with label, and raw with no label. Imagine a test of the same 100 books being sold in the three different formats. Any dealer, reputable or not, will get greatest value (speed and price) from the slabbed format. Unless the book is undergraded and sitting in the wrong holder. Then, people will pay MORE for it than a similar slabbed copy. So again, there is no ONE RULE for everyone because there are so many variables.

I've probably slabbed more books than the majority of people here. People assume when something isn't talked about it doesn't exist. Like the Kudos forum, all of those members look stellar when you're not allowed to be honest and say anything negative. People always talk about the wins but they never talk about the losses. There are LOTS of losses. I've had LOTS of losses. I just keep them to myself but they are always there.

That was more for people reading, but agree.

About the same as books that change grade on straight resubmission. Irrelevant for the most part. Lower grade books can sustain LOTS of damage before going down in grade. Mid grade books can also sustain quite a bit of damage before changing grade. You really only have to significantly worry about this for higher grade books, say, above 7.0 or VF range and even then, if a book is UNDER graded, it may not go down in grade on resub. Again, too many factors to worry a whole lot. And if you feel uncomfortable buying ungraded books then you probably shouldn't but not everyone does.

If you remove a book from a slab keeping the label with the book does nothing to increase the price at which the now raw book would sell. The book is no longer graded and encapsulated ergo if you are buying a raw book at the market price it commands when graded, you overpaid for the book. For some reason you are fixated on whether the dealer is reputable or not, which is meaningless to the discussion at hand. You're only looking at it from one angle. Some dealers (and even auction houses) tend to fetch very strong money for their raw grading because they've carved out reputations as being tight graders...and possibly even tighter than CGC. THOSE dealers don't need to slab books to sell them. The people buying from them know that they can trust them blindly most of the time. Then, there are people like me who KNOW how to grade so whether a book is in a CGC holder or raw is irrelvant to me. I grade the book myself regardless of what CGC or the selling dealer sells. Finally, there are people who avoid slabbed books and they are a significant portion of the market. Those people will gladly buy a book like this. There are probably other perspectives. It's really hard to make a sweeping statement when there are so many variables.

Almost nobody is paying the graded market price for a raw book. A de-slabbed book could have incurred additional damage, or it could've been subjected to attempts at restoration or pressing, etc. Or it could go up in grade. Let's call a spade a spade. The reality is that people who want the slab value will pay for the slab while people who want the book will pay for the book, Some people only buy slabs. Some people never buy slabs. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. So just do whatever you want to do. The price difference for a relatively inexpensive mid grade book will be negligible in or out of a slab and you may actually get more for it if you sell to someone who is a reader...OR if your book has excellent eye appeal for the grade. Too many factors for only one answer so just do whatever you feel most comfortable with. Now if you wanted to crack out a very expensive book, you may want to think about it...but even then, many of us crack out our personal books to enjoy them. The only ones I didn't crack out where the ones that would cost me a lot to reslab.

In this scene, Joker is blowing up the hospital after recruiting Harvey Dent. I've watched this scene a ZILLION times and I never noticed these things. For one, the building on the right looks to be an abandoned building. If you look at it before it blows up at the 55 second mark, all the windows are almost completely empty. It also looks like they "built" a bridge to the building across the road to link them, making them look like a hospital. The bridge looks much newer than the two buildings it connects. Speaking of new things, at the 55 second mark, check out the concrete on the corner of the intersection as the Joker's bus pulls away. The concrete is freshly poured. This makes me think that they made a new, 'rounded' corner to make it look more like a hospital zone at the stop sign and ALSO added a street lamp and a fire hydrant to make the street look more occupied. Additionally, if you look at all the street markings you'll see that some are new and some are old. For example, at the 0:55 mark the yellow street lines that the Joker walks over are fresh, as are the yellow markings on the curb at the corner. Like BRAND NEW YELLOW next to the BRAND NEW CONCRETE. And at the 1:17 mark, you can CLEARLY see fresh white paint all over the parking lots, contrasting with the old white paint in some spots. But the biggest giveaway at the 1:17 mark is that there is a MUD YARD behind the 'hospital' as well as train tracks and industrial buildings. This 'hospital' was likely and abandoned building in an industrial area that was converted to a hospital to make blowing up the hospital look real...but also cost effective. The illusions and dressing are made up by the smoke used to hide details, quick camera angles which don't allow you to see much for long, the illusion of sequential story telliing (Joker was probably walking through an actual hospital but when they cut outside to the explosions it was likely a totally different location but you wouldn't think so the way they edited it) and of course "spolosions". Noises and visuals cause your brain to fill in blanks without even realizing it. And so, there you have it. Once you lift the illusions and dressing, you start to see that meat and potatoes are not actually meat or potatoes and more like a fast food option that just looks and tastes like food but actually isn't anything like the real thing. Anyone else?

I got the idea from this thread after re-watching The Dark Knight movie with Heath Ledger as Joker. I started catching ALL SORT of things I missed in previous viewings. I attribute it to the fact that I'm a different person now than I was 3 years ago and see things differently with a much more critical eye and what jumps out at you is astounding once you start paying attention. The entire premise of film making is an illusion. The put in the "meat and potatoes" of a scene but then dress it to hide what's missing in the hopes of you not catching it. It turns out that once you stop paying attention to the dressing, you start to realize that it's not really meat and potatoes. In fact, there never was any meat or potatoes. Just dressing.

I've been turned off by Hollywood for some time. Probably a decade or longer. I feel like they're more interested in social justice these days than creating entertainment and for that reason, I've been looking at most Hollywood movies with a much more critical eye. I tend to turn towards Indy and European content for entertainment these days, as they seem to be more faithful to the art form and less concerned about greasing palms to be successful. I think it would be fun to analyze movies and discuss things we catch in movies that are either mistakes, don't make sense or were likely intentionally placed in the flicks to catch people's attention. Any move, any genre. Thoughts?

There was a time when story tellers broke new ground. They seem content on just reinventing stuff now. Marvel seems to be splitting their universe into formulas to go after separate target markets. This is what you get when you get corporate board rooms telling artists how to turn a profit for them. It's no longer art. It's art for profit and that's no longer art.

It was very odd to see such under-done special effects with the face, it obviously was a definite nod to earlier genre references. Even Man-thing had a certain look. The keep it, stylistically simplistic, Jim Henson era peak of costumes. If you remove the humanity from the monster, nobody is interested. This is why DC was not as successful as Marvel in the 60s. If you put TOO MUCH 'humanity' into the monster, nobody is interested. This is why comic book companies are NOT as successful as Marvel in the 1960's. Stan Lee knew that 50 years ago. They did it to Hulk too in every iteration. He 'looked' like the actor that was playing him. Throw backs and easter eggs are also effective in driving viewers. They did the same with Stark's dad when they made him look like Walt Disney and riffed the entire Stark Enterprise against Disney's history. The problem is, it's wearing thin. When you start to expect Easter Eggs it's no longer fun. It's a flogging.

Many jobs will be replaced.

Manga, comics, novels, music. All the same junque.

One of the best reads ever! So, legacy publishers should take note? This is a repeating pattern. Old generations utterly deny that they're becoming obsolete while new generations just quietly take over. Interesting discussion. A decade ago I'd have NEVER thought we'd see a Manga discussion flourish. Now we're discussing whether we need a Manga forum. CGC evolved from coins but was originally made for comic books. Since then, it's continued to expand to other collecting fields including posters and magazines but they don't do Treasuries yet or other unusual forms of collectibles. Does CGC grade any manga due to it's formatting? I'm assuming they DO slab mange that fits into holders but how much of Manga DOESN'T fit into CGC holders? Sad to say, but at this point of the evolution of hobbies have certification means if it's not getting certified they won't have much value even if they are good reads. It's all about the Benjamin's and always will be as long as money is the sole motivator.

Does anyone read this? What is the appeal? Why is it so popular? At first glance it looks like a gore fest.