mattn792

I put mine in a few days ago but I'm on the scofflaw list...

Now there's a thought...

Uncanny X-Men 136 in 9.8/white, originally $175 @ 20% off? Yes please!

Had to sell quite a bit??!!?! Like a kidney or 5????

Being a Wolverine fanatic, my obvious holy grail would be Incredible Hulk 181, and I own three copies at the moment. To a lesser extent, let's call them holy pint glasses, I also have 9.8s of 180 and 182. So let's take a different approach here, where I'll highlight the book that got me back into collecting. I was in fourth grade when I really started buying comics in earnest, until Marvel released the Fatal Attractions storyline. WHICH I ABSOLUTELY HATED. Wolverine gets done dirty because of Jean Grey's psycho babble nonsense, and then he still wouldn't let her fly out the hatch and burn up on re-entry when the Blackbird started falling apart. Almost 25 years later it still aggravates me a bit. Anyway, disgust led to a seven-ish year comic boycott. Maybe a bit melodramatic in retrospect, but I was a kid, so cut me some slack! Moving ahead to one fine summer day in 2000 (Wolverine 153 was new on the rack at the time), all that boycott stuff ended when I found a copy of this in the back issue box at the LCS: This isn't the exact copy, I picked this particular one up as a Universal 9.8 before having it signed by Larsen, and unfortunately I'm not sure if I still have that first copy I bought since I had 5 or 6 at one point. But to say this was a pivotal book for me would be an understatement, this hobby has been and continues to be such a blast. I can't imagine what life would have been like had a I actually stayed away for good.

$1.4 mil (that we know of publically) went missing under the ousted regime's watch, is it really surprising that things are no longer business as usual around Stan?

Let's play spot the contradictions: "COMIC IS IN LOW TO MID GRADE RANGE. READY FOR CGC OR [someone else]! WE ARE NOT COMIC EXPERTS. THIS COMIC IS COMING FROM OUR PERSONAL COMIC STOCK."

These seem even more blatant -- too neat and too consistent from book to book.

+1000 Ozzfest 2005, Tinley Park, IL, 7ish PM. Ides of March wraps up...straight into the Murders in the Rue Morgue intro...Bruce comes running on stage and the place goes absolutely mental for the next hour straight. While I enjoy the works of Twisted Sister, they could NEVER top a moment like that.

Signature Service is no guarantee either, I've heard several recent stories (and personally experienced one) of the carrier signing for the item themselves and leaving it. All across the big three (USPS, UPS, FedEx) too. Obvious mail fraud, yet the carriers don't do **&% about it. Only sure fire way to protect yourself from eBay as a seller is to not sell on eBay.

Obviously two sides to the story, but I'm not buying the "Max was like a son to them" conjecture. What son drags a 90+ year old man all over the country and runs him ragged at conventions throughout the year? I briefly saw them in action at C2E2 last year. Stan sat through a triple digit line of photo op seekers, which they ran through in assembly fashion in under half an hour, and then it was straight to the autograph table, where he could barely even lift his head. I felt awful for him. Add on top of that the militaristic guidelines in place that amount to "no talking to, no shaking hands with, no photos of, no looking at Stan in his presence", and you find that the whole idea of meeting Stan Lee at a show is total BS. He's Stan Lee, he can obviously still make money off of his name from anywhere. Set up a year round mail-in signature service that he can fulfill from the comforts of home. Do a few appearances near home each year, maybe make a jaunt to NYCC if he's up to it. ACT LIKE YOU CARE. It's already out there that Max has done time in the joint and is a two time convicted domestic abuser, and that's just what we know of. Ease of access to criminal records varies from state to state, even county to county. What else have we not seen through the years? It would obviously be in his best interest to put up a front around creators like Neal Adams and J. Scott Campbell, but around us peons Max could be a bully (probably his true persona), because we had to go through him if we wanted to see Stan. An unfortunate final thought - With Stan reportedly back at home instead of a hospital, I wonder if he has been put in hospice due to this latest illness. He's 95 and just lost his wife, could any of us blame him if that's the choice he made?

To be fair to the no effort sellers, you can occasionally land a sweet deal if you’re willing to take the risk. I once bought an X-Men lot of 56-58, one bad pic/no description for $60, and they graded out 8.0, 9.0, 8.0.

Dude, I got a copy that’s about a 9.0. Retirement time!!

You basically outed this as a scam by doing your homework and shipped anyway?

Personally I think there’s more scam buyers than sellers because the sellers are generally easier to spot (true example - 9.8 Hulk 181 for 12 grand from a zero feedback seller). If it sounds too good to be true, pass.

Random thought I had - I wonder if someone at some point would’ve tried to cast Mel Gibson as Batman had he not torpedoed his career so thoroughly.

Not being an antagonist here, but I literally know nothing about the Cheetah character, so as a layman why would I see this as a missed opportunity?

Who would you have preferred?

I was thinking more like this place: https://politics.theonion.com/biden-to-cool-his-heels-in-mexico-for-a-while-1819571718

I'd wager a small sum Max and Linda are holed up together somewhere in Mexico right now. Will they manage to stay off the grid is the next question.

Not saying you can't ultimately be proven correct, but you're making a pretty substantial leap in blaming that on the existence of exclusivity clauses when we don't know all the circumstances. For all we know this is a result of his convention rake going down because fans no longer wanting to pay him $137.50 per New Mutants 98 signature.

I'm fairly indifferent to the career of Kristen Wiig, but I think its safe to say better her than Emma Stone.

Nah, you need like $75 for that. Plus you have to get through Paul Kessler, he owns about 74% of the outstanding shares currently.

Apparently Wizard didn't think it was a good idea for 2017 either. I got bored and started poking around the interweb, and they rescheduled Springfield plus four other cities (Biloxi, Montgomery, Winston-Salem, and Peoria) that also make little sense from 2017 to late 2018. And according to Wizard's site, even now none of those cities have firm dates booked. I'm not trying to pick on Springfield, in fact I'd like to get back there in the near future to spend several hours at the warehouse that is Missouri Comics & Records. Shout out to Big Whiskey's too. Anyway, when a "major" company like Wizard chooses a city whose biggest attractions are the Bass Pro Shop and the Cardinals' AA affiliate to host a convention, and can't even book a firm date at that, said company is desperately cost cutting and hoping for commuter traffic (also a desperate gamble since the major cities are multiple hours drive away), or just plain giving up.

I recommend 10 shares of Wizard stock, as long as you can avoid a broker commission.