kHAoS

The great part about UXM 268 is the story is entirely self-contained; it's a great side-story. The really good stuff is around UXM 275, I really enjoyed seeing all the X-Men wearing the classic blue/yellow outfits. It's a very simple and clean look that clearly conveys the team aspect of the title. The art has held up well over time and story is a simple over-the-top outerspace drama.

As far as OA goes, I'd say Ed is a good place to start. A lot of his art looks better in black and white and his pricing is fairly reasonable. If you catch him at a con, he brings a lot of OA, so you'll have a good time just flipping through it.

That's interesting, I didn't know opened items were worthy enough to be graded. I had a decent collection of Gameboy carts and have been slowly selling them off on eBay for the last few years and I was surprised how much I got for complete games. Thanks for my collector OCD, I saved all the contents and all the boxes were still sharp and glossy. I still have a handful of rare games that are still complete, so it's good know I have a grading option for those games.

The current administration doesn't understand that not every agency is 'for-profit'. If we closed down Post Offices or operations in rural communities, you would literally cut-off mail service for that entire town. Even Amazon uses the Post Office for remote locations to perform 'last-mile' delivery. And I agree, most reports I've read said the Post Office is performing well financially, except for the pre-funding retirement part. There is an issue with updating their vehicle fleet, since maintaining the older models is getting costly. With all that being said, if the Post Office went private, other countries have privatized their mail service with some success. So the blueprint is out there and we can use their lessons learned to overcome that kind of transition. If the Post Office were privatized, I'm not sure most of us would like or adjust to the changes, well. You'd definitely see physical locations shutting down and see more kiosk or shared retail space inside supermarkets and malls, door-to-door delivery would probably end and everyone would walk up to a shared mailbox area, and we'll probably see the Post Office selling or advertising other products and services outside of mailing packages.

I think the collector market for videogames is starting to mature and people are starting to identify the rare and coveted items. Videogames is on the same trajectory similar to Star Wars figs and Transformers before it. Popular franchises like Zelda, Mega-Man, and Mario related games in mint or sealed condition from earlier systems will always be in demand. Less popular systems like the Sega Saturn or Sega Dreamcast had quality titles and those games were produced in lower numbers, so there is a ton of growth potential if you can track down those games in mint condition. Certain sealed items can fetch a ton due to the fact that most games retailed for $40-$60 back in the 80's and 90's, so the chances of some kid stashing a new game in a closet is virtually nil. I'd wager most surviving copies of sealed games were deadstock from a store that went under.

Unless everyone unloads all their Jim Lee art all at once, I'd say prices are going to continue going up in the short term. Just looking at HA prices from 5 years ago, there has been a significant spike in prices. All I want is a decent X-Men or Hush page and prices are climbing to the point where I'm not sure if I am comfortable dropping a significant amount to cash to acquire it. I don't see prices dropping appreciably in the next 3-5 years, so jump on it if one strikes your fancy.

I don't think Stan Lee is affiliated with 'LA Comic Con' anymore. They are not promoting his name with that convention like they have in years past. Makes me wonder how much investment he had in that show to begin with, since it was implied in the past that he had a stake in it.

I'll preface this by saying I agree with your sentiment and in a perfect world, everyone should be professional. But I've worked enough jobs and interacted with enough people to know this is not always the case. Everyone has different motivations for signing-up for a gig or job and if employers were better at screening applicants, we wouldn't even be debating this point. You're correct, no one forced the job upon them, but the reality is most of us work in an environment where there are low performers who are not capable and not up to par. It doesn't matter if you're working fast food, retail, construction, office admin, school, or hospital, there are low performers/low achievers or not invested. So while it would be nice that every JSC booth worker cares about the condition of the books, it's safe to say they're not batting 1.000.

From hearing other people talk about Brett, he seems like a low-key guy. His recent run on Titans was as good as anything that DC put out the last couple of years. He definitely has the talent, so maybe he's not seeking the limelight?

I went the other way with my purchase, once they told me about the $30 CGC tax. Realistically, I had budgeted myself to purchase and submit 10 books or so. Instead, I wound up buying 2 books and didn't even bother to submit them to CGC. If JSC continues with this practice, I probably won't be purchasing as much stuff moving forward. Based on the brisk sales of this booth all weekend, I'm pretty sure he's not hurting for my business.

in their defense, i’ve also seen some pretty rude behavior from customers at the JSC booth and any other booth selling a limited or highly sought after item SDCC. it does take a certain type of personality to work in a retail/convention environment. i commend them for being able to answer the same question every 3 mins over the course of 10 hours. i know for certain i wouldn’t be able to it.

i've seen this situation play-out in front of me and i didn’t agree with it. i saw 2 guys pay for their books and one guy was told that he had to pay the $30 charge per book and further down the line, the second guy didn’t pay the up-charge. the CGC witness gets flagged to come over and walks both guys back to the CGC booth. maybe CGC witness made the second guy go back and pay the up-charge, i didn’t stick around long enough to see how it ultimately played-out. at the end of the day, i just want to see processes being applied consistently. the up-charge isn’t clearly defined and it’s not common knowledge. the unspoken gripe is JSC gets his cut no matter if the book comes back as a 9.0 or a 9.8. the submitter bears most of the risk and i’m fairly sure most folks would prefer a 9.8 grade over 9.0.

it’s all fuzzy math or dirty pool. JSC tacks in the $30 CGC fee for no other reason than he can and the customer at the point of sale has no other option than to grab ankles and thank him for it. basically all the books are pre-signed and the hologram seal says it’s the real mc coy, except if i don’t pay the $30 upcharge, all of a sudden CGC says it’s no longer real. JSC has cornered his particular market and you pay the vig if you want to play. i don’t agree with it, but it’s obviously working for him, so more power to him for running his business.

I don't know about the general public, but locally at the time, Liefeld was an up-and-comer when he took over New Mutants. Personally, I definitely remember reading What If #7 over-and-over because his art was distinctive. His filler issue for X-men and X-Factor, plus covers for Wolverine Saga #1, Marvel Comics Presents, and his pin-up in Wolverine #8 gave him good exposure. Granted, I was x-fan at the time, so I was happy to see him take over New Mutants and had it added my pull list after he was announced as the regular artist. His hype-train really got going after the Wolverine guest appearances and Xtinction Agenda, from what I recall. So you are probably right about Liefeld getting real buzz around 1990. I felt like Jim Lee got really good buzz immediately after X-Men 248. Punisher War Journal 6 & 7 were immediate sellouts, while Punisher and Wolverine is what sold the book, those covers really put Lee on the map. Lee's run for Acts of Vengeance was really well received due Wolverine being heavily featured and Psylocke being rebooted. As much as I liked Silvestri, I was elated when he was announced as the regular artist. I'd have to re-read the letters page, but I'm pretty certain most fans liked Lee's work immediately after #248.

I grew up as a Marvel kid based on the fact that Marvel had Star Wars and GI Joe at the time. If we went on a roadtrip, my parents would let me buy a comic at the gas station. By the time I got old enough to ride my bike down the street to 7-11, I'd buy an X-Men comic maybe 2-3 times a year. Once I got to jr high and found a local comic shop, that's when I became a monthly reader. Silvestri was starting his run, Classic X-Men was also just starting, throw-in an occasional Annual by Art Adams, and it was truly a magical time to be an X-Men fan. In hindsight, the best part was being able to dive into the X-Universe and trying to get caught up on everything. If an issue was referenced, I'd dig through the back-issue bin and see how cool the cover was. I may have missed out on Cockrum's second run, Paul Smith, and Romita Jr, but enough things were implied that I never felt lost or confused. The Official Marvel Handbooks helped me understand the extended Marvel Universe without me actually having to read all the comics. The local comic shop was awesome in helping me track down early Wolverine stories like the Miller limited series or Wolverine and Kitty Pryde, as well as tracking down early appearances in Spider-Man, Hulk, Alpha Flight, and Daredevil. Then crossover events like Fall of the Mutants and Inferno happened and I became a full-blown comic fan :)

I probably should have been more clear in my original post, my examples weren't meant to be exact comparisons, but more to bring attention to the fact that there are differing degrees of monkey-business for companies to generate more demand or money that creates a bit of heart-burn for the consumer. I can see the case being made for the stores to be colluding together to raise prices, but I just can't see why the stores would want to risk their reputations for a short-term sales bump such as this. As an aside, going back to your Civic Type-R response, not sure how things were in your neck of the woods, but when I tried reserving the car 6 months before the release, no dealership in my state and 3 other neighboring states were taking reservations without 2k-5k extra mark-up. Maybe if I extended my search beyond that, I could've gotten it for MSRP, but based on my personal experience, simply trying a different dealership did not work out in my favor.

Off the top of my head, Nintendo definitely shorted or held back inventory of the Classic NES when it was first launched and that created a huge feeding frenzy during the holidays a few years back. Companies like Apple don't necessarily mark-up the product, but the retail outlet that sells the item before it gets to the consumer can raise the price. Every Honda Civic Type-R sold last year probably had a 2k-5k dealer mark-up, with the most outrageous one having a 20k mark-up (although I'm pretty sure no one was crazy enough to pay that price). Back in the heyday of game system launches, it was impossible to purchase a Sega Dreamcast, PS2, or PSP without purchasing additional games or accessories and this applied to Best Buy, Gamestop, EB Games, Circuit City stores in my area. Your Apple argument does not take into account that Apple is not marketing and selling a limited edition collectible and this happens to be a limited comic and the retail vendor is also a hobby store for most intents and purposes. We don't know if Torpedo or Midtown intentionally held back stock to artificially raise prices, since that implies that both stores would almost be colluding to do this. Given that both stores had to process hundreds of orders, there is a high probability that some orders got cancelled and they just sold the book at the current market price. Let's put it this way, if your LCS had customers who had Teen Titans #12 in their pull-lists and a month later didn't pay for their books, would you fault the store for marking up the book, instead of selling it at cover price?

Could it be possible that some customers cancelled their orders or got their order cancelled and Midtown/Torpedo are putting them back up for sale? Just a thought, since I've seen this happen with toys and other collectibles. If this were a sneaker release, sneaker boutiques will definitely mark-up the price after the initial release if the demand is there. Also, does anyone actually know if the print run was only 2500? And does Jim Lee have a cache of them out of the 2500? Or does he have like 500 copies for various cons on top of the 2500 that were allocated?

Just looking for clarification, so McFarlane will not sign any copy of Venom #1? Does that include the old series and the new series?