Michael Browning

Since it’s the last of a four-issue miniseries published right before Marvel canceled the comic - and the entire Ultraverse line of comics - I’d say it probably is fairly scarce and hard to find. There also appears to be a regular-cover Necromantra #4 (this series featured the Lord Pumpkin/Necromantra flip books for the first three issues) with the same interiors. And, being a former Ultraverse collector, this is one that I had never seen before, nor did I know even existed.

I have never seen these before this week. I can't find anything about the Lord Pumpkin #4, because all the ones I find are the flip book with Necromantra on the other side. This one does not have the Necromantra flip book. The Angels of Destruction one-shot came out in 1996 and was written by Brian Michael Bendis, which has to be one of his earliest Marvel scripts. And, from what I can tell, having a cover date of October 1996, it appears to be the last of the Ultraverse line of comics.

Are you keeping it? Asking for a friend who has three Frazettas already, but would love a fourth.

The Lost In Space Voyage to the Bottom of the Soul trade paperback and the Strangers Among Strangers collected edition both sell really high and the TPB had to be special ordered through the mail from Bubblehead Publishing so they are extremely rare.

You should add something constructive to the thread, then.

It was a Marvel parody comic that utilized the talents of some of the big-name artists they had on staff at the time (and writers), including John Byrne, Mike Mignola, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Steve Ditko, Todd McFarlane, Russ Heath, Al Williamson, Keown, Larsen and many, many others. It was in the same vein as Not Brand Echh. It lasted 26 issues and those last two or three are TOUGH to find. I've never seen a copy of #24, either.

Were there any others that were reprinted this way? I remember seeing them on the shelves at my LCS when they were first sold, but I can't remember if there were any additional issues that were reprinted.

The last two issues of What The..?! Are extremely tough to find. Very low print runs on what was already a pretty low-selling title. I’ve only ever found one copy each of #25 and #26.

They’re printed on the absolute cheapest paper so they are definitely tough in high grade. i cannot find anything on the holofoil MOTU. It has no cover price and I’ve only been able to find one on eBay and it’s listed as signed, but doesn’t show any signatures (mine’s not signed) and doesn’t have any info in the description. Lone Star Comics doesn’t have anything on it, either.

Here are a few that I hardly ever find in the wild, but found them over the last few weeks:

Yes, I could not figure out why Marvel went with those really bad 1950s Miracleman reprints -- that were so expensive -- instead of going with the Alan Moore MM reprints first. The price was prohibitive to most fans. I talked to a lot of comic shop owners and they all said the price was too high. That and the fact that these were all bagged and new readers couldn't flip through them. I'll even go so far as to say that many retailers didn't have a clue what Miracleman was to even try to promote it to new readers. Most shop owners were too young to remember Miracleman, had never heard about the back issues, thought they were Mr. Miracle or, since it didn't have Alan Moore's name on it, they didn't know how to promote it. Heck, one of the shops I frequented didn't even order any at first because the manager had no idea who Miracleman was, nor did he know that it was an Alan Moore comic. He said he didn't have a single request for a copy and there was no buzz around it at all, so he wasn't going to buy a comic that was going to sit on his shelves and not sell. One retailer said the shop still had copies of Miracleman sitting in longboxes that had never sold and I went over to look for them and, lo and behold, it was a six-inch-deep stack of ... Mr. Miracle. When I corrected the owner, I was told that no one ever came in asking for Miracleman and that they thought it was the same character.

Until recently and just right before Cates made Carnage Mind Bomb a hot book, I hadn't paid more than $1 for a copy and, the last copy I bought, which was bought before the hype started, only cost me $5. I was buying them because Lone Star Comics was paying $17 a piece for NM copies. I thought I was making a killing on them. Now, it seems I was giving them away. But, the It's A Wonderful Life one-shot is now being bought by Lone Star for $22 a NM copy, while Mind Bomb is still being bought for $17, which surprises me. But, I would have to think there are fewer copies of It's A Wonderful Life than there are of Mind Bomb. I found cover-price copies of Cates' Venom 1-5 (#4 was the toughest to find) all when they came out. Those, along with Rune Vs. Venom and the two Carnage issues will give me a little extra spending cash this month.

Great analogy.

The word alleged can have a negative connotation when it's used the way you used it. It certainly did have a negative connotation and made it seem like you were pointing out that the piece of art in question is probably a fake. Then, you asked the two best sources and both confirmed it was real, then you deleted your previous post to make it seem less like the art was fake, but that you were the one who confirmed it was real to put everyone's minds to rest. Thanks for confirming what we already knew.

After he started this thread, he THEN went to the sources - Ruben and Frenz - and asked them. Ruben has been around this business longer than I've been in it and he is a very reputable dealer. If he thought it was a fake, he wouldn't have bought it, I'm sure, and, he certainly wouldn't have put it up for sale. Ruben is a straight-up, good dealer. He and I have had our differences in the past, so I'm not taking up for him because he's a friend, but he's always been a straight shooter. The original poster got confirmation from both Ruben and Frenz and then went back in and edited and changed the tone of his question. Now, if he didn't know how to get in touch with Frenz (which is very easy to do if he'd just look him up on the internet and see that he is repped by Catskill Comics ... oh wait, he did that AFTER he posted), he could have asked on here or numerous other sites asking for Frenz's contact information. My biggest problem is that he's not even a guy who is considering buying the art! He's just some random collector who saw it and decided to ask his question in a way that made it sound like the piece was a fake -- in a public, original art forum. I know my tone sounds very harsh on here concerning this issue and I do get frustrated with collectors who just automatically call something "alleged" or "fake" before checking. But, as collectors, we have to be mindful of what allegations of forgery such as this one can do to a piece's value. It's just like someone accusing you of a crime you didn't commit and it appearing in the papers and on the news that you were arrested for that crime, then it being proven that you didn't do it. After that first story hits the news, many people will consider you guilty, no matter that you are later proven innocent. The stain is still there and it's hard to remove and it can follow someone the rest of their life. Same thing with art. There will always be that one collector who says "I saw on a thread where this is an 'alleged' preliminary, so I won't touch it," because they didn't see the amended thread or that the original poster later got confirmation that the art was indeed the real deal.

Howard the Duck was a comic LONG before it was ever a movie. You should look it up. It's on the internet.

Miracleman is NOT a movie. It's a comic. Two different things and two entirely different situations, since the comics are reprinted from the originals. The movies were adapted from Moore's works, so that leaves them open to interpretation by a director, movie studio, writers, etc.

You would think, though, that the most knowledgeable people to ask would FIRST be the SELLER AND THE ARTIST.

Gargoyles went to issue 11, right? I recently found a stack of Gargoyles 2-9 in a dollar box at a local shop and picked them up.

Howard the Duck was never a "TV product-related comic book". It was and still is owned and published by Marvel. Battlestar Galactica lasted 23 issues at Marvel and that was longer than the show - including Battlestar 1980. No one had or wanted Battlestar Galactica until the 1990s when Rob Liefeld picked it up under Maximum Press. Since then, it's bounced around and had trouble maintaining a solid readership. Micronauts is, at best, a mediocre-selling comic even today. They can't even use the Marvel-created characters, which many Micronauts fans loved. And, I'm not sure why you'd want Miracleman to leave Marvel. That makes no sense at all. Should it go back to the days when NO PUBLISHER had it? Yeah, that'd make it all better. Right. Moore stipulated that the work could be reprinted so as to allow the artists and other creators to profit from it -- but it would be printed without his name on it. Marvel probably had no choice in the matter to get the book back into print. I don't fault them for Moore not being amenable to his name being on the book. That's all his fault.

I found these in the wild in Myrtle Beach this week while on vacation: Uncanny X-Men 423 newsstand and Superman 75 fourth print newsstand. I'd never seen the Superman 75 before and I hadn't seen the newsstand copy of UXM 423 since it was released and I laughed at it being $2.25 on the newsstand since I'd just bought four copies for a quarter each at the comic shop.

True story: Back in 1993, right before things started going downhill for Valiant, I traded a guy an X-O Manowar #1 and Rai #3 and #4 for a VF Conan The Barbarian #1, and NM copies of Conan #2 and #3 and a VG Amazing Spider-Man 129.