Michael Browning

There's a direct sales copy in a set of Bettys on eBay for $95. For that $95 plus shipping, you get almost the entire set. I collect the ever-increasingly harder to find DeCarlo bikini covers (and Cheryl Blossom covers), so that is a comic I had to have for my collection or else I wouldn't have paid so much for it.

Are these hard to find in the wild? I see lots of Darkhawk, though I rarely see the last few issues.

My Comics Journal isn't in gradable shape because I've read that thing to death. It's a gorgeous cover, though.

You misattribute a quote to me. I don't care who owned it before me or who owns its after me. In my opinion, what the OP is proposing is one of the dumbest things I've seen written on here.

You're the OP that said it would be written in PEN. What is so wrong with leaving the art alone and putting all of that info on a card that you can slip inside the bag? (or, if you're so bent on using pen, then put it inside a comic bag before you slip it down into the art sleeve.) Yes, pen certainly does bleed through and can cause other types of damage. I think this is some kind of issue where YOU want to be remembered with the art (50 years from now, you're hoping whoever gets the art will go "Oh wow, not only did Jack Kirby pencil it and Vince Colletta inked it - but MichaelD once held this in his hands and, omigosh, OWNED it, too!") just like the artist, inked, writer, colorist, letterer, editor and, of course, the previous owner. Because we all know that that makes you part of the comic's history, right?

So, in the future, you think that someone is going to analyze who has owned page 12 of Dakota North #4 or Ghost Rider #38 page 8? No. The art itself causes it to be worth more and more, not who owned it back in September 1989 and who owned it in May of 1997 and then who owned it in October 2015. How much art is in black hole collections that will never have any provenance provided to future buyers? When that art becomes available, no one is asking who owned it. Do you think people are going to pay a lot more because the writing on the back includes the names MichaelD and Michael Browning? Some of this art has changed hands so many times since I started collecting 20 years ago and I couldn't care less who owned it before me, as long as it is in my collection.

One more thing while I'm on here, the back of art isn't like the library book cards inside books at the library where you write in your name and it gets a date stamp. If you want that, fill out a card and tuck it neatly into the bag or mylar. It's that simple and doesn't damage the art. The way the OP is thinking about this is like owning a VW Beetle and putting a bumper sticker on it for every town you drive it through.

Even artists and dealers who used to write in the price of the art on the backs of the pages SEVERAL YEARS AGO didn't sign it in PEN. They signed it lightly in pencil.

Completely different than someone not associated with the production of that art writing or signing it. A lot of artists sketched on the backs of the art pages before they went to the full drawings on the front. But, what is being discussed here is a current owner writing on the back of the art -- long after it's been drawn and sent through production.

You're talking about art on canvas and not WHITE PAPER through which the names can show and through which the ink can bleed. I don't think anyone buys original art because of the previous owner's name written in ink on the back.

Are you some kind of celebrity so famous that we just can't live without your signature on the back? And, is anyone going to remember the MichaelD collection? Only for the pieces that came out of it in this day and age. I mean, I love to know the history of stuff as I have been a comics historian and journalist for more than two decades, but I cannot believe anyone would think writing on the backs of art is a good idea. One light pencil doesn't show through, but when you start writing stuff in pen on the back of the art, it can bleed through or show through when you frame it. It's just an all-around dumb idea and I am amazed that it's even a question. On the comicart-l group I argued against a dealer putting his ink stamp on the art he was selling from artists who he represented. I stand by that and argue against writing ANYTHING on the backs (or fronts) of comic art. If someone involved with production of the art didn't write it on there, it has no place on it, plain and simple.

Would you do that inside your 9.8 NM comics? And, do you care who owned your prized comics before you as long as YOU own it NOW? This is a terrible idea. Just keep a written record in its bag/mylar/portfolio if it's that important to you. And, honestly, does provenance mean that much? Maybe I'm not looking at this issue correctly, but I don't care who owned it before me or who owned it before the previous owner.

As far as Image newsstands: Today, I found a near-complete run of WildCATS from 1-19, Shadow Hawk 1-3, Deathblow 3-11, several Spawns and several Gen 13 issues (no #1). The shop owner has them all priced at what they sell for on eBay, so I passed on all of them. They range from $6-$4 each, which, for these, I think is too high. The owner has had them since they were published and keeps hiking the prices each year on them as the owner does with all the shop's back issues that don't sell, so I don't buy that many from that particular shop. (The funny thing is, when I start looking at the shop's back issue comics, the owner makes note of what I've looked at and then goes back in and reprices them higher, despite the fact that most haven't sold in years and probably won't anytime soon. Sometimes I pull stuff to look at, take it up to the counter and ask the owner about it, put it back in its longbox, then go back the next week to see if it is priced higher. Many times it is.)

The one I remember best is the Shadowman 0 issue, which I found on the newsstand. There were others, but I was already getting everything VALIANT produced at my LCS, so I didn't pay much attention to those on the newsstands. Plus, they were always very badly bent from the spinner rack.

Is that the copy that was packaged with the Psylocke action figure?

I've been trying to collect all the early appearances of Cheryl Blossom for a while now, without having to pay extremely high prices, but there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of cheap copies out there. I used to find these in flea markets and in dollar boxes, but even the comic shops that used to have them cheap are now picking them out and pricing them at Overstreet and eBay prices. I have picked up several pieces of Cheryl Blossom original art, including this pinup from her third appearance in Archie's Pals N Gals #161:

I hated the newsstand editions when they were coming out and I never realized that there would ever be anyone who wanted this stuff because they were flat and boring compared to the direct sales editions. And, honestly, buying a lot of my comics from the local newsstand spinner rack, I saw these only occasionally. I looked for Spawn 1 and Youngblood 1 on the newsstand, but didn't see them. I did see the WildCATS 2 and thought they looked terrible and very cheap. I do remember the Supreme, which was probably the worst of the bunch. No one ever mentions how rare the VALIANT newsstands are. I remember those, too, very briefly, when VALIANT was expanding its line (far too quickly and without the quality of the earlier VALIANT comics, I have to say).

I found this in a dollar box: Excalibur 71 with the blue hologram (with just a slight bit of green on the lower left corner).

Those are rare? Gosh, I've got lots of the DCU variants. I hadn't been paying attention.

Several of those Groo trade paperbacks, whether from epic or from Dark Horse, are pretty rare. I'm not sure why Dark Horse doesn't do those big omnibus trade paperbacks of Groo, but some of these TPBs command high prices when they pop up. I always buy them when I find them in stores, but that's not very often. At one point, Borders (when it was still around) had them for sale and clearanced them, so I bought what they had, but that was years ago. Haven't seen many since.

Anybody who wants those Image newsstands can private message me. I'm not looking to keep any of them and I'm only buying them because it's kind of fun when I go through several long boxes of Images comics and find only one of these per long box.

And, the last one for the night, which is possibly the hardest comic I've had to find in a long, long time: Betty 8 featuring a very racy cover by Dan DeCarlo. This is the only copy I've ever been able to find.

A few other Image newsstands: Angela 3, Spawn 97, Darker Image 1 (2 copies), Brigade 1 (2 copies), Cyberforce 29, WildCATS Trilogy 1 and Spawns 8, 10, 20, 23, 25 and 37.

Found these Image newsstands in dollar boxes: Spawn 3, 7, 11, 23 and 26 Deathblow 1 and 2 WildCATS 2 and Brigade 2

I also found this Image newsstand variant in my long boxes of 1990s junk: Spawn 1.