Michael Browning

I think the comic is fairly uncommon, but probably not rare, based on the number on its cover. Also, should your ebay sale of this comic be in this thread?

There is a guy who posted his painting of a rose and of lily pads... what does that have to do with COMIC art? Are we opening the contest up to this, too?

Having finally acquired my grail last year, I've had to refocus a bit. There are a few covers I really want, but don't know where they are at the moment. If one or all of them become available, I hope to be able to buy them or trade for them. I do want to thin the collection down a bit. I got it down to around nine portfolios' worth of art, so I'm focused on getting rid of stuff that I don't really collect and commissions that I didn't commission. I do want to make sure I spend my money more wisely. In the past, I have bought a lot of art just because it was there in front of me and I was bored. So, I ended up with a lot of art that left me wondering "Why did I buy that?" I do not want to buy like that this year. 2016 was a great year for me and I was truly blessed to get a lot of great art. I hope 2017 is even better for me and for all of you!

I was just thinking about that this morning. With the inclusion of the illustration exchange on CAF maybe they could blow out the published/unpublished other and cater to that crowd a little bit too? Something Similar to what we do for comics? Non-comic covers / Advertisment art Interior / Spot Illustrations and keep the catch all Unpublished/Published Other Bill and I will keep that in mind for next year. Brian, no offense to you or Bill, because I love the contest and love CAF. It's been my favorite site for more than a decade now and I check it several times a day. But, I think this is a bad idea. The contest is done, after all, on comicartfans.com, and not paperbackcoverart.com or advertisementart.com. If collectors of these types of art want to do contests, then go to pages that are specifically FOR those types of art. All the art that is NOT comic book original art that is being posted on CAF makes me cringe and adding a category for this type of art would dilute the contest. What comic art collector wants to trudge through all that other stuff when we are here to see and vote on comic book original art? I looked at CAF yesterday (or maybe it was today) and there was a full page of new comic art listings and there was so many images of poorly-drawn fan art that I couldn't hardly find a single, published page or cover. Many mornings when I get up for work and I'm looking at the site over coffee, I have to slog through all the really badly drawn porn and art-not-related-in-any-way-to-comics to find a published page or cover. What's next, Best Photo of Artists Painting/Drawing/Posing for Photos with Fans? We're seeing a lot of that these days on CAF, too (it would take a group of moderators to police this stuff, so I'm not blaming either of you, Brian and Bill). Again, not meaning any offense at all to you, Brian, or to Bill. You guys do a wonderful job and I greatly appreciate all you do to promote our wonderful hobby. Thank you for the contest and thank you, Bill, for CAF.

I thought variant editions were not allowed in this thread.

Right. Because people don't know how rare it is. So, if someone's claiming that it's available, I'd like to see where. If it's not available, it's just possible that some people out there collect Adam Hughes rarities and might be interested to know about it. Or are we not supposed to post new information unless people already care about it, in which case it's not new? Yes, thank you for posting this book. I don't think most of us had heard about or seen it before. I'll say this every time like a broken record, rarity or relative rarity does not mean anything. Supply < demand is all that matters. Hughes has tons of early work that nobody seems to care about because it is not the style or quality of work that made him popular today. http://comicvine.gamespot.com/scandals-1-good-as-gold/4000-181440/ and someone else's WTB list: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=4796457 OK, thanks. I haven't seen anyone that has a physical copy verify that though, per my previous comments about the art style. Sounds like it is Adam vs. Stephen though. Not sure if you didn't read my comment or not, but here it is again: I spoke with one of the creators on the book and the cover is by Adam Hughes and was drawn for Innovation back in 1993 but was sold to Thorby Comics to use in 1999. The friend I spoke with is David Campiti, who is one of the writers on the book and who owned Innovation and hired Hughes to draw the cover in 1993 -- and who sold the cover art to Thorby to use in 1999. David said that the distribution was terrible, which is why it is so rare. If you look at the creator list for that issue, it is all a lot of the talent that worked at Innovation early in the 1990s.

Somebody didn't have trouble finding these: Bloodshot #51 Maybe those were the result of years of hunting? Anyway, there are 6 raw copies on ebay right now, it's not like it doesn't exist. Yup, probably all of the books in this thread can be found on eBay. Link for Scandals? There's only one person that seems to care about that book. I'd pay well for one, especially stabbed. I suspect a fair number of others would, too. I spoke with one of the writers from that issue today and he said it was published in 1999 and the cover by Adam Hughes was supposed to have been used for an Innovation comic in 1993, so it was early Hughes. The writer does still have his one comp copy of Scandals. He said distribution was very poor.

Somebody didn't have trouble finding these: Bloodshot #51 Maybe those were the result of years of hunting? Anyway, there are 6 raw copies on ebay right now, it's not like it doesn't exist. Yup, probably all of the books in this thread can be found on eBay. I didn't think "the wild" was eBay. I thought it was a comic shop. You can find anything eventually on eBay.

Who could forget the great post about the acquisition of your Cheryl Blossom pinup grail? It took me a decade to get the previous owner to even talk to me about selling it. Then, when I did get him to talk to me about it, it was a task convincing him I wasn't trying to scam him (he even thought my cash would be counterfeit and asked me to drive from West Virginia to Savannah, Ga., to pay for the art -- but even then, he wasn't sure if he could trust the cash not to be counterfeit. Yikes!). After we started talking, I worked on it for weeks before we came to an agreement. The previous owner said he had people try to buy it from him all the time, but most offers were offensively low. I had made offers each year, increasing the amounts with each email, but he never would reply -- until this year. I couldn't figure why, unless he really, really loved that pinup. Afterwards, I learned that because of his distrust for me and nearly everyone else, he hadn't read any of the emails I had sent him each year after the first one or else I might have gotten it a couple of years earlier and for a grand cheaper! But, thank God I was able to convince him I was sincere and wasn't trying to scam him and that we made the deal. We actually became somewhat friendly with each other (he's really a nice guy, but was just convinced that everyone who wanted to buy the piece was trying to scam him) and he was happy with the high-quality print I made for him of the pinup and he was happy to know the original art has a good home.

Here's my Top 5 picks from my 2016 art year: http://www.comicartfans.com/mylowry.asp?gsub=951 I was blessed to have a very good year. I discovered a huge load of unseen-in-30-years art, finally landed my grail, added a Joe Kubert Hawkman cover and a Star Wars pinup, got a few Harvey covers, a Carmine Infantino Flash cover and a lot of pages from comics I loved as a child. 2016 was probably my biggest year since I first started collecting. You can see my entire 2016 haul (well, what hasn't been traded or sold already) by clicking here: http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerydetailsearch.asp?gcat=3650&Yr=2016&pm=1π=18&order=Date I also had some struggles, particularly with a dealer who was (he admitted to me) very jealous of my Ohio art discovery and who I let burn me twice this year because of what I thought was a longtime friendship. They say no good deed goes unpunished and that old saying is absolutely correct; my "friend" wasn't so much worried about our friendship as he was guilting me into giving him two really great, lopsided (for him) deals. It was the ugly side of our hobby that nearly caused me to quit collecting altogether and led me to consider taking down my CAF gallery. But, I pushed through the nastiness and came out the other side a better person, a better collector and more focused than ever to build the best collection I can possibly put together. Again, as in all the years past, I thank God for blessing me with so much great original, comic book art. Thanks everyone for looking and I hope we all have a great 2017!

As the owner of the Flash 323 cover (Flash vs. Reverse Flash), I have to say this is a gorgeous commission by one of my favorite Flash artists. I have often thought about getting commissions done reinterpreting my all-time favorite cover, but never acted on it. I'm glad to see the Flash vs. Flash theme done perfectly here by Kolins.

Greggy says he has 3 Ahh, the old Hero Illustrated premiums. Hero tried its best to be Wizard, but just never got to that level. They did have some nice premiums and this is one. I've seen a few of the reds and I am sure I saw a gold, but never saw this silver. After doing a little research, it was limited to 1,000 copies. Cool find!

I highly doubt the validity of this claim. All in ONE shop? Where? Not Mike High and not Lonestar, because neither have all of these rarities in-shop or online. So, what great comic shop are we not aware of that has all of these books that very few of us are able to find? I never said 1 shop and my statement is a fact. If you require me to disclose? OK sure... 1.Tate in Lauderhill Fl. (Just got back 2 NY days ago) 2. The Stand (small mom and pop store in BK NY) 3. Mysterious Time Machine NYC 4. St. Marks comics NYC One again all the recent "last issues" mentioned in the pat few days with exception to Static 45. Thank you very much for your inquiry...maybe you should visit some of these shops instead of making accusations and trying to be a smart azz. Not trying to be a smart aleck and there's no need for name calling. You said you found them ALL "at lcs" meaning you found them all at one Local Comic Shop. If you are traveling around the East Coast, then you didn't find them all at ONE local comic shop. You might have found them all in various comic shops across the East Coast, but not one as you stated in your post. BTW, the question still stands unanswered: Did you find a copy of Scandals in those local comic shops?

Believe or not you can find DS 60 sometimes, but some of the last 6 issues or so I struggle with. I have never seen DS 58 and DS 50 and up are all tough most of the time. They might not sell for a lot, but you wont see them much. I've pulled a couple of DS 60's in the past year, but the Joker cover (58?) is impossible, at least around here. I can now buy a DC 58 locally, but I don't want to pay anywhere near what the seller wants. While I am impressed he has a copy I am quite sure he paid well for it because he wants a whole lot more for it. I only ever subscribed to two comics: Batman and Deathstroke the Terminator. When I subscribed to Batman, it was several issues before Death in the Family, so I got the entire death of Robin series, but they were the newsstand versions so I didn't get the call-in, 1-900 number in mine. When I subscribed to Deathstroke, I got the last 12 issues -- well, the last 11 issues. They didn't print enough of 58 and I didn't get my copy. The series was cancelled at 60 and DC never sent me a replacement for my missing 58 nor did they follow through with giving me an issue of something else, like was promised. So, I have never owned nor seen a 58.

I highly doubt the validity of this claim. All in ONE shop? Where? Not Mike High and not Lonestar, because neither have all of these rarities in-shop or online. So, what great comic shop are we not aware of that has all of these books that very few of us are able to find?

Four really rare TPBs that are hardly ever seen in the wild: 1. Truth: Red, White and Black - so rare even Kyle Baker didn't get a comp copy from Marvel, maybe only a few hundred printed of the trade paperback. It was later reprinted as a Captain America hardcover. 2. Master of Kung Fu Hellfire Apocalypse by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy from Marvel's MAX line of adult comics. Took me years to find a copy. 3. Lost in Space: Voyage to the Bottom of the Soul. This wrapped up the series that was started at Innovation and finished in the trade paperback. These sell for upwards of $150 each when they pop up and have sold for as high as $400. 4. Mortal Kombat: Blood and Thunder. Maybe one of the rarest TPBs I have ever owned. I have only ever seen one copy -- the one I had. If I remember correctly, I got around $150 for it.

1999? That hardly qualifies as "early" for Adam Hughes. I can't find a single copy anywhere on the internet and eBay hasn't had a copy to sell in a long time because there's no Sold listings for it. It looks like very early Hughes, so maybe it was an early piece by him that was used later on. I see David Campiti listed as one of the writers. David is a friend of mine and I will ask him about this comic. Maybe it's old inventory from the Innovation Comics company that was published in 1999. Hmmmm... this comic is a mystery to me, but I will try to get some answers to post here.

What comic is that? I can't find it on the Adam Hughes cover site and it's not showing up on comics.org nor mycomicshop.com.

Spectre 62 as well as 54 are tough finds any day. A lot of the later Spectres are tough to find in comic shops. That comic was great and should be as highly-regarded as Sandman, but it doesn't get the respect it's due. I loved it and found #62 in a shop that had ordered it for a customer, but it hadn't sold, so I got it. I later bought the entire run from eBay. For awhile, #54 sold for quite a bit when there was hype around a TV version of Mr. Terrific and #62 was selling for upwards of $10 because it was a scarce last issue, but I think both have cooled down. They're still very hard to find in the wild, though.

Let's be honest, what artist brings a lightbox to SDCC to do commissions?

Actually Ill tell you plenty about you without even knowing you.. Youre a member here since 2005 with 3000+ posts In the past 12 years of your membership here you have contributed NOTHING to this board other than harsh criticism and disillusion assumption of knowledge backed with lies. Which Im sure is not an insult to you since based on those facts we know that you are a shilled account. I mean, the other option would be that you just get a kick out off trolling others here, like you are right now, and contribute nothing to this board. So with respect to your continued efforts to troll me I will just ignore you and stop wasting my time Happy new year lover boy You are unbelievably ignorant. It's sad, really. I don't troll people, I just question ridiculous B.S. posted by people who clearly don't know what they are talking about. If I have contributed nothing, you have contributed far less than nothing. I agree with you, 100%. Aweandlorder likes to spout "facts" that he can't back up and then lashes out when he is proven wrong or if someone disagrees with his "facts". He really doesn't know what he's talking about at all.

Dont be LAZY Highlight the entire sentence.. Here let me help you: The problem with your theory here is the same problem you seem to have consistently with ALL YOUR theories. They are based on numbers that are IRRELEVANT to the secondary market today. Quoting numbers of ESTIMATED sales reports, If these genius long-term planners were actually ordering heavily on last issues, those issues should show a spike in numbers, but they do not! If you don't know what a Statement of Ownership is, you have no business even thinking (obviously a stretch anyway) about trying to tell me what I know or don't know about the hobby or industry. But please, continue proving your ignorance to everybody reading this. Yes, dealers can buy stuff from the secondary market just like anybody else, but it's an inefficient way to buy large quantities of specific issues. These warehouses you're talking about are mostly filled with that nobody wanted then and mostly nobody wants now. For every Sensational She-Hulk 60 that's actually worth a bit now, there are twenty Savage She-Hulk 25s which are all but worthless. Most of the comics that are in Chuck's giant store/warehouse right now will still be sitting there after he dies. Right, I have absolutely no retail experience. Please, tell me more about myself. Aweandlorder must live by the mantra "Don't confuse me with the facts, because I've already made up my mind." He keeps referencing Chuck Rozanski, but Chuck isn't (and has never been) dumb enough to have fallen for that "buy bulk on last issues of titles that AREN'T SELLING that Aweandlorder keeps referencing. Take a look at milehighcomics.com to see how much stock Chuck has up for sale from these warehouses full of these last issues. The website is saying they are out of stock on a lot of these rare issues. So, that negates Aweandlorder's statement that Chuck has warehouses of these last issues just sitting there waiting on them to increase in value. Or, maybe Chuck is sitting on them NOW, even though they are at their highest prices in years (decades, even). But, Aweandlorder wants to keep talking about how much he knows about comic shop owners/dealers and how he knows they all stockpiled last issues on the advice of Chuck Rozanski. I'd say many of these comic shop owners/dealers didn't and don't subscribe to Chuck's newsletter and probably didn't follow his advice. If there were a few who did, it was very few. Obviously, Chuck didn't even take his OWN advice on buying these last issues, because the site has very few of them in stock. No Bloodshot 51 or the Last Stand special. No Magnus Robot Fighter 64. No Deathlok 33 or 34. No Marvel Comics Presents 175. No Quicksilver 13. No Force Works 21 or 22. No Harbinger 41. No Solar 60. All of these are last issues (and next-to-last issues) that SHOULD have been stockpiled by Aweandlorder's logic.

There have always been last issue collectors, but last issues' print run numbers don't drop into the low thousands and even hundreds when comic shops and dealers are buying them in bulk to sell 20 years in the future. Despite the fact that many of these last issues are very hard to find, there aren't many that sell for much more than cover price and many collectors even scoff at PAYING more than cover price for them, despite their rarity. I was an Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide advisor from 2001 until last year (it is a very time-consuming job to gather data from numerous comic shops) and have been active in comic collecting/selling/trading since 1978, so I've been around a LOT of shops all across the East Coast and I am telling you this: comic shops don't increase their orders as sales fall off, no matter what the future potential of buying a last issue may be. Case in point: Deadpool 69. It had a super low print run and is terribly hard to find in shops. Very few shops ordered it, despite the fact that it was a last issue and was an issue of Deadpool. And, I don't care what anyone says, Mile High Comics does NOT buy in bulk with the idea that they can dump the comics. They buy to sell out, just like everyone else does. No comic shop owner/dealer wants to have back stock sitting around with the possibility of those comics ending up in 50 cent bins - I don't care how large of an operation you're running. None of the comic shops I frequent have any of the Valiant last issues, even though that company was churning out gold for the first few years of its existence. They don't have any because they didn't order any and what they did order was for pull lists and reserve customers and those were bought by the customers who were still hanging on and trying to finish out their runs. Those shops that did have the last issues had, like, maybe, one copy of each, left over in a long box somewhere stuck back under a table. I know that I have only ever found one copy of each of the Valiant last issues in all my years of looking in shops and those went into my collection to fill the holes where MY LCS didn't order them when I was buying them new. I do, however, see a lot of stuff that was over-ordered like one guy who had 283 copies of Rai 9 and 83 copies of X-Force 2.

Thats exactly correct sir. Most comic shops today buy and sell primarily to their buyers. theyre not in the "speculating" market. Dealers back then were HEAVILY into speculating. We all know that Chuck was THE KING of Pump n Dump. The absolute king. He would pick up on trends and pump mercilessly on his monthly newssletters. On a few occasions he would hit, just like Wizard would, but mostly it was buying books he would know he could dump easily. I think that with you spreading the gospel of 1990s-Chuck Rozanski so many times in these last few messages that you should probably do a thread telling of your discipleship of Chuck. I like how you're backtracking now, saying that comic shop owners aren't the dealers you are referring to and that you agree that comic shops don't order multiples of comics with the far-off hopes that they sell them for more than cover price. How many comic shop owners AREN'T dealers? They sell comics, right? So, that would make them a comic dealer. And, what small percentage of comic show dealers aren't comic shop owners? I don't know many "dealers" who only do shows who could order multiples of comics to stockpile WITHOUT a dealer contract with Diamond (or, at that time, Capital and the small guys like Heroes World and a few other distributors). If these books are so plentiful, as you say, then why don't we see them show up in comic shops more often? I mean, at least a few of these shop owners have to be dealers, too, so wouldn't now be the time to bring those rare last issues out into the open for sale while they are so hot? Or, are they still holding onto them so that they can make an even bigger profit years on down the road?

I don't think it's so much confusing dealers with flippers. Rather, it's using dealers interchangeably with retailers/comic shops. Sure, a lot of comic shops are probably dealers as well. However, those who rely on new comics for majority of their income would probably prefer to sell stock quickly rather than tie up capital on old stock in the hopes of the comic appreciating. Ghost Rider #93 may be selling for $30-90 now but during that 18-year period, the retailer could have used the funds to buy comics that sell quickly and dependably. Let's say the retailer makes $1 per comic and they sell every month, over the years, that would have net them $200+. Your average LCS will not buy comic books to sell at a premium on eBay. Thats exactly what Im saying. However, seasoned dealers, like chuck, were and are aware of trends and buy accordingly. We're talking about finding books in the wild, right? Like, in a shop? I don't consider a dealer at a show having a last issue up on his wall at a jacked-up price finding a book in the wild.