Zonker

Here's another Bronze Age Batman lot (1975-1980)

On 5/25/2024 at 1:13 PM, shadroch said:

Bob says he was buying 200 copies of X-men because of the art. Without knowing how many copies of other books he was buying at the time, that isn't particularly helpful.   

 

200 was apparently teen-aged Bob's 1968 speculation benchmark.  Here is his previous paragraph for more context:

So, he was treating the first Adams X-Men as if it were a new #1.

On 5/25/2024 at 10:15 AM, shadroch said:

Out of curiosity, how do you choose when to believe a person whose past postings show an unusual relationship with the truth?  I liked Bob and enjoyed listening to his stories, but his views often contradicted reality. 

A fair question.  

First, I'm always suspicious when someone is the hero of their own story.  So, if someone like Chuck Rozanski or Stan Lee (or, in fairness, Jack Kirby), says something that makes them look good, I become more skeptical.  Here, it is not clear what's in it for Beerbohm to shade the truth-- is he trying to show what a savvy speculator he was, and therefore he's smarter than the rest of us?  Seems a long way to go for not much benefit.  Now if I had been following more closely some of the board's controversies with Bob (Obadiah Oldbuck, right?) I might have a different opinion.

Second, it helps if what someone is saying is consistent with other witnesses.  In the CBA article Beerbohm is quoting heavily Neal Adams' views.  But then Adams does have a motive for exaggerating his own popularity or explaining the commercial failure of some of his projects, so your mileage may vary.  Still, the Adams/Beerbohm narrative is consistent with what other people are quoted as saying about the chaotic nature of commercial decision-making at DC in the early 1970s (people like Dick Giordano and Irwin Donenfeld suggest the sales data wasn't very good at that time). 

Finally, the fact that Beerbohm's recollections made it into print in CBA does carry some weight with me.  I'm under no illusion that Jon Cooke employs an army of fact-checkers, but Cooke does frequent the con circuit, and would no doubt get grief from that community if he regularly published pieces that didn't have at least a ring of truth about them. 

Early Walt Simonson, Howard Chaykin & Jim Starlin art on Weird Worlds & Sword of Sorcery

1. Sword of Sorcery #4 Cover by Howard Chaykin.  This series adapts Fritz Leiber's stories about Fafhrd the Barbarian and the Gray Mouser. In this issue Denny O'Neil adapts Leiber's "The Cloud of Hate."  Chaykin Inc is credited with the interior artwork, and it is possible that a young Walt Simonson penciled several of the pages uncredited.  Regardless, Simonson penciled & inked the second story, an original Fafhrd short story by Denny O'Neil.  Fine condition.   
    
2. Weird Worlds #8: The first non-ad appearance of "Iron-Wolf" with cover art, interior artwork and plotting by Howard Chaykin.  Denny O'Neil scripts over Chaykin's plot.   Fine Plus condition.  
    
3. Sword of Sorcery #5 Cover by Walt Simonson, who also penciled the interior artwork for O'Neil's adaptation of the Fritz Leiber story "The Sunken Land."  The second story is an original Gray Mouser short story written by George Effinger and penciled by Jim Starlin.  Al Milgrom inked each of the two stories in this issue.  Fine/Very Fine condition. 
    
4. Weird Worlds #9 has a Nick Cardy cover.  Inside, Chaykin plots, pencils and inks, and Denny O'Neil again scripts.  Also includes a "Tales from the House of Ironwolf" story co-plotted by Chaykin & John Warner, and drawn by Vicente Alcázar.  Fine Plus condition.
    
5. Weird Worlds #10 has a Mike Kaluta cover.  Inside, Chaykin again plots, pencils and inks, and Denny O'Neil again scripts.  Also includes a "Tales from the House of Ironwolf" story co-plotted by Chaykin & John Warner, and drawn by Vicente Alcázar. Fine Minus condition.  

Here's the relevant section from Beerbohm's CBA article

Your first objection was that buyers could legitimately purchase wholesale at 8 cents a book, so why risk doing something shady to get them for a few cents more cheaply out the back door?  My response offered a couple of examples of hot then-recent comics selling for only a few dollars each back in the day, so the difference in paying 8 cents legitimately versus paying something less than that could make a significant difference in the profit margin.  Also, Beerbohm's recollection of paying 20 cents for Conan #1 offers a possible motive for whoever his supplier was.  If that supplier reported the 600 copies as sold, then perhaps the supplier made $72 off of Beerbohm.  But if the supplier reported all 600 as unsold, he suddenly makes $120.  Tempting, right?  And as noted above, these are 1970 dollars, not 2024 inflated dollars.

Then your second objection was that nobody speculated in premium artists at that point in time, instead the interest was all in new #1s.  My response was to show Beerbohm's recollection that Adams' arrival on X-Men caused him to start speculating on that title.  The way I read it, he started with Adams' first issue #56 at 200 copies, and increased it from there.  This was all pre-Direct Market, at this point he was buying to flip, not to stock a retail establishment.

I think we agree that affidavit fraud occurred.  Chuck's Mile High 2 accumulation is the existence-proof.  Personally, I'm agnostic whether affidavit fraud was enough by itself to move the needle to cancel the Adams or Kirby books, but I think it is an interesting theory to explore.  

On 5/19/2024 at 9:02 AM, shadroch said:

Of course, there was affidavit fraud; it was an industrywide issue as the mob loved cash operations, but to argue it only affected good artists like Adams X-Men is ridiculous.  Why were speculators streaming hordes of X-Men books while his highly acclaimed Avengers run sold so well? In an industry moved by first issues, people suddenly started holding books like X-Men 56 and Green Lantern 76 for good art.

I believe for both you and me, this was a bit before our time.  Beerbohm (RIP) had a colorful history on the boards here, but I'm trusting his recollection on this point is valid:

On 5/19/2024 at 9:09 AM, shadroch said:

It sounds like what I do with Wall Street on a daily basis. If Beerbohm did buy the books above the cover price and sell them at a profit, what did he do wrong? Are you upset he sold comics for a profit?  

Not upset at all.  I just offer his story as a way of explanation why it might be worthwhile for someone to bother to supply him those Conan #1's at 20 cents a piece, which sounds like a fools' errand to our 2024 ears, but which paid for his trip to NYC back in 1970.

On 5/18/2024 at 11:06 PM, shadroch said:

The wholesale price of a 12 cent comic was eight cents. A speculator could buy a thousand copies for $80 from a distributor.   A thousand copies would have cost $100 even during Kirby's DC era.  By the time comics were $1 cover, it was a different story as a brick of 1,000 was now $670, but massive corruption to save another penny or two per book, I'm not convinced. First Issues were everything back then, not so much artists.

Everything was cheaper back then!  

My earliest Overstreet is from 1974, and Green Lantern #76 was already a huge outlier at the then-princely sum of $5 in "Mint." 

In his Comic Book Artist article, Beerbohm remembers speculating on 600 copies of Conan #1 he bought legitimately from a Nebraska newsstand at 20 cents a book (so above cover price!) and then turned around and sold at a NYC con for $1 "wholesale" or $2 "retail."

These guys (Rozanski, Beerbohm, etc.) were small fish at the time, but apparently there were a lot of them.

On 5/18/2024 at 8:37 PM, shadroch said:

People speculating on books is not affidavit fraud. You are confusing two different things. 

No, I don't think so.  Speculators who outright bought comics in bulk would presumably have had those recorded as sales, and so would not contribute to the cancellation of books like GL/GA, Kirby's 4th World, Adams X-Men, Deadman, etc.  Instead, the claim has been made that early would-be comics dealers were scarfing up books they got through the back door at vastly under cover price, the fruits of affidavit fraud.   And they picked which books to stockpile based on the rock-star-artist as collectible trend (which is where the speculation aspect comes into play).

On 5/18/2024 at 6:19 PM, Hepcat said:

But where's the evidence that the Green Lantern-Green Arrow title was among the highest demand books at the time? Certainly not in the sales numbers you provided.

 

 

The theory is that speculators back in the day would target the "good artist" books that they believed had the greatest potential to flip for profit to comic fans / collectors, not to the general population that was making Archie & Superman the top sellers.  There does seem to be a trend that the collectible artist books got cancelled with great regularity in 1968-1972:  Neal Adams' X-Men, Deadman & GL/GA.  Kirby's DC stuff.  Barry Smith's Conan nearly missed cancellation (if Roy Thomas is to be believed, sales only really took off beginning with the Gil Kane fill-in issues). 

On 5/13/2024 at 5:16 PM, shadroch said:

The 1970 circulation report is from issue 75. Adams took over with issue 76. Denny and Neal were given so much leeway because GL was selling so poorly before they took over. 

Actually, I think the numbers reported above for GL in 1970 come from the circulation statement published in GL #83.  I think what the Standard Catalog does is take the circulation statement published in this example in the April 1971 issue, reporting a circulation statement filed on October 1 1970, and then applies that average monthly circulation figure to each issue cover-dated 1970, in this case from GL #74 to GL #81.  Then the cover-dated 1971 issues are assigned the circulation figures published in GL #89 (the last issue of the original run).

Here is the trend for the Silver Age GL series, as reported in the Standard Guide.

1965 #34-41 273,527
1966 #42-49 245.699 
1967 #50-57 201,700
1968 #58-65 211,750
1969 #66-73 160,423
1970 #74-81 134,150
1971 #82-86 142,657

1972 N/A due to title's cancellation at mid-year. 

On 5/13/2024 at 10:46 AM, Dr. Haydn said:

So, is this the 1970 report on 1969's numbers? (Dr. Strange was cancelled in 1969. Also, X-men was all reprint by 1970, which makes its relatively high circulation numbers a bit suspicious.)

Dr. Strange is a mystery, maybe @Prince Namor can clear that up.  But the X-Men numbers for 1970 come by way of the circulation statement published in X-Men #69 (April 1971).  Or at least that's what my copy of the Standard Guide indicates. The equivalent 1969 numbers are 235,811, by way of reference.  And 1970 was the transition year for X-Men: 3 new issues were published (including one with Neal Adams art), then a 9-month hiatus, with the return as an all-reprint mag for the December 1970 issue.  (All months/years are cover dates here, not publication months).

On 5/9/2024 at 8:48 AM, BA773 said:

So if i understand its all freaking reprint of the Fawcett GA stories...? Absolutely any novelty? 

If it is, there s absolutely no argue to collect it, especially considering that Fawcett GA books still affordable... 

The Grand Comics Database has all the answers to what-it-is

Whether you want to collect it, knowing what-it-is, is only something you can answer. 

On 5/10/2024 at 3:49 PM, MR SigS said:

1st Louise Simonson.

 

 

Bah, that's the ret-con.   (Though a happy one, from all evidence.)

Final 3 chapters of the Neal Adams Green Lantern / Green Arrow series in Flash #217-219

Paul Dini Batman Mini Lot

Detective Comics #841 846 848 849 + Streets of Gotham 3 4 (2008-09)

On 4/29/2024 at 2:25 PM, StingerMcK said:

Flash, Sabrina and B&V issues are now $4 each.  Minimum of 5 issues or more!

Flash 217 218 219 222 225 

Mark Evanier & Steve Sherman certainly were no Stan Lees.  

"Many of our other readers are no better off than you."
"You can hardly expect to understand everything by the end of the second issue."
"No one ever said comic books were easy to understand."

If Stan were plugging this, he'd be congratulating us all on how intelligent we were to be following this saga, a work of unparalleled genius in the annals of literary masterpieces.  And inviting us discerning readers to write in with our own theories as to what was going on or what would be happening next, in order to share how very smart we were with our fellow sophisticated comics connoisseurs.  

On 4/24/2024 at 11:09 AM, Dr. Balls said:

I do have one question for Dune fans: why was most of the pronunciations of the names changed, while some stayed the same: i.e., "Har-Cone-Nen" was the old way of saying it, now to "Hark-En-En", or Duke "Lee-toe" is now Duke "Let-Oh" but some, like Muad'Dib stayed the same. That was a very disjointed part of both movies coming from a longtime fan of the first film - was there some clarification that Frank Herbet had specific ways of pronouncing names that got ignored on the 1983 film?

I think part of what made Frank Herbert's novel such a sensation upon original publication was its degree of world-building, never before seen in a science fiction novel (though Tolkien's Lord of the Rings previously had accomplished a similar feat in an epic fantasy setting).  Herbert included a glossary of his made-up and borrowed terms, but without a pronunciation guide (at least not in the editions I have).  I would imagine Villeneuve's movies reflect the subsequent fan consensus, or perhaps even Herbert's later instructions, since Villeneuve has always been an extreme fan of the work, in a way that David Lynch never really was.  I'm guessing "Maud'Dib" sounds the same in both versions because it is almost the only way one could pronounce it in English, whereas the others are a bit more ambiguous, and so-- luck of the draw-- the different creators took different approaches.  

Well, $2.25 shipped for mid-grade copies is more than I'd want to pay for that run, but you're right, we are spoiled collecting here in North America!  

So I'm guessing that's a pretty good deal for you considering other buying options.  Also, I'm assuming you like the idea of getting a big stack at once instead of the "thrill of the hunt" chasing down individual books over time, always looking for the best price.  If that's you, then I'd say go for it.  You might not have an equivalent opportunity to get so many at once.

Do you know other collectors of American comics in the EU?  If so, selling the duplicates becomes interesting, as you could undercut most eBay sellers by not having as high a shipping cost for your European buyers.  And you're probably aware some people are willing to pay more for the newsstand versions, although I think that is generally a high-grade phenomenon.  

Good Luck!  

Quote

95 to 261 and i have an agreement with him, i could get all that stuff for 3$ each 

I'm a big JLA fan, but assuming we're talking about mid-grade books, $3 each works for #95-120 or so, but is too steep for most of what comes later.  Particularly after #200, those books I would expect the seller to throw in for free to close the deal.  Shipping of course will be a concern.  I'm confident you could piece together a similar run for much less than an average $3 per book, but shipping costs to Europe might mean you wind up spending more with multiple sellers, multiple shipments.   

ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS to Get 50th Anniversary Re-Release

@Prince Namor, I'll be looking forward to reading your new forward to this re-released edition.