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I have never heard of this show. Is it a rebranding of the trivalley con or something like that?

Thanks for posting. I did not realize this title ran until 1963! Never seen any of the later ones.

Nice! I've done a deep deep dive into DC war lately.

Off to a good start!

If you go to Instagram.com and check out Tim's page at Berkeleycomicshow and also #berkeleycomicshow you'll see some! No app required, just on the web.

He goes around making very meta comments, like Deadpool, including the fact that Walt will cut off his hands if he ever takes off his gloves. (hope you guys get the reference)

That was super fun! Thanks to everyone that came--possibly record attendance and the parking lot almost filled up. Was gratified to see some people finally attend that I've been bugging for years. Once they see the show they are generally sold. Terry O'Neill also came and it was great to see him. I love his stock and we'd love to see him set up sometime. Next show is Nov. 3rd. with guest of honor Thomas Yeates. Bunch of new dealers for that one. Also, about half of our vendors, including me and Harv, will see you at Silicon Valley Comic Con in August. Want to thank our local shops for handing out fliers--Comic Collector Shop, Heroes, Fantastic Comics, Stand-Up Comics, Dr. Comics and Mr. Games, Cape and Cowl, A-1 Comics, Escapist Comics, Crush Comics, Black Cat Comics, and the Batcave.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there tomorrow. This is more or less the third anniversary of Tim and I starting the show in summer, 2016.

Might be more dollar books than ever at this show. Harvey has moved to a much higher pct of dollar books and there's a new vendor who will be across from Phil and Allen, plus Bronze Age Batcave brings a bunch. CW and ComicWeb often have a bunch too. EdgerX?

Canteen Kate = Awesome!

Inker James Pascoe just added as an additional guest. He's done a lot of Batman work and a long run on Azrael, plus X-Men, Superman, L.E.G.I.O.N. etc.

I don't have a preview pic, but my main pickup since the last show was a complete set of DC war, 1952-1988. Everything. I also really want to recommend you guys chat about old comics with Erik Larsen if you get a chance. He's an expert in all things Kirby, plus knows a lot about golden age Captain Marvel, Herb Trimpe, and a lot of other things.

X-Men recent back issues were 25% of my con sales in the late 1985 to mid 1987 period. That's just selling back issues of the one title from say 150 to 200. Couldn't really get earlier issues! There were lots of new people coming in who actually needed stuff from the past few years.

CBG awards are a little later, no?

The British were probably a year ahead of us in figuring out what was good.

But a very good year to pick up as many copies of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade as you could!

Our Fighting Forces is a really weird one. Starts bimonthly like many new DC titles, gets up to monthly after 1.5 years, but that only lasts awhile and it settles into a quite weird schedule through the end of the 60s, typically six or eight a year, and then when they try the Losers, they wait five months for the next issue (I had no idea!). So obviously they were letting the sales data come in. The title seems to be just a regular 70s DC bimonthly book ...until they need to give Kirby work to finish his contractual obligations with them and bam, the title jumps to monthly! Do we think the title really started selling better just thanks to Kirby? Basically as soon as he's gone, it settles into bimonthly for the last few years until DC, really foundering on the newsstand by 1978, pulls the plug.

Since I'm so focused on war books right now, I took a quick look at Star Spangled War Stories, and you can see that the dnosaur issues in 1963 and 1964 are just chugging along as bimonthly, in the middle of the multiyear War That Time Forgot series. They try Enemy Ace, also bimonthly. Switch to Unknown Soldier with 151 and in a year or two, bam, it goes monthly (well, not exactly, 11 issues published in 1973, only to fall to 7 (!) in 1974, which probably had more to do with comic sales plunging across the board, than any real Unknown Soldier weakness, considering the title was published for another eight or so years. OTOH, you could argue that a war title can always switch leads (as SSWS did many times, from Marie to dinos to Enemy Ace, to US) whereas a title like Daredevil is certainly showing weakness by dropping to bimonthly. Plus SSWS started out in a period where DC had tons of non-monthly titles.

I bet we could find some titles that chugged along at bimonthly for a good long while. I think it was a step in the process for a lot of books. Maybe headed towards cancellation, maybe taking a pause to see if sales would pick up. I can't help but wonder if it also had to do with editorial concerns a bit--they seemed to have such trouble staying on deadline, especially in the 70s, that having a good pct. of the books as bimonthly might mean fewer missed deadlines or reprint filler issues.

Couple comments-- There were lots of bimonthly titles back in the day and I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say bimonthly meant headed towards cancellation, necessarily. (for instance, the only time I've heard Batman mentioned as a possible cancellation target was 1963 or so, just before the New Look but the book had a multidecade run before it became a monthly). Also, I find it interesting that the Stan's Soap Box for that month totally highlighted both DD 158 and Frank Miller by name. They seemed to think they had someone special, albeit just as a penciler.

I'll have GI Joes, Transformers, and Star Wars for sure. You can find me up front where I can have a direct line of sight with Tim (wormboy) at the door. As for the magazines, I'd suggest hitting up Brian Peets at A-1 Comics Sacramento. He does a good job of bringing stuff that people request in advance. If you have some mag highlights he'd be happy to bring them. He'll also be up front at this show.

No, the vagaries of the calendar dictate Nov. 3 for the next one. (Silicon Valley Con, our remaining local big con, just switched from April to August and then there just happen to be a ton of local shows in September and October.) Btw, we tried for Saturday Nov. 2 but the venue was booked.