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Pixx_L

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Everything posted by Pixx_L

  1. I'd like to see a custom label for J. Scott Campell's next signing. Sam Kieth Jeff Smith Julian Totino Tedesco Alexander Lozano Sozomaika Jeff Dekal Joshua Middleton Joe Quesada Hiroaki Samura (Blade of the Immortal, Die Wergelder) - this is a wish list right?
  2. Double Cover of X-Factor #78 signed by cover artist Joe Quesada and Inker Jimmy Palmiotti on Both Covers!. Check out my complete ebay listings here. All books sold so far have shipped out within 24hrs of sale and are carefully and attentively packed. All CGC Cases are Mint and literally have not been removed from the return box from CGC aside from the pictures taken for the listings below. They are not being taken to trade shows etc - these are from my personal collection. Feel free to e-mail any questions. Thanks for looking!
  3. Selling some CGC'd books from my personal collection - many signed. Check out my complete ebay listings here. All books sold so far have shipped out within 24hrs of sale and are carefully and attentively packed. All CGC Cases are Mint and literally have not been removed from the return box from CGC aside from the pictures taken for the listings below. I'm not a dealer. These are not being taken to trade shows etc - again these are from my personal collection. Feel free to e-mail any questions. Thanks for looking! Image: Spawn #9 CGC 9.8 Signed by Todd McFarlane (SS) Spawn #202 CGC 9.8 (SS) McFarlane (LOW Print) Spawn #288 & #290 (Variants) CGC 9.8 Signed by Todd McFarlane (SS) Spawn #50 CGC 9.4 SS by Todd McFarlane & Capullo Gunslinger Spawn #1 (1:50 Variant) CGC 9.8 Signed by Todd McFarlane (SS) Witchblade #118 Fantastic Realm Virgin Sketch Cover CGC 9.8 Signed by Marc Silvestri (SS) Gen 13 #1 (Spider-man #1 Homage Variant) CGC 9.8 Bone #24 CGC 8.0 Signed by Jeff Smith w/Bone Sketch Bone #20 CGC 9.6 Signed by Jeff Smith w/Bone Sketch Bone #2 CGC 9.8 Signed by Jeff Smith Bone #11 CGC 9.6 Signed by Jeff Smith w/Sketch Marvel: Spider-Man #1 (Silver Poly-Pagged Edition) CGC 9.8 Signed by Todd McFarlane (SS) Amazing Spider-man #55 CGC 9.8 (1st Print) ASM #72 (Heritage Variant) CGC 9.8 (SS) Inhyuk Lee Amazing Spider-Man #14 CGC 9.8 SS Campbell.com Edition K Signed by J. Scott Campbell Hulk #1 (FC Variant) CGC 9.8 Bjorn Barends (SS) X-Factor #78 (Double Cover Misprint) 9.6/9.6 Signed x2 Quesada & Palmiotti both covers! Spider-man 2099 #1 (@CGC for Rick Leonardi Signing) Iron Man #12 CGC 9.8 (Rahzzah Variant) Sky Doll #2 (Sky Doll Spaceship) CGC 9.8 DC: Batman #50 1:100 Lee Sketch Variant (@CGC for Jim Lee Signing) Harley Quinn #1 CGC 9.8 Amano Variant Superman Man of Steel #19 CGC 9.8 Batman: Shadow of the Bat #1 CGC 9.6 Signed by Brian Stelfreeze in Green Ink Green Lantern #22 (1963) Signed by GL Creator M.Nodell Green Lantern #19 (1991) CGC 9.4 Signed by Late GL Creator Mart Nodell 1991 DC Cosmic Card Signed by Late GL Creator M.Nodell Valiant: X-O Manowar #0 CGC 9.6 (Signed x3 by Quesada + Palmiotti + SS Bob Layton) Solar #29 CGC 9.4 SS (Signed x3 Quesada + Palmiotti + Layton) Eternal Warrior #1 CGC 9.8 (Frank Miller Cover) Archer & Armstrong #0 CGC 9.4 Dark Horse: Ghost in the Shell 2 #7 CGC 9.6 Ghost in the Shell 2 #8 CGC 9.6 Blade of the Immortal #18 (Dreamsong 7of7) CGC 9.6 Blade of the Immortal #131 CGC 9.6 (Final Issue LOW PRINT) Blade of the Immortal #76 CGC 9.6 Blade of the Immortal #101 CGC 9.8 (HTF) Misc: Vampirella #7 (1970) CGC 7.5 (Iconic Frank Frazetta 'Witch Woman' Cover) Sacred Six #5 (Virgin Variant) CGC 9.8 (SS) Derrick Chew w/Sketch Lady Death Cataclysmic Majesty #1 CGC 9.8 (Cosplay Kickstarter Edition) Sacrificial Annihilation #1 CGC 9.8 (Cosplay Wrap-Around Cvr Kickstarter Ed.) Lady Death: Blasphemy Anthem #2 CCGC 9.8 (SS) Kendrick 'Kunkka' Lim Sacred Six #10 CGC 9.8 (Maine Virgin Variant) Triggerman #1 CGC 9.8 (Fay Dalton HTF Pinup Art Variant) Sold & Shipped:
  4. Some Bad Girl CGC'd books from my collection - many signed. Check out my complete ebay listings here. All books sold so far have shipped out within 24hrs of sale and are carefully and attentively packed. All CGC Cases are Mint and literally have not been removed from the return box from CGC aside from the pictures taken for the listings below. They are not being taken to trade shows etc - these are from my personal collection. Feel free to e-mail any questions. Thanks for looking! Witchblade #118 Fantastic Realm Virgin Sketch Cover CGC 9.8 Signed by Marc Silvestri Vampirella #7 (1970) CGC 7.5 (Iconic Frank Frazetta 'Witch Woman' Cover) Lady Death: Blasphemy Anthem #2 CCGC 9.8 (SS) Kendrick 'Kunkka' Lim Sacred Six #5 (Virgin Variant) CGC 9.8 (SS) Derrick Chew w/Sketch Lady Death Cataclysmic Majesty #1 CGC 9.8 (Cosplay Kickstarter Edition) Sacrificial Annihilation #1 CGC 9.8 (Cosplay Wrap-Around-Cover Kickstarter Ed.) Sacred Six #10 CGC 9.8 (Maine Virgin Variant) Triggerman #1 CGC 9.8 (Fay Dalton HTF Pinup Art Variant) Ghost in the Shell 2 #7 CGC 9.6 Ghost in the Shell 2 #8 CGC 9.6
  5. Sure both SD and NYCC are high cost areas (though less so in San Diego). But when attendance for SDCC is pushing towards 150k the rationales of 'good for them for making as much as they can - they might be out of business' or 'these events shouldn't be for the poors' become absurd. The economy of scale allows for the event to both make money and be cheap to enter, especially since SDCC is in part subsidized as a de facto Hollywood red carpet event. Some may want to pretend otherwise but it's not an either or situation, and the example of Gamescom in Germany is a precedent for how SDCC or similarly large American conventions could function (and indeed did function for most of my childhood and teenage years). Having a low entry price also allows for more money to obviously be spent inside the walls of the convention rather than on the ticket price. Pretending a high entry price is a good filter to excluding people because they may not be the type to drop $500+ on a single grail comic book or w/e the rationale is self-defeatingly stupid. Vendors should aspire to have as much traffic and business as possible at various price points - not less. Tokyo Game Show is another counter example to the status quo of American Convention pricing. Over 200k people attend (a little less recently due to Covid). Is Tokyo not one of the most expensive cities in the world? Their ticket price this past year was 2,300 Yen or about $15 bucks. A better world for attendees of large conventions is certainly possible - even if unimaginable within the US.
  6. Nice. Just out of curiosity where do you think the grade range is for the copy you found? From what I've seen on ebay over time they're not really well cared for.
  7. 1) People create institutions that are greater than the individuals that participate in them. They are reflective of ideological missions - whether that be a current day not-for-profit organization, or corporation, or those of previous eras like the monarchy, or church. Institutions are more powerful and impactful in a society than any lone individual or group of individuals as a result. This is what people mean when they talk about systemic power. It's why billionaires invest millions into institutions that reflect their ideological priorities. Reducing the power of institutions to the attitudes and preferences of individuals is misleading, and incorrect. Further, whether the legal definition of a non-profit organization can be subverted to undermine its stated purpose is irrelevant to the idea and importance of having non-profit oriented entities that serve a public good. Spoiler: there will always be bad actors and corruption that exists in any society. I don't see how acknowledging the existence of such bad actors or corruption justifies not caring to have/create institutions that serve a public good. Again pricing tickets for cultural events like SDCC at $100 does not serve a public good. Pricing a ticket at a broadly accessible $20-$30 (like Gamescon) does. That doesn't mean every large convention in the country has to be at the price point of Gamescon but to treat the current norm of large conventions being priced at nearly $100 for a ticket with not just indifference but applause is to me antithetical to wanting the culture to grow, be in good health or in anyway 'care about the art.' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 2) Conventions do not need to 'operate at a loss' to make their artist tables financially accessible at better rates than the example I gave with the woman who self-published her own graphic novel. (They don't need operate at a loss to reduce their ticket prices either). They just need to adjust their priorities in what they choose to monetize and for how much as well as reconsider who they care to serve. Pretty simple. I've backed several kickstarters for pop-up art shows, downtown murals, public sculptures etc. Maybe the people running conventions that think they need to charge $100 a ticket to be financial solvent just have a lack of imagination in how they fund what they do. 3) I agree with you. I think the comic-con culture in the US I grew up with has largely become irrelevant and stagnant for all the reasons and preferences you outlined above. Anyways I rarely post on these forums and I'm not finding any value in this engagement at this point with you from the positive interest I had when it started, so I'm just going to exercise this little button I found called 'ignore.' Cheers.
  8. 1) "Why wouldn't SDCC charge $100day?" You answered your own question - if they are a non-profit then the goal is not to make profit but service a collective, social or public benefit. They exist to serve a public good. I don't see how a $100 a day ticket is a public good. The better question is if someone is so devoted to 'caring about the art' of comics why wouldn't they want one of the largest pop-culture/comics-related events (or just more conventions in general) to be as affordable and as accessible as possible to as many people as possible? Obviously Gamescon in Europe with its $20-$30 tickets embody this. The conventions I attended in my youth embodied this. I see no reason more conventions in the US currently couldn't as well, besides a certain corporate mindset that sees everything as a profit maximizing endeavor. The philosophy of taxing everyone's wallets at every opportunity didn't lead to a healthy comics market by the end of the 90s - I don't see why that example would reach a different outcome for geek culture and conventions the way they're going. 2) This side steps the issue of accessibly for artists at conventions. Whether you have 120 artists at a convention or not really says nothing about how accessible those tables are given their price. Obviously, my example was not of an artist making 'japanese woodblock carvings of Bonsai Trees,' (that definitely would fit the bill for Art Basel) but rather a working class woman who normally works as an illustrator with an ad firm (by day) who was moonlighting in comics with a graphic novel she had made in her free time along with prints of various illustration work she had done. Given the cost of that table for her, she was finding it pointless financially to go to conventions. But I totally get why it would benefit conventions to sell tables to more than just one type of vendor while pretending to do a service for the artists. There's a similar dynamic at work for most film festivals here in the US that charge the same price for a short film (overwhelmingly submitted by students and unknowns) to be entered and reviewed for acceptance as they do a full-length feature film. I have never been to a US film festival where the organizers didn't come out and grandstand as providing a great resource and service to filmmakers. By contrast most European film festivals have no charge to review short films for acceptance - an actual service to filmmakers. 3) As far as what people care about and why - this is ground someone like Robert McChesney covers extensively. The short answer is if people have few opportunities for one thing and more for another popular tastes become reflective of what is more dominant. You can't just blame the people themselves for this result but those that are restricting the options available to them.
  9. I didn't mean to imply a convention should only be comics, but rather (pulling from the example of my teenage years in the 90s) that I'd like to see conventions more focused on keeping the admission price down. Mega-con (at that time) was a big event with comics (obviously), anime screenings of upcoming state side releases, vast rooms of Lan-party computer gaming setups, artists, seminars on various topics, dealers of comics, toys, bootleg movies/anime, pulp and pop culture oddities etc etc, I think a magic tournament as well - on and on. It just didn't cost much to attend. There also wasn't a roster of A-list TV & Movie celebrity guests at that time either though. Whatever the costs of 25 artists I can't imagine the costs of the increasingly bloated lists of TV & movie stars I see at the top of the marketing for every (even mid-sized) convention advertised these days. I've never been to SDCC but what does a day pass cost? $100-ish? I would guess a few hundred for a 3 or 4day pass. It might not be an apples to apples comparison content-wise but Gamescom in Europe is of a similarly massive scale to SDCC with a huge number of attendees and the price per day is under $30 ($20 if you're a retiree or student). That's a price point that won't simply gather the people already into the culture but is low enough to add a more casual audience as well. That is the kind of pricing I'd like to see SDCC or any equally big show aiming for (obviously I'll probably move to Europe before that happens though). On a side note: one thing I'd like to see conventions doing (and I have no idea how easy it might already be) is to make conventions very accessible for unknown artists to get tables. And by artists I mean of any visual medium not simply comics, and not people that are just doing doodles of superheroes they put up for sale but people that actually have an artistic voice, style, project, something of real interest etc. I can remember backing a Kickstarter some 10yrs ago for a woman that came from advertising and animation who in her free time worked on a graphic novel she wanted to publish. She raised a little over 10k on Kickstarter and got it published and then around the time she got the books out to her backers, she went to a few conventions to try to promote extra copies she had on hand. It was purely coincidental I ended up seeing her at a convention near me but I can remember talking to her a bit and hearing how she was getting beat up on the costs of travel, hotels, and then renting tables at shows for not much if any benefit. She was the type of person, with the type of project and work (she was selling some amazing prints of her illustration work in addition to her graphic novel) that should have been lifted up by attending the events she was at. It's a real shame she wasn't and a real disappointment if nerd culture/conventions have gotten to a point where the most corporate/mass market/advertised thing is what people are salivating to go to them for or show the majority of their interest in.
  10. Double Cover signed by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti on both covers. Posted this in a similar thread today and the search tells me I never posted it here. So enjoy :P
  11. I think the biggest threat to Comic-cons these days as someone that is mostly selling off my collection on ebay but still interested in what goes on in comics (at a reading/creative level) is the entry price for most shows. I grew up in Florida going to local conventions that were $5 bucks to enter and Mega-con which they did two of at the time (a smaller one in Tampa and the yearly larger one in Orlando). Given the scale of Mega-Con then for the ticket price it was an easy 'yes' price even factoring in a hotel stay for a night. Nowadays (being in Ohio) the admission fee alone for a day pass is just too high (for the shows around me) relative to what I may actually think is exciting or valuable to see. I don't really care about Movie and TV show celebrities if that's the justification for bumping ticket prices to $50 a day or more. CXC in Columbus is probably the only show I'm interested in traveling to and it's focused squarely on comic creators. Admission is free leaving me more money to put in the hands of the creators trying to scratch out a living versus whatever corporate entity now took over the previous corporate entity of Wizard World.
  12. Yeah I agree. A lot of my original submissions to CGC were all signed books and back then if they could read the name they typically wrote "X name written on cover." If it's legible they really should have the exact name noted on the label as some sort of compromise since they don't verify signatures like this. I'm guessing they changed it for legal reasons to be unambiguous that they take no responsibility for verifying anything written on a book including even noting the name itself.
  13. Double Cover Misprint - Signed by both Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti on each cover :)
  14. One of my first CGC submissions. Had this signed by the late Mart Nodell (original Green Lantern creator) as a teenager in Florida at one of the MegaCons in the 90s. I called CGC when I got it back to complain that the label should be the green qualified label. The rep. told me it didn't matter because it was so low a grade it wouldn't make a difference. I guess people like blues more than greens so I left it as is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  15. Given seemingly every book nowadays has a 1:100 or 1:250 variant or given the popularity of Newsstand Editions (which to me takes the prize for most boring variant one could possible pay a premium for) - I don't see how anyone could convincingly argue that misprints shouldn't have a premium attached to them. The premium depends on the popularity of the book or character and how cool the spectacle of the misprint is in relation to the look of the cover or book. If there was a Todd McFarlane Spider-man #1 with a B&W double cover misprint I doubt anyone would be arguing it's not worth much because there's a million+ other copies of the book. Below is a Mr. Sinister Quesada X-Factor Double cover misprint I have signed by both Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti on both covers (from back in the day when Jimmy was Quesada's inker). (I literally had this book signed when I was maybe 13yrs old). I've had the book listed for sale for some time and it hasn't moved at the price I want (no doubt because the issue is not particularly valuable in and of itself) but I really don't care because it's just too cool an artifact by one of my favorite artists and it still excites me to have it more than there is a desire for me to drop the price to the lowest common denominator simply to get rid of it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯