KCOComics

How many of your business associates have access to some or all of your email addresses? How many of your "business associates" use your account to make online forum IDs? I've layed off Flake, but there are enough red flags that everyone should be excersizing extreme caution. There has been 0 transparency. Just odd Business associates who apparently also love comics enough to send them in for restoration work.... I don't have a single coworker or business associate that cares at all about comics.... it seems so strange to me that two guys sharing the same email would have sent different comics to Hero. Maybe their business is comics???? But they haven't said that.... they haven't said anything. They haven't told us what books they sent in? What services they requested? How many books? Have the books been sold? They haven't explained their legal strategy, named their lawyers or even talked like real people... Every other victim has talked in a very natural way. Two haven't. Two with the same email address. And look, maybe he is real. And I have great empathy for anyone who was victimized by Mike. But let's not shame the community for questioning questionable behavior.

I feel like there is an inside joke I'm missing. This is the middle school playground all over again! Can someone please tell me what your laughing at?

@The Lions Den explained this once. I think it's basically used at the graders discrepancy, when they feel a comic needs to be stabilized. I can't explain why some comics would need it and other nearly identical comics wouldn't.

How did he remove the trimmed designation? Leaf casted new material?

That would make a lot of sense. Any board members who used him have major restoration done?

You may get more responses in the restoration thread.

Take

And you are one of those people I often consult! Every time we discuss a book, I learn something new and I greatly appreciate your willingness to share your knowledge!

These are some of my favorite books to buy. Lower grade books with great presentations. @Ron Funk I got much better at grading by using the "Spare a Grade" forum here. Basically people posts books and a bunch of board members tell you their opinon of the grade. I participated pretty actively for a year or so and learned a lot. And I'm still not an expert. I often reach out to people here for advice and thoughts.

I think the grade matters to most. That's where the value is. You can protect a book just as well with bags and boards, stored in a short box.

Is there something in particular that interests you about that characters? A particular story line or era? Are you looking for suggestions on stories and runs? I grew up in the 90s when McFarlane was a house hold name. So when I was really into reading comics I read a lot of stuff from that era. As I got older I began to appreciate Ditko and Romita Sr art and bought a ton of SA spideys. Then I traded or sold nearly all my Spidey Books as my taste changed to GA and Atomic age books. The circle of collecting life.

I agree - This thread is valuable to the collecting community, as its consistently provided updates on Hero's criminal activity. We've already had 1 of these threads locked.

There are alot of us (myself included) who love date stamps. For the FF1, does it have an August 8th date stamp? 8/8 is largely considered the first day it hit the sales rack, so a nerdy minority of us keep an eye out for those date stamps. I don't think it actually adds any value, but just a cool little piece of the books history.

And yet, he managed to come up with the cash to buy a new RV and open a retail store front.

What was the 2012 Bankruptcy? His business ? Or personal? When did he officially start Hero? I'm sure it's been said.

You've done nothing but play games, dodge questions and act shady since day 1. You and your "business partner" joined on the same day. You had the same, strange, motivation to get people to video chat with you. You have disclosed nothing. No plan, no approach. I don't trust anything you say. We are dealing with a person in Mike who has proven he would go to great lengths, to lie, steal and cheat people....and now you have 2 IDs who are obviously the same person and he's pretending to have a business partner, who also gets books pressed by Hero and has a vested interest in getting people's personal information and to video chat.

I thought it was very odd that Catina201 and Flake were pushing for these video chats... and then complimenting one another.

I honestly think it was less nefarious than that. I think he had every intention of doing the work asked of him. I think he was disorganized, a poor business person and gave himself no margin for error. So when errors came, he collapsed. And the collapse was complete and total. Personal and professional. And none of this is an excuse for him. He stole money from hundreds of people. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's inexcusable. He should go to jail. He sold people's comics. He should go to jail. I don't believe anything he's said. The first robbery, the second robbery, the heart attack and covid... maybe it's true. Maybe parts are true. But he's given us no reason to believe him and I simply don't believe any of it.

I don't have a problem with CGCs response. They were just stating Hero's status with CGC. And look, back in 2022 most of us had no idea people had been waiting years for their comics. I thought Hero had a great reputation.

I wouldn't slab it. I don't think you'll see a return on the cost. It's still a desirable book because it really changed the format / style for HOM for the next decade or so. I would hang on to it, read it, and enjoy it.

I collect DC Bronze Age Horror. The general rule of thumb is, condition is everything. If it's a high grade copy NM- or better, it would likely be worth the cost of grading. If it's below that range, it's probably not worth it. Feel free to post pictures! Good luck.

For the sales forum here? You can follow certain sellers who sell stuff you like, but I think that's about it. Otherwise you can refresh the page on your phone every 26 seconds like I do.

It doesn't have the pinup, which is a fairly common problem with this book.

Yeah - if the point was to get kids interested, I think they missed the mark. I was 25 or so and living in an apartment with 2 slobs. My Great Aunt use to get the paper and would put aside stuff she thought I would like. She was a very sweet women who died at the age of 96, 3 or 4 years ago and this brought back good memories. Among the articles she would put aside for me, were classified ads of people selling comics.

The newspaper inserts from that era was how I read spiderman 1 for the first time.