Qalyar

Based on the photos, I don't see anything that makes me deeply suspicious here. The case doesn't look like it has been compromised. The comic looks, as far as I can tell, like it matches the grade. That doesn't mean there's not a problem here, but I can't see it if there is. It does appear that either the corner of the label or the inner well around it may have gotten folded during or prior to encapsulation. Obviously, it would have been nice if QA had caught that. But honestly, I'm not sure that would even have qualified for mechanical error correction, especially since it only affects the label and not the comic or the comic well. This is hardly the only book from that era that has something wonky about label positioning. In general, there's a reason why they made changes in 2016.

Normally bug chew includes highly visible cover damage, though. This silverfish apparently hated the taste of cover stock, so only chewed the interior. I feel that makes this a better candidate for a green label, because there's very little about the exterior that suggests such a substantial defect exists. But when CGC decides green labels apply or not is one of the truly inscrutable mysteries of the universe.

These are not 1960s books, regardless of what your MIL may have claimed. They were actually distributed as inserts in Sunday newspapers for awhile in 2006/07. You've got the first and last issue of the run. The AF15 reprint is probably a ~$15 book, give or take a little. It's hard to judge condition from these pictures. Financially, it would only really be worth considering for grading if there was a good chance to get a 9.8; this book has zero chance at a 9.8. The second issue here reprints the second half of ASM 11, and would probably be a slow seller as a ~$5 book and has absolutely no reason to consider grading.

I am not a lawyer and, more importantly, I am not your lawyer. This is not legal advice That said, people with substantially valuable books outstanding with HR need to contact a local attorney concerning civil action. Do not wait for criminal charges to be filed, if they are filed. A criminal case does not make you whole. Do not wait to join a class action suit, because I don't think a class would be certified here, among other reasons. You need to protect your interests. Being made while here may involve compensation for the value of the books that cannot be returned, the loss in value of books that have been disassembled or damaged, reimbursement of fees for work not done, and potentially compensatory damages for the amount of time the books were held without contracted work. If that's likely to be over $75,000 (almost guaranteed for AF15s), and you're in a different state than Mike, this may qualify for diversity jurisdiction and be able to be filed directly in federal court Regardless, I would urge anyone with claims to have their attorney send a preservation of evidence letter. With Mike's admissions that he intermingled personal property with corporate client's books, his habit of ghosting people with concerns, the substantial evidence that he has engaged in theft by conversion, and the apparent claims that he's now had books stolen, just about everything is potentially of evidentiary value. And as an external reader of this tawdry debacle, I wouldn't trust this guy not to try to dodge responsibility by just throwing his records out in the trash. High value customers especially do not want to wait longer than necessary and risk losing their claims, nor be last in line for compensation from whatever assets exist.

That book is fantastic. Only copy of this I've ever seen looked like it had taken a turn inside the VCR

I can't imagine there'd be any way to authenticate these (although there's clearly no reason to believe this copy is anything other than what it appears to be, of course), but that detail aside, what a fantastic piece of Linsner history.

That's an amazing signature page. I agree that there's nothing about this to suggest that those signatures are anything other than authentic. But please stop holding the front cover open by the severely-folded corner. That picture is anxiety-inducing.

So, if the first printing of Cheetahmen is an obscure book that is easier to find that it used to be, here's a book that definitely isn't. I've talked about Teeny Titans before. You can read my 2022 post about the book, an obscure SDCC 2016 give-away at a panel totally unrelated to comic books. But there I wrote "As far as I'm aware, all physical copies have the blue "Teeny Titans mobile game available now" sticker on the cover at bottom-left..." Surprise! What my 2022 post, in retrospect, should have said was that all copies distributed to the public are believed to have the blue foil sticker applied to the cover. This copy is not one of those copies. It was from the personal collection of a then-DC editor, who received it directly from the printer prior to SDCC. Thus, no sticker.

Probably not very much! Some time before 2008, a copy was sold out of a badly damaged NES Action 52 box to a collector who had an otherwise complete-in-box Action 52 that was missing the mini-comic. That copy sold for $50 in a private transaction brokered on a video game collecting forum, and was the only market transaction I've found for just the minicomic prior to the NVGM promotion. For what its worth, I had a standing offer to match that $50 sale for several years on several VG forums, and got no bites. But with the number of extra copies now in circulation, I wouldn't think this is more than a $15 or $20 book, if that. But it's still part of fairly infamous video game history, and it's still kind of cool in it's own... erm, let's say homely, way.

Here's one that's actually a lot easier to find in the wild than it used to be. In 1991, a company called Active Enterprises released an unlicensed multi-game cartridge for the NES, called Action 52. It was terrible. Several of the games simply don't work. The ones that do largely make you wish they didn't. The flagship game for the cartridge was The Cheetahmen, which was envisioned as the start of an entire multimedia franchise. Before, you know, people played it. In any case, the NES box for Action 52 (but not the later, better-quality version for the Sega Genesis) shipped with a copy of the Cheetahmen mini-comic, written and illustrated by Joe Martinez. It's, um... well, you can read the entire thing at the Internet Archive. Comic book quality notwithstanding, complete-in-box examples of the NES Action 52 are chase items for NES collectors, and sell with some regularity for hundreds of dollars. Sealed boxes are even crazier and are definitely the sort of thing that tends to wind up with one of the video game grading companies. Other than the cartridge, the other constituent material from the box, such as the mini-comic, rarely if ever comes up for sale individually. I like me some obscure video game tie-ins, and weird modern mini-comics, but there was no way I was going to consider chasing a CIB copy of the video game at those prices just to own this book because... I mean, seriously, look at it! But remember, Active Enterprises thought Cheetahmen were destined to be the next big thing, bigger even than TMNT. So of course there were more copies of the mini-comic produced than were ever packed into the small number of Action 52 cartridge boxes produced. A few of these trickled into the market over the years, but the National Video Game Museum in Frisco, TX managed to acquire the bulk of the remaining stock, and gave them away as part of a 2022 promotion. Active Enterprises sort of rose from the dead much later, with a Kickstarter to release a bug-fixed version of Cheetahmen II that somehow actually did happen. As part of that whole thing, Active reprinted the comic. The reprint covers are clearly marked as such, and the cover is rebranded as Cheetahmen: The Creation, although the indicia wasn't changed (I view these as 2nd printings). In any case, the NVGM giveaways were from the original printing. This copy is almost certainly an NVGM giveaway.

Regardless of the merits of this sort of fee structure, it's hardly something that CGC invented, nor is it unique to the comic book encapsulation industry. All of the major, reputable grading services for both stamp and coin collecting have some sort of broadly similar practice, where items with higher market value cost more to authenticate. I'm pretty sure that's true for sports cards also. Frankly, it could be worse than the way CGC does it. Most of the major philatelic authentication services literally base their pricing off a set ratio of Scott catalogue value. I can't imagine the trainwreck that would commence if CGC pricing was directly pegged to Overstreet values. (Now, some of that's because Overstreet really phones it in, but... still.)

Or at least the most Florida thing from the 90s. Shoulda been a warning, really.

Diana's never quite been my cup of tea, shall we say. He's best known at this point for having gotten an obscenity conviction for Boiled Angel. This is one of his earlier works. I believe this is issue 1, and that the title went to 7ish issues or so. But I'll admit, it's all pretty poorly documented, so take that with a grain of salt. Regardless, none of Diana's early stuff is common

Really late to the party here, but I suspect a production error rather than an intentional variety here; the "yellow" copy is also missing the green ink from the bird (or whatever that is) between Sonic and the pillar

Robin isn't unique. That's why it's the Batman, but only a Robin.

That Chakan book is a pretty cool find. There are a few copies out and about, but it's not super common and Chakan has a little bit of a cult following. Black cover, video game promo.... gonna bet that most copies don't have a prayer of seeing 9.8 though.

I don't actually know very much about him, either, except that he's Spanish. One of the things I really like about this run of Spawn covers is their artists. They aren't all super-established household names. Sure, the shine was off Spawn as a title... well, before these late 200s issues, surely. But it's still a premiere title with a lot of name recognition, and Image was giving cover shots to relatively un-established artists, many of whom have diverse international backgrounds. And frankly, a lot of covers they got from that experiment are really good.

Agreed. That's a fox. I even checked with my wife while covering up the text at LR. She agreed that it's a fantastic fox sketch. The muzzle is just too narrow to be a wolf But that said, this still makes a better werewolf cover than what they actually opted for for Moon Knight 29. And I agree it's better than the Moon Knight 28 front too (although that one isn't bad either).

Yeah, I've been trying to track down any info about this. It's a heck of a ghost. I did find one retailer using a copy of the book as a stock image for their listings of DHP 114 (naturally, they don't actually have Measure 31 copies), which at least suggests there are more of these out there. Somewhere. I have some friends who have been involved in liberal Oregon politics for years. 1996 was a long time back on the scale of such things, but I'll see if anyone remembers these from back in the day.

Wow. I've never even heard of that before. What an absolutely unique piece. Dammit, Duck, that might have to go on my list of stuff to search for now... @MattTheDuck This was from Oregon, I assume?

The real answer is that they're Korean, and that first letter is pronounced like a G, not a C. But, um, yeah. Maybe should have checked with a native English speaker before running with that name if they had aspirations of being an international company, huh?

So, first things first, CGC has miscredited these covers, because this artist's name is Hicham Habchi. He is not, in fact, named after teppanyaki cooking. He's Moroccan-born, although I believe he's been in the US for most of his life. He did a little bit more comics-industry stuff than Faraz Shanyar did. Beyond a couple of Spawn covers, he's done some Batman covers, and apparently some work for Marvel although I'm not sure what offhand. Like Shanyar, he's largely found a career in the video game industry. His biggest successes have been doing concept art for Riot Games. I believe he's also done some work for Netflix animated projects.

Up until sometime last year, I think, there was a website, somewhere, that had a reasonably comprehensive list (with nearly full cover images) of all DC promotional and pack-in comics. It was categorized by promotional topic, so there was a section for video game promos, for movie promos, for food-related promos, etc. It seems to have disappeared, and because I wasn't paying attention, I don't seem to have even kept track of where it was, so I'm not able to try Waybacking it. Anyone remember what I'm talking about?

Very nice. And yeah, those are not exactly growing on trees.

Iranian-born Faraz Shanyar didn't do very much work for the comic book industry, which is unfortunate because he's quite talented; here's his portfolio spotlight at Fable Hatch. These days he's in Sweden, working as senior concept artist for the video game company Machinegames.