jdandns

Yes, at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, near the DC Comics booth, I perchanced to lock glances with an advanced cosplayer who was the very incarnation of Wonder Woman, somehow a mix between the Lynda Carter version we all knew and the Gal Gadot version that was yet to be. Well, sir, one thing led to another, and that night, I lost myself to ruby red lips, milky white skin, and baby blue eyes, all while snuggly bound at the arms in an impressive replica golden lasso. She said her name was Russell.

In sheer number of issues, it's probably Uncanny X-Men for me as I have it from around #20 through somewhere in the 400's (less an occasional issue here and there and the reprint run from 67-93). Totally uninterrupted, from the Bongo Comics line, I have Simpsons 1-245, plus Bart Simpson 1-100, plus Futurama 1-83, and Spongebob Squarepants 1-85, Treehouse of Horror 1-23, the various Radioactive Man series, and all of the mini-series and one-shots which constitute well over another 100 comics. I've also got all Swamp Things, the 171 issue series that started in the early 80's, plus the 1970's series before it, and the several that followed it, which all-told, constitute another 100+ issues. Runner-up would probably be Daredevil, which I have from the first Frank Miller issue (#158) to somewhere in the 300's I've also got Incredible Hulk from around 290 through the end of the Peter David run, which I think would make for about 160 issues straight.

Love it! In the early days of Ebay, if you searched using the word "Miracleman", it wouldn't bring up any comics listed as "Miracle Man", that is, with a space between the words. As a result, there were often bargains to be had for copies of "Miracle Man", even #15. Remember, too, this was also before Fixed Price listings, so everything was auctions, and because Ebay listing fees increased according to the minimum bid the seller put on the item, most auctions began at either 99 cents or else $9.99.

The Omnibus released about 6 months ago features the first three books (the Alan Moore Stories). It's an 800 pager (400 story pages, 400 bonus content) and is readily available from online retailers for about $60, so less than a copy of issue #15 alone usually costs, not too shabby. Writer Neil Gaiman is in the middle of the long-delayed 5th book now, and there should be a 6th book forthcoming after that, which will comprise another trilogy. Book 4, written by Gaiman, which was originally published way back when, is available in a recent hardback from the same outlets for about $15 or so.

Incredible! I wonder why they used the recent Ryan Sook drawn homage variant featuring Harley Quinn for one of the Mexican editions, though.

The LCS around the corner ("Players" on Perris Blvd. in Moreno Valley, CA, just outside of Riverside) has a nice event for this every year. Pretty good crowd, like usual. They clear out a lot of stuff at half-price including comic sets and action figures. Each person gets three free FCBD books, no purchase necessary, but if you spend $10 you get to pick a ticket for a prize. Most of them were a couple of random comics and some non-comics items like posters and smaller toys. Didn't win (or even see) what the better prizes were, but it's usually some nice stuff, to the store's credit. To make sure I was supporting the shop (even though I don't shop there often), I dropped about 60 bucks on some Simpsons Bongo comics and Archie Sonics (at regular price). My selections on the FCBD were Freak Brothers, Frazetta, and Madballs Vs. GPK. The Freak Brothers comic is awesome, loaded with stories. I only skimmed through it, but they seemed to pick strips that were not so heavily reliant on the drug humor. My wife is nice enough to come with me to these things, so she enabled me to basically get 3 more titles which were: "Dawn of DC", "Marvel Voices", and the new Jeff Lemire book, "Fishflies". (We both like the show "Sweet Tooth" based on another of his comics, so that was cool. Maybe this one will get a NettFlix series someday, too.) Beyond those, if picks were unlimited, my next choices after the 6 we got would've been The Archie Cursed Library, Star Wars High Republic, Umbrella Academy, Conan, Smurfs, TMNT, and Spidey/Venom, all to say it's a pretty nice selection this year. Of course, not so long ago, I'd have used up all my choices just on books I actively collected like Simpsons, SpongeBob, and Bob's Burgers. There aren't a whole lot of monthlies I'd collect still being published these days which is a big part of why I don't shop there often. Even so, this has really become a great day for comics retailers and fans, so I hope our guy does well with sales and hopefully makes a few new regular customers.

I dig Steranko, but he has a very, very vivid imagination.

Yup. Stan Lee, Garth Ennis, Jim Steranko, Dave Stevens, Bernie Wrightson, Matt Wagner, Kyle Baker, Mike Mignola, Geof Darrow, Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, George Perez, Brian Bolland, Barry Windsor Smith, P. Craig Russell, Jill Thompson, Michael Kaluta, Bill Sienkiewicz, Arthur Adams, Mike Mignola, Nelson DeCastro, Sergio Aragones, Alex Ross, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison, Dave Gibbons, Garry Leach, Charles Vess, David Lloyd, Eddie Campbell, Kevin O'Neill, Steve Dillon, Walt Simonson, Peter David, Steve Rude, Glenn Fabry, Chris Weston, John McCrea, Los Bros Hernandez, plus Matt Groening, Ron English, and Stephen King, All of them were kind enough to sign autographs for me, a few did sketches. Most of them seemed like pretty nice people. Some didn't talk much, but only Grant Morrison seemed a little annoyed by the whole business. I guess Alan Moore, the King of them All, is the main one who got away. I'd also like to shake hands with Gilbert Shelton, Neil Gaiman, Chris Ware, Frank Miller, Tim Truman, Brian K. Vaughan, and John Bolton at some point, maybe Jim Lee and the Toddfather, too.

Also excellent by Peter David (with George Perez art) is "The Hulk: Future Imperfect". "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" in Superman #423 and Action #583 is one of my all-time favorites, anabashed love letter and farewell to the Superman of the Silver Age from Alan Moore, Curt Swan, and Kurt Schaffenberger, before the John Byrne-led modernizing reboot of 1986. The most heartbreaking one might be the Tom Stone tale in "Tom Strong" #20-22 from Alan Moore via America's Best Comics, art by Jerry Ordway. The story titles for those issues, which is an alternate take on the Tom Strong mythos that had begun in issue #1, are "How Tom Strong Got Started", "Strongmen in Silvertime", and the kicker, "Crisis In Infinite Hearts". Reading them 20 years ago for the first time, they had that instant classic feel to them, and they hold up beautifully today. "Love is all we have, Tom, in any universe..."

I was very young when comics with the "Still Only 35c" were issued but I remember it very well. Here's a few first issues.

Y #60 is surely one of the greatest final issues of all-time (and what a cover, not only the heartbreaking Ampersand puppet, but note the issue number on the kid's jersey.) I'm sure it benefited from ending right when the writer wanted it to, as with the last issues of "Sandman" and "Preacher"

I remember my friend ordered like crazy from those 50 cent sales. He was especially happy about a long run of Kubert Tarzans that included the first DC issue. I remember the condition being exquisite on those, they were clearly unread and high gloss, so you could hit some gems even with the "Very Good" caveat.

I was only ever to go to an actual Mile High Comics store sometime in the 90's. It was the one in Anaheim, CA, near Disneyland, and my couple of visits there were made not too long before they closed that location down and returned to being only located in Colorado. It was an impressive place to be sure, easily the biggest comic store I'd ever been to, in terms of both square footage and the sheer amount of material for sale there, which including a lot of comics, of course, but also movies posters, action figures, trading cards, and other miscellaneous items. . I vividly remember they had a small "clearance section" right nearby that was in an otherwise vacant storefront in a strip mall. It was odd in that it was basically unattended by MH employees. Anything you found in there, you would just gather up and go over to the actual store to pay for it. This predates "Ring" type cameras, so it was a real honor system deal as it would've been pretty easy to just walk out with the stuff in the other direction. I happy to say my comic buddy back then and I were/are honest dudes, so we paid for our stuff. It was an odd mix of material, but as usual, I wish I had today's eyes when I was looking through that stuff. It was all dirt cheap and there were definitely items that are much more in demand now in 2023 than they were in the mid to late 90's.

This is a definitely a function of the code word sales (usually 40% to 60% off) that can be used on their website, but obviously not on items purchased through Ebay. The comics were always priced high for my taste (really, my abilities), even back in the mail-order only days, although I did like going through his "50 cent bins" that comprised some of those big yellow full-page (or even multi-page) advertisements that ran regularly in Copper Age Marvels and even the Overstreet Guide if I'm remembering right. I definitely ended up with some very good deals from those lists. The real treat for me where Mile High was concerned once the internet got going (late 90's, early 2000's) were the non-comic items on the website, which included movie posters/press kits and magazines (non-comics movie and music music related magazines plus professional fanzines like Amazing Heroes and Comics Interview). I got some incredible steals on some of those, including a complete run of the first couple of years of National Lampoon in decent shape for about $40. I was also constantly getting Amazing Heroes, Comics Interviews and Comics Journals (that I didn't have or doubles of covers I liked) for about a buck apiece, and some of those, with pre-comic appearances of certain characters have attained a nice value, plus they've always been loaded with the thing that made me seek them out: unabashed nostalgia. And with some deep dives, you could find those kinds of bargains all the way until around 10 years ago, when even that kind of stuff started being priced at the, um, optimistic level of most comics. That said, I've have multiple magazine boxes filled with great stuff that I got at a real bargain from Mile High. Indeed, even certain comics that are now fairly popular were very inexpensive for a long time there, including the 1970's Marvel Hanna-Barbera titles and Marvel Star titles. I remember getting a complete run of the first issues of the Hanna-Barberas (including Scooby-Doo) in nice shape for maybe $2 each. I wish I'd have picked up full sets of those. All that to say, there were great bargains to be had at Mile High for a long stretch of time, just not so much on most actual comic books.

It's probably not helpful because Ebay title lines allowed so few characters back then, I didn't have the room to list what serial number it was, but here's the email from Ebay with the sale details. The name of the person I sold it to is not in the list above, so I'm not sure if he passed it on, or still has it. If I'm remembering correctly, this book was raw when I got it in a lot purchased from Ebay for, I believe, $40 or so, sometime in the early to mid 2000's. There were several comics in the lot, seemingly unrelated, and there wasn't much to the description of any of them, it just mentioned something like "Miracleman #1 signed". I'm not even sure it said who had signed, but I really wanted the lot for the copy of "Spidey Super Stories #1" that was in it, so I didn't worry much about the MM. Obviously, I thrilled to find it was the Gold Edition with certificate, which I was aware of, being a big Moore fan since the mid 80's. I was even happier when I sold it, which I did at that point only because I'd acquired other Moore signatures by then. My seller name on Ebay is/was "jdandns", which is the same as my name here. As you can see, this was before we were highly incentivized to offer free shipping on all items, so I actually charged $6 for the shipping on this, which I think mostly covered priority mail with signature confirmation, which I certainly would've used on a book that sold for this much. MIRACLEMAN #1 Gold ALAN MOORE Autograph w/ CERTIFICATE Sale price: $536.59 Quantity sold: 1 Sale date: Jan-20-10 00:56:24 PST MIRACLEMAN #1 Gold ALAN MOORE Autograph w/ CERTIFICATE Item# 370319834525 $536.59 USD 1 $536.59 USD Shipping and handling $6.00 USD Insurance - not offered ---- Total $542.59 USD Payment $542.59 USD

Maybe they just forgot to affix the sticker or it fell off during production. Aren't there some instances of the Comics Code Authority paste-up seal simply falling off the original cover art?

I have one of those pages (along with the books). Do you know how many supplemental sheets were made in total? I'd probably want to get them all before I actually stuck them in the books.

Maybe with the marquee teamup of BWS and Arthur Adams on that cover, it was decided to not block out any of the art on the direct edition, since it wasn't actually necessary to do so. A lot of Liefeld covers from this era, on the other hand, could've benefited from the placement of multiple UPC boxes, I'm thinking, like, 7-8 per cover .

Pretty cool spring cleaning find today: a large sized wall scroll poster from 2001 featuring the cover of Spider-Man #1. This is on a sort of shiny cloth tapestry and measures 24x36.

That these garden variety complaint-of-the-day videos are even 10 minutes long is beyond the pale. That people actually watch them is tragic. What a colossal waste of time.

Speaking for everyone, eh?

Not a chance. Well done.

Try asking him what his pronouns are again.

A couple of sad keepsakes, a pair of memorial pinback buttons, made shortly after the passings of two legendary artists.

Just scanned these for the promotional items thread, but they go nicely here, too. These are all from when the comics were still being published. Along with the six Dave Gibbons promo posters, I'm pretty sure the smiley pin is the among the first Watchmen promotional items to be issued.