Local Net Plus, LLC

I haven't looke up a book in at least a couple of weeks and got this today on my 1st lookup. "Your search activity has exceeded our limits. These limits help to protect the security of our database. Please try again later." Any clue as to why?

That is an unacceptable resolution. So I will keep your hair in the slab as a reminder to myself and a warning to all of how poor your quality control and customer service is.

Sure. I can do that. How much in free grading credits are you going to give me for the inconvenience of CGC being incompetent? Otherwise, I will probably just keep it as is and show everyone the hairy slab that CGC Sent me.

Guys. There was a hair in my slab. How is this possible? For this to happen there is NO quality control. How do we rectify this? Both for me NOW and for EVERYONE in the future so this doesn't happen again. Maybe you should just make your employees wear hair nets. Then hair in the slab will be one less thing to check for even though you were never going to check for it in the first place. I know this is not the 1st hair in the slab incident. I wonder if it is the same shedding culprit in every situation?

I see individual pages graded and for sale quite often. How does one go about getting a page slabbed?

Picked up the Color Proof for Deadman: Dead Again Issue 5 page 5 probably sometime in 2002 I think. Randomly, 18 years later I stumbled on the matching OA. It just showed up today. Definitely was not out looking for it, but now I wonder how many proofs I have I can marry the OA to? Or Vice Versa I guess. Nothing like a good 3 stooges eye poke between dead people.

All of these have been stripped from their frames and put in to a binder. They are the first four I had framed 25 +/- years ago, and the first one I bought that came framed. The X-O and Showcase 100 will probably get framed again at some point. The rest are probably in the binder for eternity.....

Impressed! And I don't impress easily.

Working on my amateur bubble-making-restoration-skills. First picture is the OA with all bubbles and transparencies removed. Second picture is a scan of the published page. Third picture is the bubbles only with all images and color removed, and is hopefully what will be printed on a new archival safe transparency once I get the roll in next week. Fourth picture is me putting the bubbles only over the OA. I have another draft or 2 of the bubbles only page to go getting it cleaned up as best I can and a touch of resizing. I already see I cut off part of the "SQUEE!!" bubble. But so far so good for proof of concept. Next test will be to see if how close I can get to "white" to actually print on the transparency or if I need to have the bubbles printed on white vinyl and cut.

Definitely my favorite cover. I just sent my copy in for grading last week.

Thanks. I tend to agree. Prologue by far the best. Epilogue was a distant second and everything else in the middle was just kind of meh.....there was soo much hype around the series and it was kind of a let down. The valiant universe worked so well together and the image universe always was more standalone so trying to throw so many together from each universe just did not work for me.

Going through one of the binders and stumbled on these 2. I actually forgot I even had the first one. Might push both of these up the list of ones to get framed.....and lean in the corner because I have no wall space. Deathmate: Prologue Page 8 Signed by Jim Lee and Barry Windsor-Smith The Spectre Vol 3 Issue 11 Cover Study by Greg Hildebrandt.

Here is his reply to me via eBay Greetings! Yes...that Spectre sericel was one of mine, all right...and one of a very few that still included original line used in its production. I haven’t ever come across any Valiant stuff...but the Spectre pops up from time to time, and I once had a Gold Key Magnus piece. Charles

This rings a bell now. I see where he states these "prototypes became available in 1999 which is probably close to when I got this one. I messaged the guy and sent pics of this piece to ask if it was one of his. I also asked him if he had any others of certain characters. Let's see if they wind up on eBay. I have a theory now after seeing this information. It seems very odd that he has been selling "prototypes" for nearly 20 years. He has over 2200 feedbacks and the vast majority are regarding these cells. If you conservatively said half were cells then that would be over 1000 cells that were "prototypes". I suspect that this guy is creating all of these cells himself (or a "friend" is creating them and this guy is just the seller). Mine could have been an original "prototype" as he claims them all to be or perhaps just another one of their creations. Regardless, 20 years ago in most studios, especially home studios, the line art would have been hand drawn on board or paper then traced onto the acetate before painting. Now he/they are probably using digital line art and direct printing to the acetate for painting. Hence no line art white boards included with current auctions. Whether they are "Universal Prototypes" or "mess I make in my basement", they are cool pieces and if he has/creates any more in my genre of collecting I would probably buy. I would just like to know the real story.

Anyone know what this animation cell is from? It is obviously a recreation of More Fun #59. It is very high quality cell. Picture does not do it justice. Size of cell is about 8x10. The ink on board came with it and is the same size. I picked it up on eBay a long, long, long time ago. I don't remember if the seller said anything about its origins or not. Just knew I had to have it!

These are all by a local artist by the name of Jason Hillyer. The Spectre was a commission piece. The rest were pieces he had available for sale at the time I had The Spectre done and I just had to pick them all up.

Commission by Vaughn Belak

Does this count as original art commission? The Spectre as imagined by Scott Radke.

Then there are things like this mess......Painted panels by Ernie Colon. The top right panel is detached. Acetate overlay with some of the word bubbles. Most appear to be held on by static and not glue, and a second overlay showing position of said bubbles (overlay is flipped in photo). Tempted to take each panel off and have this framed in a die-cut fasion so it resemble the printed page (minus the word bubbles).

Here is a closer shot

I will probably be taking several pieces out of frames this weekend. I posted several pieces in another thread showing how my framing tastes have changed over the years. I will upload an image of the piece out of the frame once I get to it.

Even though I have been at this for over 25 years I have never really given the case of "word bubbles" any thought. I looked through posts for "word bubble" threads and found a few, but mostly relating to what glue to use to put them back on. I'm wondering if they should be kept on in the first place? Especially if they are empty bubbles? I probably haven't pulled the below pictured piece out from behind the bed in over 10 years. When I did so last night I noticed a bubble had become detached, and they were all yellowing. This piece would obviously look much better without the yellow, wordless, bubbles on it (and in a more minimalist frame or perhaps just in the art binder). I have always been in the habit of keeping OA as-is once acquired, assuming that was the best practice. But is it? Is there some general rule of thumb for Word Bubbles? Remove wordless bubbles? Remove all bubbles? Keep pieces as-is regardless of bubble state? Just do whatever you think is best? I suppose as long as you aren't destroying the bubbles and they are kept with the OA and not necessarily on it there would be no harm and the next owner could do what the want with them. Maybe I answered my own question? What does everyone else think?

When I got into this 25+ years ago I never dreamed I would be where I am today with my collection. Also didn't realize my taste in framing would evolve. Here are some of my EARLY acquisitions and how I chose to frame them followed by some newer pieces. The last 2 were acquired within the last year from Menton3. Lots of wasted real estate on those early ones. I'm to the point now I want thin free floating frames or something that is virtually borderless. All of my wasted space pieces are going to get recyled. And may not even get reframed. I might just stick them in the art binders with the rest of the unframed pieces. Over 150 pieces in binders and another 50 +/- framed (counting non-comic related works), sadly mostly stacked, leaning in corners.