Denver Comic History....

[Dustman]

Talk about obscure, but I'm going ask for it anyway.

 

I live in Denver, I started collecting here in Denver, and I even worked in shop during the crash of '90's, but it is almost impossible to find out anything about the history of comic collecting here in Denver.

 

This is the city where the Edgar Church collection was bought. This is the home of one of the most enigmatic and controversial comic store owners(Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics) there is. Does anybody have any dirt? PM me if you want don't want to post. I just need some history. Chuck Rozanski doesn't give any meaningful interviews to the local media, and we only have his 'column' to go on.

[heliosten]

I lived in Denver back around 89-95 (lived on Capitol Hill at Sherman & 11th). There was this little comic shop on Colfax maybe a block or two from the Capitol building. On payday I would walk up to the shop to load up on whatever was new and there was always this hippie guy working. When I would walk through the door he would always ask "How may I hinder you?". Odd fellow.

 

Over time I became familiar with him and he started to show me some of the books from his collection and man o man what a collection. Golden Age Timelys, Centaurs, DCs, pre-code horrors, key silver Marvels & DCs. This guy had everything. Most of it wasn't high grade, but most of it was in very collectible condition. Being 20-somthing and having never laid eyes on most of these books, I was absolutely stunned. I remember he had an absolutely wonderful copy of Startling #49 that I'd have given my arm to own.

 

Me and the hippie were never more than friendly; outside of showing off his books he was rather standoffish. Several months later I noticed that he wasn't around and I asked the owner what happened. Apparently hippie guys worked for the IRS and was using the accounts of dead people to write checks to himself. Using his ill-gotten gains he was purchasing thousands of dollars worth of books via mail order. I don't remember exactly what he was doing, but it made one of the dealers suspicious and he made some inquiries and hippie guy's gig was up.

 

Cool story and it was kind of neat being involved in a peripheral sort of way.

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

I lived in Denver back around 89-95 (lived on Capitol Hill at Sherman & 11th). There was this little comic shop on Colfax maybe a block or two from the Capitol building. On payday I would walk up to the shop to load up on whatever was new and there was always this hippie guy working. When I would walk through the door he would always ask "How may I hinder you?". Odd fellow.

 

Over time I became familiar with him and he started to show me some of the books from his collection and man o man what a collection. Golden Age Timelys, Centaurs, DCs, pre-code horrors, key silver Marvels & DCs. This guy had everything. Most of it wasn't high grade, but most of it was in very collectible condition. Being 20-somthing and having never laid eyes on most of these books, I was absolutely stunned. I remember he had an absolutely wonderful copy of Startling #49 that I'd have given my arm to own.

 

Me and the hippie were never more than friendly; outside of showing off his books he was rather standoffish. Several months later I noticed that he wasn't around and I asked the owner what happened. Apparently hippie guys worked for the IRS and was using the accounts of dead people to write checks to himself. Using his ill-gotten gains he was purchasing thousands of dollars worth of books via mail order. I don't remember exactly what he was doing, but it made one of the dealers suspicious and he made some inquiries and hippie guy's gig was up.

 

Cool story and it was kind of neat being involved in a peripheral sort of way.

 

 

Would that collection of books have been labled the "IRS Collection"?

[heliosten]

Actually there was someone selling the books under that title at one time. I don't know what became of the collection.

[heinlein99]

Isn't that kind of killing the goose that laid the golden egg? The guy who squealed got rid of a perfectly good, long term customer.

[Forsythe P Jones]

I lived in Denver back around 89-95 (lived on Capitol Hill at Sherman & 11th). There was this little comic shop on Colfax maybe a block or two from the Capitol building. On payday I would walk up to the shop to load up on whatever was new and there was always this hippie guy working. When I would walk through the door he would always ask "How may I hinder you?". Odd fellow.

 

I lived in Denver from 1972-1995 was very into the comics scene until 1989. Above is one guy, can't remember his name right now, but this guy got the call for the Church books before Rozanski and said he charged to go to someones house to look at collections, so they called Rozanski instead. Thats more likely why he left the biz (I think he sold the store, I don't remember for sure) Below is a different guy, the guy from below didn't work for the IRS (the collection was poorly named) he work for the Colorado state tax department, wrote tax refund checks to dead people then cashed them for his collection, his name was Aran Stubbs, I knew him. Didn't know he was doing that at the time I knew him though.

 

Apparently hippie guys worked for the IRS and was using the accounts of dead people to write checks to himself. Using his ill-gotten gains he was purchasing thousands of dollars worth of books via mail order. I don't remember exactly what he was doing, but it made one of the dealers suspicious and he made some inquiries and hippie guy's gig was up.

 

[Duffman_Comics]

This is going to derail this thread even further (what would I know about comic collecting in Denver? ).

 

I got some books from the "IRS" collection in San Diego in 1995 (I think) and they came with a Cert that gave a brief rundown of the backstory and the name and number of the book associated with it. Still got them - want to see a scan?

 

I think it was Harley Yee who blew the whistle on the scam. He noticed some irregularities on cheques sent to him (third party payee sort of stuff) and went to the "owner" of said cheque, the Colorado State Sales Tax people.

 

The jig was up and it was off to the Big House.

 

I think the guy even bought a heap of really big fridges in which to store the books.

 

Anyway, back to the OP's original question - what was Denver like back then?

[RockMyAmadeus]

I have an "IRS collection" book!

 

That guy was ballsy, you gotta give him that. Doing that while under the noses of his state revenue dept. bosses....

[50 Cent #II (1st)]

If you're interested in the "IRS collection", here's something I pulled off some site:

 

"The IRS name is a misnomer - collector Aran Stubbs worked for the Colorado Department of Revenue, not the Internal Revenue Service - but we're stuck with it, as we shall explain in a moment.

 

Aran Stubbs was, in the words of his lawyer, "a little different than the average person." "Very eccentric-looking," said Dorothy Dahlquist, a publicist with CDR. "Very eccentric-acting. And absolutely brilliant." "He had a very special Spartan lifestyle," according to attorney Steven Katzman. "It was just Aran and his dog." And as far as anyone could tell, Stubbs didn't care a whole bunch about the dog. He had two passions in life - computers and comic books - and his genius was figuring out a way to use the first to acquire the second.

 

When Stubbs was first hired by the Department of Revenue, the agency didn't run background checks, so the agency never discovered that its new clerk had two convictions for burglary as a teenager and in 1979 had pleaded guilty to mail fraud, serving four months of a four-year sentence. All CDR knew was that Stubbs was very good at his job and very adept with computers. He rose steadily through the ranks and kept his eyes open. By the time Stubbs became a chief computer programmer in 1990, he knew how the system worked.

 

He knew, for example, that if someone prepaid an estimated tax, then died due a refund, CDR would never send it out. Because no one would file for the refund, CDR would stow the money in that unopened account forever. "Never say forever." That was Stubb's motto. He had a huge comic book collection - several hundred long boxes - but he didn't have the money to fill in all the holes until he started tapping those unopened accounts.

 

"Aran would manipulate the system," Dahlquist explained, "forcing it to issue a check, either to himself or to the account. then he would either intercept the check or have it sent to his house." Dahlquist said agency investigators believe Stubbs began diverting funds in August 1991, and for several months no one was the wiser. Stubbs kept the checks small and his ears open, in case CDR had plumbers listening in for small leaks. As he hit the major-league mail-order dealers around the country, he always paid with cash.

 

But the caution didn't last. "The process got addictive," Katzman said. "You don't know when enough is enough. Greed overtakes your better judgment. The thing overtook him." Stubb's mistake was to begin paying for his larger orders not with cash but with the actual state warrants. "He contracted at least one dealer," Dahlquist said, "saying, 'I am representing a group of people who want to invest in comic books. I will send you a Colorado state income tax warrant. It will be endorsed. Just use that as payment.'"

 

The scheme quickly pricked the suspicions of one dealer, Harley Yee of Detroit, who called the Department of Revenue and asked if the check was good. When the investigator researched the refund check, he discovered the name on the check belonged to a dead man. Dahlquist said the agency security systems were already tracking a thief inside the agency: "We knew someone was doing it. The comic book angle identified Aran."

 

Stubbs was arrested on March 19, 1992. "If the scheme had run its full course," Katzman said, "Aran would have been out of the country. He didn't expect them to find out about it so soon." Estimates of what Stubbs stole ranged from $150,000 to $500,000, but the state eventually settled on $180,000. Stubbs was charged with a Class 3 felony - theft over $10,000 - and pleaded guilty to a Class 5 offense, embezzlement of public property.

 

Stubbs could have gone to jail for up to 16 years on the original charge; he ended up escaping prison time entirely. Instead, he was sentenced to four years' probation and ordered to forfeit his collection to repay the Department of Revenue. The collection consisted of 400 long boxes, or approximately 60,000 comics. Stubbs had stored the best of the lot - Detective #38, for example, and Showcase #4 - in three freezers in his house. In no mind to go into the retail business, the CDR decided to auction off the entire array in one lot by sealed bid.

 

The winners of the auction - RTS Unlimited of Golden, Colorado - quickly dubbed their take the "IRS Collection" in huge, obnoxious ads in the Comics Buyer's Guide. Although others who had viewed the collection came away unimpressed by its quality or the number of key books, RTS promised buyers that "each comic will be issued with a certificate of authenticity to validate it's pedigree and unique origin from this important part of comicdom history."

 

How important? RTS demanded $22.85 ($19.95 for the catalog and $2.90 for shipping and handling) for the "100+-page inventory listing" of Aran Stubb's ill-gotten gains.

 

--from Comics: Between the Panels"

[Forsythe P Jones]

Thinking about this a little by 89 the guy who took the original Church family call had long since sold this store to another guy (I can't remember his name either) he was kind of a hippie dude too, is why I first thought it was two guys. I know the store Stubbs worked at until mid 89, (it wasn't this store) but I was out of the scene after that, so that was Stubbs after all just working at this Colfax store (I didn't know he had changed stores, until today) He was rather odd and standoffish.

 

It was mid 90s by the time he got busted. (it was in the local papers) I saw the list of siezed comics at the time and knew it was woefully short, so they didn't get all his stuff. The state auctioned them off to pay back the money, but I'm sure he got the majority of his comics hidden away before the state showed up. He owned the property where he lived too, don't know what happened with that.

 

He loved all comics, had complete or near complete collections of everything! My guess is he scammed checks for a very long time before they caught up to him and they probably never got a clear idea of how long or how much he took. I had heard he got out of jail, (I think before I left Colorado in 95) but don't know what happened to him after that.

 

I hadn't thought about any of this stuff in along time....

 

 

--from Comics: Between the Panels"

 

thanks for posting this I wrote the above before reading this post!

[Dustman]

It was mid 90s by the time he got busted. (it was in the local papers) I saw the list of siezed comics at the time and knew it was woefully short, so they didn't get all his stuff. The state auctioned them off to pay back the money, but I'm sure he got the majority of his comics hidden away before the state showed up. He owned the property where he lived too, don't know what happened with that.

 

Jeez, I had almost forgotten about the IRS collection.

 

That's not the first time I've heard that the seized books were just a small part of the collection. I keep wondering if they are tucked away in storage unit someplace under an alias.

 

I remember the local TV news stories about it when the collection got seized. I heard the guy who bought it paid a million dollars for it. I see him at the local shows, and he seems like a nice guy but I can't imagine he's gotten his money back out of it.

 

I also remember the guy on Colfax & Sherman too. I think it was right next to a rescue mission or one of those storefront churches you see in really bad neighborhood and I remember thinking to myself that next door was a lot less scary than the comic shop he ran. It smelled like stale cigarettes and mold, and I'm not sure the guy who ran it ever said two words to me.

 

I think some of the stores that are still in existence here were, at one time, a Mile High Comics. If I have my facts straight, All in a Dream, Time Warp were Mile High that the managers bought out when Chuck sold off his first set of stores.

 

I worked at Earthbound Comics in the early '90s.

[Forsythe P Jones]

I think some of the stores that are still in existence here were, at one time, a Mile High Comics. If I have my facts straight, All in a Dream, Time Warp were Mile High that the managers bought out when Chuck sold off his first set of stores.

 

Time Warp was the original Mile High. Its still owned by Wayne the manager who bought it 84. Ray bought All In A Dream in 82 (I think). He was the first and for a time the only formal Mile High store, hes still there too! I talked to Ray just a month or so ago, he was the first store (I know of) to embrace the trade paperback. He was stocking all the titles he could find (in the mid to late 80's) when most stores only stocked a few....

 

[followtheleader]

Yeah, the "IRS" collection is around at the Denver shows. I'm sure it's been mass distributed, but it really doesn't seem that fantastic.

 

Quite frankly, RTS wants far too much for the books. I'm sure it's because he paid far too much. I tried talking to him about it and he was pretty defensive. I'm sure it's a tired story for him. I tend to skip it completely anymore.

 

Wayne's Time Warp store is great. Good friends with the guy. He opened a second store in Longmont but it didn't do too well in the last 2 years. Didn't help when a gaming store, owned by some fellow employees, took over a couple doors down the street (ended up collapsing it with the old Boulder store into the nicer current Boulder store). Wayne does the Denver shows too (helped me score a Walking Dead Retailer Incentive HC #1 at the last show for a great price!). He's pulled in some great artists over the years. Linsner and Campbell were both fun at a shop level.

 

Dreams Unlimited was in Longmont. Great shop but the owners lived in Cheyenne and drove down everyday. This is really where my love for comics came from. Unfortunate that they closed. It's also where I learned how unstable these hobbies really are. Pogs were the funniest of them all. Rose so damn high and crashed even quicker. The whole time, I'm thinking what the hell is the interest & collectibility in these. They were good at changing the store to the new hobbies regularly. When Diablo and such were big, they had networks set-up. Magic the Gathering ballooned well there. Sports and Comic Cards had there time (though generally short-lived). But comics were always the constant. The damnest thing I remember is a Vietnam Vet working there telling me to stop buying Image and stick to classic Silver Age. I thought he was a crackhead. Now who's the insufficiently_thoughtful_person (though I still don't hate some Image books as much as the general comic populace). Good times, good times.

 

For a short time, there was Cool World too. Super hot wife helped run the store. Bought my Hulk #181 as a young teen from a customer there. They had some good internal auctions too (as did Wayne).

 

All About Comics used to be Boulder. Two guys started a shop that didn't know a whole lot about comics but thought it would pull down some nice bread. Oddest store. It was in the middle of a hippie convention that was formerly a tire store. One guy said screw this and bombed out. The second guy had some falling out with the owner of the building and was forced to stay away. He hired others to run the store and it was never the same. I helped this guy sell on the net and he would hook me up. Good guy but not that saavy in comics. He got a lot of his collection from a former Mile High based store in Lafayette CO. The owner kept most of the books when the shop closed and traded them to All About Comics years later.

 

I could go on and on. Seen and been involved with a lot in Denver comics over the years.

 

Pat

[chromium]

This is Aran Stubbs today...works as a software developer in Colorado Springs.

[Forsythe P Jones]

This is Aran Stubbs today...works as a software developer in Colorado Springs.

 

Wow, I haven't seen him in 20 years and thats just how I remember him.