Obadiah Oldbuck vs. Superman

[gifflefunk]

Bob, I whole-heartedly apologize to you and your customers. At this point, I have no doubts that you actually believe picture-stories are comic books and that you look upon them as one and the same (i.e. no intentional scamming of people).

 

If Mr. Meyer is willing to throw money in your direction for those books who am I to judge you in selling them to him?

 

Now I need to run off and read Smolderen's article in Comic Art that questions picture-stories and narrative strips being called comics by some people.

[*paull*]

I also have no issues about what prices you or anyone else sets for their books. Take what you can get! I think it was genius for you to sell those picture books for 30K.

[BLBcomics-migration]

I know Thierry Smolderen very well. A world class comics historian. He runs the Coconino World web site in Angouleme France as well teaches as at the Angouleme comics museum.

 

http://www.coconino-world.com/s_classics_v3/mng_classics.php

 

read more stuff on Topffer by Smolderen at

 

http://www.coconino-world.com/sites_auteurs/topffer/index.html

 

Comic Art publisher Todd Hignite has been after me off & on to throw another contrib his way. I still need to score a copy of the new ish.

[Comicdey]

"San Diego Comicon - this man insluted me over and over"

 

Typo or Freudian Slip.....you decide....We all love the comic form, but this thread has really pushed the envelope. I've been away from this thread for quite a while and didn't realize it had come to this.

 

 

 

 

The moral to the story is: you shouldn't blindly believe everything you read on the Boards to be true

 

So I checked all the comic price guides and comic book histories in my local big chain bookstore (Wizard, Krause, Comic Buyer's Guide, Standard Catalog, etc.). Only one had any mention of some picture book mistakenly listed as a comic book... the OPG. None of the other publications have fallen victim to the charade that Overstreet has been victimized by... seems very strange that Oldbuck isn't listed as a comic book if it is obviously a comic book.... what are these other publications thinking? Don't they know that Beerbohm needs to sell picture books to suckers?!

 

And the uplifting commentary from Nick Pope just keeps on coming - all the while i am out hacking & hewing in my comics booth at the San Diego Comicon - this man insluted me over and over on this thread, all the while i am not in a position to respond.

 

So, i got back from the two largest USA comic shows, re-set up my comics business, read a bit of this thread, began responding, more than a little livid this insufficiently_thoughtful_person makes this stuff up in the fantasy land he calls a brain.

 

Wizard's idea of an old timer comics creator is the likes of Frank Miller or Jim Lee.

 

The other three you list are all the same company: Krause, CBG, Standard

 

You make it seem like there are mountains of "other" comic book price guides out there, yet only OPG is the "victimized" price guide?

 

Again, i bring up the concept that some of you out there in CGC-Boards crazy land seem to think i have some sort of power over Steve Geppi, John Snyder, Bob Overstreet and the others who work at Gemstone.

 

I was asked by John Snyder and Bob Overstreet to build these sections coming up on a decade ago. My services were solicited. It ain't my price guide, though i am damn proud to be a contributor. I have little control over what they ultimately print.

 

And i get doubly incensed when some insufficiently_thoughtful_person refers to my collector customer friends as "suckers". Me, i say baseball bats at ten paces

 

Robert Beerbohm

[showcase4]

My old friend Obadiah Oldbuck sure has caused quit a stir, that's for sure. Whenever an event happens that challenges the status quo, such is often the case. You know, there was a time when men thought the earth was flat...when the idea of it actually being round surfaced, I would think it was off with someone's head back then. Fortunately, my fellow collectors and I don't go around decapitating each other if we don't agree.

 

It is obviously going to take time to see if there will one day be widespread acceptance of Obadiah and other 19th century comic books to be universally considered comic books...since that is not the case now, does not mean they aren't comic books; it just means it's not the case now. It will also take time to see how good or bad my $20,000 price paid on 2 different issues works out. I have no plans to sell, so I guess we would only know if another copy is sold thru an auction house, and I am not the high bidder ( or if I am, the 2nd highest bidder may be a price that you accept as auction value)

 

I can tell you this my collecting friends, I am thrilled to own these books, and at the price I paid. Regardless of what you may think, I know I am holding one of the most historically important and rare US comic books ever printed when I have an 1842 Brother Jonathan / Obadiah Oldbuck in my hands. Perhaps the same sense of pride and joy that you may experience as Golden Age collectors when you hold a Detective 27.

 

This is not a closing comment --- I don't want this important and informative post to die....just my thoughts of the day, as I reflect upon all of your appreciated input. The Boards have obviously attracted some very smart collectors.

[mrwoogieman]

I don't care one whit about these books but this thread is very enjoyable!

 

 

 

[BLBcomics-migration]

"San Diego Comicon - this man insluted me over and over"

 

Typo or Freudian Slip.....you decide....We all love the comic form, but this thread has really pushed the envelope. I've been away from this thread for quite a while and didn't realize it had come to this.

 

The moral to the story is: you shouldn't blindly believe everything you read on the Boards to be true

 

Totally a typo which i fixed - i need a 40 hour work day to get thru all the stuff i am doing and asked to do for other researchers on a constant basis

 

- and it took a while to wade thru this long thread to read all the positve warm soft fuzzies thrown at me

 

I did not come to the epiphany of an heretofore mostly undocumented 1800s comics business in America lightly. It was a transformational evolutionary process over many years.

 

It was in the mid 1960s i got my first early (for me then) comic books - A Buster Brown largze size oblong from before World War One, several of of the 1920s 10x10 Cupples & Leon books as well - and i am still a teen ager in Jr High school. I thought to myelf, "what are these? the formats sure are funny looking"

 

I began getting RBCC (Rocket's Blast Copmicollector) in the mail back around May 1966 with #45, when it was still mimeographed and hand collated by cerebal palsy victim Gordon B Love - back when it was the center of the universe for comics collecting - when its circulation was around 700.

 

Those who have back issues of RBCC before the advent of TBG (later known as CBG), go thru the ads. And i am talkign here of 1960s issues, maybe the first few years of the 70s. Thirty five to forty years ago.

 

You will discover advert after advert for comic books we now call Platinum Age - the term coined by John Snyder for that period before super heroes, before Famous Funnies, when there were many varied myriad formats for marketing comic strips to the public.

 

Cupples & Leon 10x10 format books for sale - other collectors running want lists for them as well as the early news paper reprint comic books such Tip Top Popular King Magic Ace Funnies Super Famous Funnies etc etc

 

Back when three of the hottest comic books were Flash Gordon 4C 10, Tarzan SS 20 Prince Valiant FB 26 - hotter than Action 1, Tec 27 or Marvel (Mystery) #1 even - and equally desired - back when Donald Duck 4C 9 was also one of the most desirable grails in collecting.

 

As that earlier generation's interest in the nostalgia aspect waned, mostly, I suspect due to the generation dying off, the ads become more sparse, eventually stopping almost altogether by the end of the 1970s and the advent of a serious Direct Sales Market fuled the rise of the comic book store in the 1980s.

 

Fast forward 20 years, right before the dawn of the 21st Century - and i had been working on a history of the Direct Sales Market i helped birth along with a few hundred other friends and acquaintences in the business. Parts of the many players i have documented in two articles titled The Origins of the Direct Sales Market in Comic Book Artist 6 and 7, each about 12,000 words

 

But to explain the 70s, i went to the 60s, and to explain the 60s, the Comics Code and massive gluts of the 50s had to be explained, which made me delve into the 40s, and to explain the 40s, one had to go into the 30s - and to understand why the 30s format arose, one had to look at the 20s, and so i found myself going back thru the decades.

 

It has never been cut and dried that Famous Funnies was "first" news stand comic book and Yellow Kid was "first" comic strip. Nothing is ever so easy to compartmentalize. yes, that is what many comic book collectors seem to want and demand.

 

Like one book triggering the Gold or Silver or "Bronze" or that new kid on the block "Copper" - Ages. That is patently absurd when you truly think about it.

 

And then i began studying the words of one collectors from a long time ago, Gersham Legman, whom some know a little bit about due to his 1949 Love & Death self-published book, with three chapters, one on how comics teach all kind sof things, positive and negative. Wertham used this Love & Death chaper extensively in Secduction of the Innocent. He also had an extensive collection of 1800s comic strip books & mags he wwrote about in a 1946 article which became the basis of my quest to learn more.

 

So, about a decade ago, a group of us began examining the defintions by which the foundations of our holy cannons were built upon. The defintion as devised by a small group of well-intentioned comics people in the mid 1960s stipulated recurring characters as well as word balloons imbedded into the panels.

 

Once one removed the recurring character concept as simply silly to include, we also dissected like an MRI the concept of word balloons as an essential "have to have it" criteria as there are many many comic strips which Ernie McGee coined to be "pantomime" ie wordless - zero words at all, nada

 

- including what he proves to be the first sequential comic strips running in the NY World a couple years before the advent of RF Outcault's Yellow Kid - drawn by Mark Fenderson and Walt McDougall dating Jan 1894.

 

RFO himself had pantomime comic strips run in the NY World like a year before his first single panel YK ran Feb 1895

 

- I show this in the Overstreet Plat article titled "Origin of a New Species" Nov 1894 - well known in some other history books

 

And many many of us also have long thought of such classics as Prince Valiant or Raymond's early Flash Gordon Sunday pages to be "real" comic strips - words below the art in the panels

 

All still having words and pictures juxtaposed that both are essential to understand fully what is going on

 

The world of comics is more inclusive than some want to include.

 

Peace, my fellow collectors

 

Robert Beerbohm

[showcase4]

who got the better deal here?....imagine it's 5 years from now. your comments as collectors are appreciated. You can click on the pic several times to enlarge it.

 

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=8525&si=122

[*paull*]

That's an easy one. If I were Bob, I'd be eternally grateful that you walked into my life with 20K burning a hole in your pocket.

[Silver Surfer]

Bob this is OT but I just listened to the first portion of your interview with Vince Z of Metro, great stuff.

[BLBcomics-migration]

Yo Paull

 

in all actuality, and i have read quite a few posts from people mis-assuming they know what i think in the comics field, i miss my Obadiah Oldbucks immensely - and wish i had the $20K necessary to buy one back. If the Comic Ghods bless me with one mor ecopy, it will never leave my collection.

[BLBcomics-migration]

Bob this is OT but I just listened to the first portion of your interview with Vince Z of Metro, great stuff.

 

Yo Surfer

 

Thanks for the kind words.

 

Which one?

 

I have done two of them with Vinnie now - the 2nd one was distracting for both of us as we were both getting ready for San Diego - hence, we have discussed doing a 3rd one as there is still so much ground to cover. Each hour blew by so fast - if you liked what you heard, let Vinnie know you want to hear more

 

Robert Beerbohm

[Silver Surfer]

Bob this is OT but I just listened to the first portion of your interview with Vince Z of Metro, great stuff.

 

Yo Surfer

 

Thanks for the kind words.

 

Which one?

 

I have done two of them with Vinnie now - the 2nd one was distracting for both of us as we were both getting ready for San Diego - hence, we have discussed doing a 3rd one as there is still so much ground to cover. Each hour blew by so fast - if you liked what you heard, let Vinnie know you want to hear more

 

Robert Beerbohm

 

Was the recent one in their archives, you talked about the Action #1 hitting $1,000, how you sold 600 Conan's #1 at a NY con, etc, just a tremendous history lesson. I will defintely drop Vince and email and request another session as this kind of stuff should be shared with the masses.

[*paull*]

BLB, I'm not claiming that I know how you feel, I'm just saying how I'D feel. I'd kick my heels all the way to the bank.

[BLBcomics-migration]

I actually do not remember exactly which one discussed what subjects - throw in San Diego, 3000 mile round trip there, pit stop for retool boxes, drive to Chicago Wizard, 9 hour each way there, and both interviews run together for me.

 

Those 600 Conan #1s i bought by ordering from my local magazine outlet then paid for our entire trip to Seuling's 1971 NYC comicon, and introduced me to how speculating in new comics could lead to something big time.

 

By the time Byrne began doing X-Men, i began ordering 10,000 of an issue - the Direct Sales market was relatively young in those days back in the late 1970s

 

Other people came up to me at San Diego saying they enjoyed the ipod casts - Vinnie and i had some fun, i have a lot more stories where the ones already recorded came from

 

Comics have been a way of life for me (and many others) for quite a few decades now

 

best

 

Robert Beerbohm

[BLBcomics-migration]

BLB, I'm not claiming that I know how you feel, I'm just saying how I'D feel. I'd kick my heels all the way to the bank.

 

I completely understand assumptions can be made

 

- i am just saying i am not in this comics thing just for the money

 

- and i trust the history i have been sharing in the Overstreet and else where like the lamented Comic Book Marketplace, Comic Book Artist, Comic Art, Comics Journal, and elsewhere have been enjoyed.

 

The ground i stood on fell out from underneath me back in 1986 when my comics company's warehouse holding a million comic books, half a million baseball card, 10,000 Fillmore type posters and more stuff was mostly destroyed in flooding in northern California - but was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

 

Now i have memories, and in the mid 1990s began the process of nailing down all of the collective history of the comics business in America - something i have taken back to Sept 1842 in New York City. This edu-war has been ongoing for a decade now.

 

It will erupt again in the near future. One can take that to the bank -

[showcase4]

BLB,

my question of "who got the better deal" was intended to get feedback from Golden Age collectors on this post...not to imply as to who is wiser between the 2 of us...we both did great!. Please don't take the question as offensive...the money aspect keeps coming up, so I'm prompting for some feedback of neutral parties.

we both know what this book is, and how fair the price was

[ShoNuff-migration]

This is not quite a public apology, just apologize and this will all be over.

 

Robert Beerbohm

I would like to publicly apologize to everyone for Robert Beerbohm's snotty arrogance and childish name calling in this thread. Apparently, he's the kind of know-it-all who is physically incapable of ever admitting he's wrong on any subject, and instead prefers to counter with verbal attacks when challenged in any way. Again...my sincerest apologies to all regarding his behavior.

[Comicdey]

BLB,

my question of "who got the better deal" was intended to get feedback from Golden Age collectors on this post...not to imply as to who is wiser between the 2 of us...we both did great!. Please don't take the question as offensive...the money aspect keeps coming up, so I'm prompting for some feedback of neutral parties.

we both know what this book is, and how fair the price was

 

For someone that thinks they got a great buy and now has "the" key book, questioning what you paid to third party individuals seems a bit curious.

 

I'd say the boards are fairly neutral on the issue as we don't really care which one of you has the money, or the item.

 

But, with that said, the neutral boards of GA collectors is pretty much saying to you that you paid a nosebleed price.

 

if you're happy with it, then go with it, if not.......too late.

[showcase4]

BLB,

my question of "who got the better deal" was intended to get feedback from Golden Age collectors on this post...not to imply as to who is wiser between the 2 of us...we both did great!. Please don't take the question as offensive...the money aspect keeps coming up, so I'm prompting for some feedback of neutral parties.

we both know what this book is, and how fair the price was

 

For someone that thinks they got a great buy and now has "the" key book, questioning what you paid to third party individuals seems a bit curious.

 

I'd say the boards are fairly neutral on the issue as we don't really care which one of you has the money, or the item.

 

But, with that said, the neutral boards of GA collectors is pretty much saying to you that you paid a nosebleed price.

 

if you're happy with it, then go with it, if not.......too late.

 

the money aspect is extremely important with a $20,000 investment, and the input from other collectors is helpful for me as a Victrorian/Platinum age specialist. If someone pays $200,000 for an Action #1, it's ok. If I spend $20,000 on Obadiah Oldbuck, I'm foolish. There is nothing curious as to me seeking the answer as to "why?"