The Comic Book Thread

Dug deeper into my pile of "keeper" comics this week and re-discovered Ben Edlund's fantastic "The Tick" (hence my new avatar and my new signature quote as well... "The Tick" is one of the most quotable comics ever)... I had forgotten how hilarious that book was. How can you not love an insane asylum escapee turned superhero whose "battle cry" is "SPOON?"

Bumpin an oldie here cuz I found this story interesting...

I may not collect comics anymore, but I still occasionally have geek daydreams about stumbling across a copy of this bad boy (or a similarly important comic, i.e. "Batman" #1, "Detective Comics" #27, "Amazing Fantasy" #15, etc.) in someone's attic or basement...

Rare Superman comic sells for $317,200
By DAVID B. CARUSO / Associated Press Writer
Published: March 14th, 2009 01:52 PM
Last Modified: March 14th, 2009 05:42 PM
NEW YORK - A rare copy of the first comic book featuring Superman has sold for $317,200 in an Internet auction. The previous owner had bought it for less than a buck.
It's one of the highest prices ever paid for a comic book, a likely testament to the volume's rarity and its excellent condition, said Stephen Fishler, co-owner of the auction site ComicConnect.com and its sister dealership, Metropolis Collectibles.
The winning bid for the 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1, which features Superman lifting a car on its cover, was submitted Friday evening by John Dolmayan, drummer for the rock band System of a Down, according to managers at ComicConnect.com.
Dolmayan, who is also a dealer of rare comic books, said he acquired the Superman comic on behalf of a client he declined to identify.
"This is one of the premier books you could collect," he said in a telephone interview. "It's considered the Holy Grail of comic books. I talked to my client, and we made the move."
Dolmayan said the client has "a small collection, but everything he has is incredible."
Only about 100 copies of Action Comics No. 1 are known to exist and they seldom come up for sale.
"Maybe in a booming economy, it would have done a hundred grand more, but in this economy, I think the price is great," Fishler said.
The man who had previously owned the book purchased it in a secondhand store in the early 1950s when he was nine years old.
He paid 35 cents.

http://www.adn.com/nation/story/722847.html

That's ri-damn-diculous. Why anyone would spend that kind of money on a comic is beyond me.

SpectreFate wrote:

That's ri-damn-diculous. Why anyone would spend that kind of money on a comic is beyond me.

I wouldn't have paid more than $316,998 myself.

Twenty-some-odd years ago I went to a big comic book convention in New York City and one of the dealers had a copy of Action #1 on display at his booth (in what appeared to be a bullet proof glass case). I think the price for it at that time was around $10 grand, and back then THAT seemed ridiculous. How times have changed!

I remember as a kid dreaming I could find alot of those golden age DC Comics at a garage sale, I had to settle for the large sized reprints that DC did in the early 70's to read them.

I have to agree with Spec, that is alot of money to spend on one comic book. Superman is cool but $317,200!!!!

manny wrote:

I have to agree with Spec, that is alot of money to spend on one comic book. Superman is cool but $317,200!!!!

Ten years from now it'll probably go for twice that.

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Ten years from now it'll probably go for twice that.

In 10 years, no one will have $600,000 except for the AIG execs, of course.

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I remember as a kid dreaming I could find alot of those golden age DC Comics at a garage sale

You ever seen the Simpsons episode where Homer is going through some old lady's yard sale stuff? He picks up a copy of Action #1 and throws it away like "junk," then picks up a sheet of the famed Air Mail error stamp and chucks THAT away, like "Eh, the plane's upside down," then picks up a Stradivarius violin and sez "Stradi-Who-vius?"

Fat Freddy wrote:

Quote :

I remember as a kid dreaming I could find alot of those golden age DC Comics at a garage sale

You ever seen the Simpsons episode where Homer is going through some old lady's yard sale stuff? He picks up a copy of Action #1 and throws it away like "junk," then picks up a sheet of the famed Air Mail error stamp and chucks THAT away, like "Eh, the plane's upside down," then picks up a Stradivarius violin and sez "Stradi-Who-vius?"

Classic!!!

Fat Freddy wrote:

Quote :

I remember as a kid dreaming I could find alot of those golden age DC Comics at a garage sale

You ever seen the Simpsons episode where Homer is going through some old lady's yard sale stuff? He picks up a copy of Action #1 and throws it away like "junk," then picks up a sheet of the famed Air Mail error stamp and chucks THAT away, like "Eh, the plane's upside down," then picks up a Stradivarius violin and sez "Stradi-Who-vius?"

frickin homer...

Collected a few different comics, but I used to live for when the Avengers comics would come out new. Someone might have to correct me on this, but did new comics come out every two weeks??? I remember going to Comiskey's drug store in Greenwood, Indiana with my mother or my father, and going to the spinning comic rack looking to see if a new Avengers comic had come out.

Favorite Avengers:

1. Iron Man
2. Captain America
3. Giant Man
4. Hawkeye
5. Thor
6. Vision
7. Power Man
8. Beast
9. Scarlett Witch
10. Yellow Jacket & Wasp (kind of a team)

I have a fairly significant comic collection of several thousand books. I have all but about 15 Daredevil books (all runs), the original X-Men (as in pre-Uncanny) back to #6, and most of the Flash comics as well. Lots of Batman stuff, as well. Far more of a Marvel guy than DC, though



Arttie

I'm sure some of you guys who went to Sunday school in the 70s will remember the infamous Spire Christian Comics series, written and drawn by Al Hartley. My church used to give'em out to the kids every so often. Many of them starred Archie and the gang. Al had been working in the comics biz since the late 1940s at many publishers including Atlas/Marvel and Archie Comics before he had a religious conversion in the late 60s. When he started up the Spire Christian Comics series, the Archie publishers allowed him use of their characters for free and he did about two dozen or so Christian comics using their characters. Man, if you thought the Riverdale gang were goody-goody in the regular Archie books, you gotta see Al's Bizarro-world Spire versions...seriously. I'm sure Al's heart was in the right place but these comics were just so over-the-top that they're kinda ridiculous now. Heck, they were even kinda ridiculous back THEN.



As you can see, ol' Al was about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the forehead.



Love the "Jesus Christ" banner. I remember seeing that on T-shirts back in the day too. When I look at this panel I imagine a secretary at the Spire Comics offices saying "The Coca-Cola company is on line one, Mister Hartley... something about a Trademark infringement lawsuit..."

The Christian Archie series were the most popular and best sellers in the Spire line, probably because the NON-Archie books were a mixed bag. Some were pretty good (an adaptation of the book/film "The Cross and the Switchblade" was probably my fave) but a lot of'em were just so bizarre and off the wall that you gotta read'em to believe 'em.



I love this one. "You can TELL they're not Christians!" Yea, because they...um... they smoke? And play cards? In BROAD DAYLIGHT? Shame on them!! HEATHENS!!!
(The above panel is from a comic called "Gospel Blimp," by the way, which I received as a giveaway at Sunday school when I was a kid. Even at seven years old, I was already a huge comic book fan and knew at the very first glance that this was gonna be a crappy comic. It has something to do with members of a church flying around their town in a big blimp dropping religious leaflets all over their neighbors' driveways and lawns, then wondering why everybody was so pissed off. If you drop litter in my yard from a blimp, I'd probably be a little pissed off too. Nowadays I look back on it fondly as a hilarious piece of retro 70s junk.)



Some nice artwork here. I have no idea what Spire Comic this image came from, but I gotta say, if you took the word balloons out of it, it would make a bad-ass cover for a Thrash Metal album.



Are you SURE about that, kids? Maybe you're just not looking hard enough for the drugs.

Note that Al Hartley had an extremely ANNOYING habit of EMPHASIZING every THIRD or fourth WORD in his WORD balloons even if THEY DIDN'T need extra emphasis. He also was known for his habit of using three exclamation points at the end of random sentences!!!

Mind you, even as silly and Ned Flanders-approved as these comics were, I was still a fan... I had a big stack of'em in my old collection!

By the way, if anybody wants to read (or re-read) some of the classics from the Spire series, there's a checklist at this site that features PDF files of many of the issues (you'll need Adobe Acrobat to open the files)...I particularly recommend the "Gospel Blimp" and any of the Archie books...oh, and you gotta read "Hansi: The Girl Who Loved The Swastika." Un-frickin-believable.

http://www.carpsplace.com/spire/spire.htm

I took a look at some of these and seem to have a vague recollection of some of this stuff. If I read any of 'em as a kid it was probably through friends who attended other churches as I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have passed 'em out in the one I attended as a kid.

Yeah, this stuff is definitely pretty heavy handed and goofy like much of this kind of stuff. I'm pretty sure that like you said these guys' hearts were probably in the right place but maybe if they had gotten some objective input and heeded it they might have done better. But then again there was plenty of goofy mainstream stuff as well back then.

Come to think of it there's some pretty goofy mainstream stuff nowadays too. Oh well, I often wonder what stuff out there today will become the goofy-retro-camp of tomorrow.

I have a total comic geek question...

If Magneto can manipulate all metal, why didn't he just rip the metal skeleton and claws out of Wolverine and kill him? Healing powers or not, I'd think that ripping out the metal that was bonded to his body would have some sort of devestating effect.

They kinda hinted at this in the movies and maybe this was a plot-line in the comics, but I haven't read them in years. Anyone know why this gaping flaw was never addressed?

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I have a total comic geek question...

If Magneto can manipulate all metal, why didn't he just rip the metal skeleton and claws out of Wolverine and kill him? Healing powers or not, I'd think that ripping out the metal that was bonded to his body would have some sort of devestating effect.

They kinda hinted at this in the movies and maybe this was a plot-line in the comics, but I haven't read them in years. Anyone know why this gaping flaw was never addressed?

I believe that just that very thing happened in X-Men(2nd series) #25. I think Magneto ripped the metal off of his bones and then Wolverine was saved somehow and was without the metal for quite a while. He got it back again later, (don't remember exactly how) , in one of those typical comic book ways.

Svengo wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I have a total comic geek question...

If Magneto can manipulate all metal, why didn't he just rip the metal skeleton and claws out of Wolverine and kill him? Healing powers or not, I'd think that ripping out the metal that was bonded to his body would have some sort of devestating effect.

They kinda hinted at this in the movies and maybe this was a plot-line in the comics, but I haven't read them in years. Anyone know why this gaping flaw was never addressed?

I believe that just that very thing happened in X-Men(2nd series) #25. I think Magneto ripped the metal off of his bones and then Wolverine was saved somehow and was without the metal for quite a while. He got it back again later, (don't remember exactly how) , in one of those typical comic book ways.

That sounds about right. A totally obvious question that comics anwers in a vauge sorta cop-out answer. "If it's something we can't explain, the answer is 'magic'."

Same goes for Collosus. If he turns into an all metal creature, you'd think Magento could just squish him up into a paper-weight, but I'm sure the comic writers have some sort of vauge reasoninng why that doesn't happen.

Thanks for that. I have to go re-arrange the pens in my pocket-protector now.

Speaking of Christine comics, does anybody remember the Christian comics published by Chick Publications ( I think that was the name), they always had great artwork and were known for their tracts that were everywhere during the 80's, they were both amusing and disturbing, especially their anti-Catholic slant on some of their stories.

manny wrote:

Speaking of Christine comics, does anybody remember the Christian comics published by Chick Publications ( I think that was the name), they always had great artwork and were known for their tracts that were everywhere during the 80's, they were both amusing and disturbing, especially their anti-Catholic slant on some of their stories.

Yup, I remember those. They were even more over-the-top than the Spire Christian comics. At least Spire had some humor amongst all the go-go-God stuff... Chick Publications tracts were totally doom-and-gloom, "YOU'RE GONNA GO TO HELL KID!" kinda stuff.

Since we are talking about comic book stories, has their ever been a super hero or that matter a supervillan that dies and stays dead? I can't think of any, well maybe Marvel Comic's Captain Marvel, or did he also come back from the dead?

manny wrote:

Since we are talking about comic book stories, has their ever been a super hero or that matter a supervillan that dies and stays dead? I can't think of any, well maybe Marvel Comic's Captain Marvel, or did he also come back from the dead?

Nobody ever stays dead in comics.

Fat Freddy wrote:

manny wrote:

Since we are talking about comic book stories, has their ever been a super hero or that matter a supervillan that dies and stays dead? I can't think of any, well maybe Marvel Comic's Captain Marvel, or did he also come back from the dead?

Nobody ever stays dead in comics.

True, I remember when they killed Superman I knew they would bring him back, but the storyline that DC used for his return was lame IMO.

manny wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

manny wrote:

Since we are talking about comic book stories, has their ever been a super hero or that matter a supervillan that dies and stays dead? I can't think of any, well maybe Marvel Comic's Captain Marvel, or did he also come back from the dead?

Nobody ever stays dead in comics.

True, I remember when they killed Superman I knew they would bring him back, but the storyline that DC used for his return was lame IMO.

I still have my copy of Superman's "Death" issue. It came sealed in a black plastic bag with a bleeding Superman "S" on the front of it and included a black armband (again with the bleeding "S" on it) and a tearsheet from the Daily Planet of Supes' obituary, gimmicky as hell but kinda neat. People were buying zillions of copies of that ish figuring it was going to be worth money someday (of course, there are so many copies out there that they're common as hell, therefore I doubt they're going to ever be worth much). When I bought my copy I promptly ripped the bag open (to the shock and horror of many of the geeks in my comic shop) and wrapped the black armband around the sleeve of my leather jacket.

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and wrapped the black armband around the sleeve of my leather jacket.

The comic book geek equivalent of burning your bra.