Week 15: Staying Strong
I hope everyone is doing well, staying healthy and staying sane. I thought I’d try a visualized tour of our current plight. With his beyond excellent splash to Giant-Size Man-Thing #5 Frank Brunner sums up the way most of us…
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Walter Durajlija
Walter Durajlija is an Overstreet Advisor and Shuster Award winner. He owns Big B Comics in Hamilton Ontario.
Read MoreWeek 15: Staying Strong
Original versus Restored
It used to be that a purple label (the colour of the label CGC gives to comics designated as restored) was the kiss of death for a comic book’s value. I remember when guys would see a purple label and…
Week 14: Anything Goes
No April Fools prank from me today, just some good clean splashing around. Oh and one other thing, I’m trying to keep Making a Splash a spur of the moment post, I want to try and feel the moment each…
Character Introduction – Improving on an Idea
The most important driver of value for comic books is character introduction. Cover driven value has picked up over the past few years but covers are still a distant second to character introduction. Character Introduction is a huge topic and…
Week 13: Double the Fun
This week I thought I’d double the fun by highlighting a comic book with two great splash pages by two great artists. Silver Surfer #4, Page 3 – John Buscema. I’m gonna come out and say that this is one…
So What’s the Play?
I hope everyone is safe and healthy and practicing their social distancing responsibly. Right now we need to keep up our mental health as well as our physical health so I thought I’d post something positive that looks forward to…
Week 12: The Fighting Irish
This week I’m paying tribute to St. Patrick’s Day and to the spirit of the Fighting Irish. I only know one Irish song and it goes something like this; “we drink and we fight – and we drink and we…
Covid 19
It seems the whole world has been turned upside down with this Covid 19 virus and my thoughts are with everyone and their health and safety. Let’s take the necessary precautions and let’s put all our efforts and energies into…
Week 11: xx
March 8th was International Women’s Day and I really should have put this post up last week so apologies. There are some great female comic artists that I’ll be featuring all year long but this week lets reserve all the…
Writers
Honestly, I’m not even sure how valid my observation is this week. I’m doing it by feel, this is the way I feel about the subject and I’ve somehow morphed this feeling and lack of awareness into a full-blown summation…
Week 10: more free styling
My mind is all over the place this week so I thought it best if the splash pages were all over the place as well. Yowzers! This splash from Hangman #3 is just nasty. Comics.org has Mort Leav and John…
Covers: Part 1 – Good Girl Art
Covers! While the number one driver of comic book demand and value is and will remain character introductions (I have some posts coming on that topic too) there is no denying that cover appeal is the second biggest comic value…
Week 9: The Early Marvel keys
As comic collectors, we’ve all seen the covers to these Marvel keys featured below. I did a thought exercise and I couldn’t visualize even one of these splash pages in my head. I was close on a couple of the…
Comic Cons
I’m getting those email notifications for the big C2E2 Comic Con happening this coming weekend in Chicago. C2E2 is the official launch of the mega con season, San Diego Comic Con is probably the best known comic con with all…
Week 8: Double the Fun
My pal Alan was in the shop yesterday and he gave me a suggestion for this week’s Making a Splash post: feature some great double-page splashes! Nestor Redondo outdid himself with this beautiful double-page splash for Rima the Jungle Girl…
Nostalgia Cycles
Nostalgia cycles exist and they have a great effect on collecting comics and other pop culture collectibles. The process seems eternal. As kids we enjoyed what we enjoyed then too suddenly we grew up and found ourselves in school. After…
Week 7: it’s in the air
I was thinking of going hard on a Valentine’s Day theme but decided against it; I still added a few to remind us of what really makes the world go around. One of my favourite Undervalued Spotlights was when I…
Origin issues
Like I mentioned in the first post of this column, I’m planning to cover a lot of topics with some being meaty and others a little lighter but still worth discussing. I’m not sure where the Origin Issue falls but…
Week 6: Raboy gets his due
No theme again this week, and again I like where my A.D.D. took me. There have been some references to Mac Raboy lately so I thought I’d lead with a monster of a splash page from the man himself. We…
Scarcity of Grade
It looks like most of us have a very difficult time defining what kind of collectors we are; we seem to be opportunistic and have erratic buying habits. If we can’t be more focused on what we buy let us…