The Heavyweight Champion of the World
My pal Dennis De Pues dropped in last week and was hunting down some old Fantastic Four issues. I had to listen to him talk about how great the title was in the 60s, I might have yawned once or…
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
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Read MoreThe Heavyweight Champion of the World
The Power of the Panel
I’m posting a special Time to Collect insert piece written up by my Comic Culture co-host Chris Owen. Chris loves comics almost as much as he loves – I was gonna say donuts but thought it wrong, then my mind…
Promotional Comics
I had a nice visit from my good friend and Captain Canuck creator Richard Comely last week, it was great to see him and he’s doing just fine. We were rummaging through some old Captain Canuck stuff and I happened…
Masks
Now, more than ever, we have become acutely aware that we all swim in each others’ mists and that proximity can transmit and infect. The western handshake and European cheek peck may soon become obsolete and the palm-press namaste of…
Creating Niche Markets?
This will be the last of a three week push into market analysis, we’ll change speed next week, we’ll come back to the tough stuff but only after we visit some lighter, more fun topics in the coming weeks. There…
The Gorn
Thanks for the comments on last week’s post. Lets keep pushing into the brave new world on investing in comics. One of my favourite old Star Trek episodes was the one where Kirk was stuck on the planet with the…
We have to Earn it Now
Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to focus on sharing some thoughts on investing in comics. I know a lot of you reading the column focus more on collecting but there are just as many who play at…
Character Updating
Let me throw in a terrible aside in even before I start into the topic. When I was younger I practiced Tae Kwon Do, I started as a young adult and had a great instructor. It was a fun sport,…
Artists
In a Time to Collect post awhile back, I covered comic book writers and noted that hardly anyone collects comics based on writers. We can’t say the same for comic book artists, collecting comics based on favoured artists is one…
The Enemy
The sense of ‘pulling together for the greater good’, as we in Canada are doing now under the jackboot occupation of this pandemic, would have had a sympathetic resonance with the Canadians of the Second World War homefront eight decades…
Made in America
Today’s post is mostly a collection of my observations and opinions, it is not meant to be a dissertation nor something to be read as fact. These are just my views. This post was inspired by an email I received…
Magazines
I had a good long talk with my pal, Chris Owen, about magazines recently. We could not figure out why magazines have not exploded in value as collectibles. We were talking about comic book related magazines, so we narrowed the…
Character Introduction: Villains
A few times a year I’ll visit elementary schools and do a history of comic books presentation for a class of grade 5 or grade 6 students. I know what they like, I’m light on the actual history and heavy…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Sort of Heroes
As many of you know, this column began seven years ago as part of my attempt to focus a newly minted retirement on something both interesting and challenging, albeit perhaps trivial in comparison to the struggles we all face daily…