Fan Expo Toronto is fast approaching and I’ll be going to promote ICE and to sell comics as Big B Comics. Holy cow are hotels ever expensive these days!! Hopefully, a few of you can drop by the booth over the four days, say hi and let’s talk about some comics. I’ll get a booth number posted on next week’s post.
Our friend Dave sent me a link last week to eBay item #115461488569 featuring a custom-made Werewolf by Night #32 featuring the first appearance of Moon Knight. The description says as follows;
“This is a beautiful custom made exact replica of the hot key Werewolf By Night #32 book, with the first ever appearance of Moon Knight! Nice glossy covers, and newspaper print pages. This is a really neat unique item. A must-have for all fans of Moon Knight! See the photos for condition. I believe it to be in Mint condition. Will be bagged and boarded, sandwiched between rigid pieces of cardboard.“
I’m not sure what to make of this listing. Is this a real thing? If it is real then I’d like to know how there are made. Where do they get the cover stock and newsprint? How are they printed? Can anybody shed light on this? Obviously, I could see this as an issue with a raw copy being offered for sale as the real thing… Here is the pic in the listing.
A good batch of comics is going up onto our eBay auction later this week. This Robert Crumb Fritz the Cat oversized edition from 1969 caught my eye and I think it is a deserving cover of the week. I didn’t know they had these things in Treasury size editions; there was also a Head Comix oversized edition going up.
From Batman #60 comes our ad of the week. First of all, I’d like to admit that the modern world and all its perversions do sometimes get the better of me because when I first saw the cover of Batman #60 I thought about Batman and Robin pole dancing; frankly, that is very wrong but that is how far down that path I’ve apparently gone. The ad for Bob Hope Comics #4 is a gem, full of girls, adventures and laughs, heck I’d buy it because I want to know who stole that cake recipe. I think the Bob Hope title is the standard for the comics based on popular comedians of the day, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, all come in behind the Bob Hope comics.
The splash page of the week comes out of Rima the Jungle Girl #4, great art on this two-page splash from Nestor Redondo on Joe Kubert layouts. One of the benefits of listing a lot of 1970s DC comics for auctions is that I’ve run into Mr. Redondo’s work often and I’m a big fan; Nestor oozes talent and ability and should be celebrated.
Another of our weekly internationalcollectiblesexchange eBay auctions ended last night and I was impressed with how this lot of Dracula Lives magazines did. The lot fetched $159.50 USD and it’s just one good result out of many I’ve noticed for the Curtis Magazines that Marvel put out in the 1970s. Forever these magazines were not easy sells; I think their time has come.
Sigh. I used to own that Fritz the Cat along with a ton of other Undergrounds which I sold along with almost everything else to buy Canadian Whites. The only ones I simply could not part with were the two issues of Air Pirates. Dan O’Neill has always been a particular hero of mine for taking on The House of Mouse and their huge team of lawyers (and, unfortunately, losing). There was a time when most comic shops didn’t want to touch this stuff or, if they did, sold it for insanely cheap prices. My Air Pirates were only fifteen bucks a piece at Now and Then back in the ’80s when they were only about fifteen years old. Cut to today and the same books are about fifty years old and genuinely difficult to find in decent shape. So many of them were flipped and passed around, tucked into back pockets, left in the bathroom to mildew and mould, or used to roll joints on (the latter custom being extremely hard on the covers, as you might well imagine). I wish I still had mine, but that’s the common regret that comes from parting with anything. I think you will see very good auction results for Undergrounds in nice shape, and that’s a lovely copy of Fritz the Cat!
Walt, that WWBN is scary good looking. I bought a Daredevil #1 at auction years ago that had a copy of the cover wrapped around a generic 60’s FF issue. Fortunately I raised hell and the auction house refunded my money. At least this seller was honest with this listing and said it was a repo but I can see where this can turn into a hairy issue.
I noted that the repros of all the big bronze keys are appearing on eBay, I report them as soon as I see them. Once a reproduction goes into the community it gets traded and gains a air of legitimacy until it’s graded, then the last in the chain of owners gets the burn. Infringement on legal rights. full stop…and with that book being produced by Marvel as a facsimile there is no valid reason for someone to want to own that other than to scam others in my opinion.
I see sales of not only comics but the repo covers at various prices all over eBay. Sometimes you have to wade thru 20-30 of these just to get to a real comic!
I have a stack of undergrounds that I tried to sell ten or 12 years ago and didn’t get one bite… and I was selling cheap!
While I was disappointed with Bernie Wrightson leaving Swamp Thing in the 70’s…there was no hating done on Nestor Redondo’s work… he was s master… loved his work!
Yeah guys, I don’t like these repo things one bit, as Spider notes, no good can come of this.
Gerald, try those undergrounds on eBay in the coming weeks, I’m told there is demand, try a couple to test the waters.
It would be interesting if Underground Comics finally come into their own. I sold them in the 1970s at cover price through my lists and catalogs and took them to comic shows, so I know them all very well. Over the years I’ve accumulated a lot of them, many more than I have sold. I’ve always found the market is very, very soft for all but a handful of titles: the earliest Crumbs, some of the Corbens, Vaughn Bode has started to get some traction. I just had a box full at the recent Portland Rose City show and, as usual, had very little interest.
I’d be thrilled to hear they are finally catching on. There is a lot of dreck, but it does seem a bit silly that so many good ones still go begging at $10, $15, $20, $30 in nice shape. I sent my buddy’s Zap #1 first printing into Heritage many years ago, and it set a new high at the time, fetched $4200 if I remember the number correctly. Graded and slabbed, of course. Too bad it wasn’t on commission, but he was a good friend. I know I have one packed away somewhere, hope it’s a nice as his copy was…
Funny, I have the exact Fritz image in a wonderful lithograph print signed by Crumb. I bought a bunch of signed lithos about ten years ago, from a collector who was moving, and that was the one image that I just could not let go. The rest were a tough sell, took a long time to move them on, even signed and all. Had a bunch of smaller unsigned ones, still high quality lithos, very tough to move even at $150 or $200; the larger ones went for $500-$1000. My Fritz litho is framed but sitting on the floor, looking for non-existant wall space. And in the right place, since it’s a bit in your face for a few of our visitors. But so classic! My buddy Ken Sanders (Cosmic Aerplane, now Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City) got pick of the litter on the other lithos and bought Crumb’s Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin, the cover Crumb did for their LP. It’s another classic, even more than the Fritz I probably should have kept it, but you know how that is. I can see it when I visit him.
The Fritz stories from that book you show also came out as a set of three three oblong about 4×9 softcovers, those are fun and pretty uncommon. The early editions of your book and Head Comics, again, don’t command big prices. So much of it has been reprinted ad nauseum over the years, so it’s plentiful if you just want to read it. It took me some time to flip a couple of the original books on MyComicShop, starting at $200 and slowly coming down on my price until they sold.
Nestor Redondo was consider the grand master of the Filipino artists, by all the rest of the younger (back then) guys, like Alex Nino, Tony Dezuniga, Alfredo Alcala, who I got to know pretty well, etc. They all considered Nestor best of the best.