News From Comic Con

Well, another year and another San Diego Comic Con has come and gone. With it brought a deluge of announcements on new projects, movies, tv shows, video games, and comic books. Some of the announcements were pretty obvious, and others caught me by surprise. Here, in no particular order, are the things that I was excited to hear about.
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TAS: Masks, Calories, and Beavers

In late 1944, Steele seemed to have come up with the idea of doing cut-out masks of a few of the lead Bell characters on the inside covers of some of the Bell Features books. We modern collectors look back somewhat aghast on this because, just like Bell’s placement of cut-out coupons in similar locations, it must have led to wanton disfigurement of many of these books, but such were the ways of the world back then towards something that was seen as ultimately disposable and easily remaindered. Steele signed these "fathead" portraits with his shortened monogram "TAS."
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Review | Mike Mignola’s Hellboy In Hell and Other Stories Artist’s Edition

Well designed and produced, Mike Mignola's Hellboy In Hell And Other Stories Artist's Edition has a major flaw. I gleefully opened my copy, enjoying each page as I flipped through the table of contents and indicia beautifully designed by Randy Dahlk. I landed on the first page of Hellboy In Hell and noticed there was not text. Then I flipped to the next page and saw no text. Skimmed the full 110 pages of Hellboy In Hell story and there is no text.
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Undervalued Spotlight #207

Legends #3, DC Comics, January 1987. The Suicide Squad made its first appearance back in September 1959 in Brave and the Bold #25. BB #25 is a great comic to own and very undervalued at its 9.2 guide value of $1,800. The book is a tough find though, it rarely comes up for auction so this week, rather than send you out on a mission impossible, I thought I’d lighten it up and send you after a book with potentially way more upside, at the very least it will be much easier, much more fun and much much cheaper to hunt down.
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Canada’s Own Comics: a WECA database

Today is the launch day of our modest attempt to set up an online database of Canadian comic books from the WECA period (1941-46), better known to collectors as The Canadian Whites, at canadasowncomics.com. We were approached early on in our project to avoid the difficulty of creating an online index of these comics from scratch and simply upload our information to the Grand Comics Database. However, we felt it of utmost importance that the first real indexing of these comics be based in Canada. I’m sure that the information we put up there (and remember that this is the first real setting down of comprehensive data about a unique, rare, and arcane set of comic books) will often have holes and need amendment and tweaking, but this first effort is important. I’m sure that a lot of our information will be mined by sites such as the Grand Comics Database, I just hope that whoever ends up using our findings as published material will link back to our site or, at least, credit their find appropriately.
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Toronto Comic Book Show Report

On July 6th I had the opportunity to attend the Toronto Comic Book Show (TCBS) for the first time. This was the second TCBS after its inaugural show in May. You won’t see any cosplay or signings at TCBS—the show’s organizers are 100% focused on serving those who just want to get their hands on books (both raw and graded). The admission person I spoke with said they expected over 400 people throughout the day. While that’s a far cry from some of the bigger Toronto shows or US shows, it’s a pretty respectable number considering TCBS is a collector-first show.
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Con Bravo 2014 – Saturday

On Saturday I attended Con Bravo. It is a show I haven't been to before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Con Bravo is the "Festival Celebrating Everything Geek" and the focus of the show is "indie media, gaming, and cosplay". Unfortunately I do not follow the indie scene, so I was at a loss when it came to the special guests and panels that were featured at the show. But the convention goers were going nuts for the guests. There were long lines waiting to interact with the celebrities. Which is the real focus when it comes to the celebrities at Con Bravo - the personal interaction with the convention goers.
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RONIN (revisited), Part One

In 1986, at the height of the 80's comic boom, DC comics published Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (DKR). If you were to ask any comic fan which books are considered to be the “best” the medium has to offer, these two titles would top most lists, even today. Terms like “best” or “great” are blanket expressions of course. They are meant to communicate affection but in reality are kind of meaningless. There are so many genres, tastes and interests that any meaningful response should be more specific. As well, comics have such a long history..., to continually reference the same books over and over and over again, I feel does a disservice to all the other “great” stories out there. But, I do find it very curious how amongst all the great stories, amongst all the many fickle tastes… how is it that these two stories are universally appreciated?
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Shaking Things Up at Marvel

The comic book world is still spinning from the news this week that Marvel is shaking things up a bit, and changing some of their major characters. Originally I was going to write this article about the power of Thor being transferred from Thor to a new female character. That is a column within itself. But this week we hear more news that the mantle of Captain America is being passed from Steve Rogers, to his friend and ally Sam Wilson.
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