Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
It’s time for another update from BIFF SOCKO, TWO-FISTED NEWSHOUND. Biff Socko covers Comic Book News like zits on the A-V Club. Faster than Perry White! Stronger than J. Jonah Jameson! Hotter than Cat Grant. He is…BIFF SOCKO!
One of the most interesting things about walking away from this great hobby of ours, which is what I did between 1992 and 2002, is finding out what you missed when you return. Both positive and negative.
Avengers #223, Marvel Comics, September 1982 I was pricing up a stack of Avengers recently and like always I basically stopped at issue #200. Anything over #201 in the Avengers run has always gone straight to the bargain bins. Now…
With the release of Thor: The Dark World, Marvel introduced to us their new ident. Without getting too deep, an ident is basically an animated logo that, as the name suggests, help to identify a product, service or the company itself.
Did you catch Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe on TV last week? In case you missed it, let me recap very quickly. It was essentially a State-of-the-Union address from Marvel Studios, explaining how the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to be, how we got to today, and where it is going into the future. All 3 waves of Marvel films were summarized, as well as the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show and the Marvel One-Shots (the special features on the Marvel Blu-Rays).
It was exceptional television. Except for one thing...
A gathering of wonderful art spotted by yours truly these last few days.
Pie. Oh ya, that is right, this interview starts with pie. I sat down with Marcus To at Wanda’s Pie in the Sky in Kensington Market. After picking out our favourite slices, we sat down and chewed on some pie and talked about Marcus’ career.
A new ongoing collection of Frank King's Gasoline Alley colour Sundays, collecting the first two years of Walt and Skeezix in an excellent introductory volume.
It’s that time of year again when Canadian golden age creators are considered for inclusion in the Joe Shuster Awards Canadian Comic Book Hall of Fame. Certainly an august constellation of creators but who are the two additions that should be inducted this year?
All that talk last week in Undervalued Spotlight about Amazing Spider-Man #37 and the importance of how it fits into the history of Spider-Man got me thinking and asking the question. Why isn't the Spectacular Spider-Man #2 magazine more in demand.
Journey into Mystery #85, Marvel Comics, October 1962. Last Saturday evening my kid decides we should all watch Thor 2; I wanted to watch the Habs/Senators game. So Thor 2 starts and I kind of like it, I actually thought it was better than the first one. Near the end of the movie my kid mumbles something like “I really like Loki, he’s smart and crafty”. Woah!
There's been a lot of buzz on the "inter-webs" this week about comic book television. It has all come about because of the release of images of the costume for the new TV series "The Flash".
It’s St.Patrick's Day. The only day of the year when the world goes green, and actually means it. We all want to be Irish today and if we’re not, we can pretend we are and go to the pub to celebrate anyway. All this green gets me thinking, not about money, but about comics, and a question. Why are all of Spider-Mans villains costumes green?
A gathering of wonderful art spotted by yours truly these last few days.
Recently, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival Marvel announced some additional features that will be coming to its Unlimited service, most notably the use of sound effects and additional DVD-like commentary as you read. This expands on their Augmented Reality (AR) app that can be used to access additional features while reading a paper copy.
SelfMadeHero's third H.P. Lovecraft adaptation by I.N.J. Culbard, The Shadow Out Of Time is another smashing success.
This week Comic Culture hosts Chris Owen and Walter Durajlija chew the cud on all kinds of comic book related stuff, movies, conventions, toys and of course comics too.
As always they are joined by producer Shekky Feldstein!
Hey and the tunes are back!
I was set up at ComiCon this year and so I thought I'd share with everyone what I sold over the 3 days. I know some people are curious and this insight might help them decide if they would like to set up themselves.
The Wing was the creation of John G. Hilkert and first appeared in Joke Comics No. 4 (Sept./Oct. 1942) as the Wing, but if we look closely we can find an appearance of a character (not costumed or super powerful) named Trixie Rogers in a text story written by Hilkert and art by Murray Karn in Dime Comics 5 called “Death Casts a Vote” a couple of months before she put on the costume in Joke Comics.
Last weekend was the Toronto ComiCon. Now I realize this site is read by people from all over the world, and if you have been following the posts here the last few days, a lot has been said about it already. So I will leave it at that except to say I was there looking for raw comics in particular but I was looking for one CGC graded book as well.
Amazing Spider-Man #37, Marvel Comics, June 1966. Recently I've been receiving some strong Spotlight suggestions from Juan from Rochester N.Y. These are good solid picks he’s sending in, I’m lucky he doesn't want to start up a website.