The Other Woman: John G. Hilkert’s The Wing

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.

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Raw, Raw, Raw!

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.

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Toronto ComiCon 2014: Saturday

Toronto ComiCon is done for another year. The vendors have packed up and headed home. Convention goers are busy reading those comics they found, or setting up those brand new action figures. And everybody is planning for Fan Expo in August.

I was able to attend the ComiCon on Saturday only. Unfortunately my schedule didn't allow for me to be there the other two days. But I think I was able to get good insight on the show, even with just attending that one day.

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Captain Canuck Panel

Panelists: Fadi Hakim, Richard Comely, Paul Gardner, Dean Henry, Mike Valiquette, Kalman Andrasofszky, George Zotti.

The panel started with a viewing of the Captain Canuck web-series in its entirety. The web-series is an animated adventure that introduces (or re-familiarizes) Canada with their very own hero Captain Canuck. You can catch the series on the Captain Canuck website.

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Storm by Dave Cockum. Source: http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=753692

The Gender Gap In Comics

For me, this forty percent figure exaggerates the actual percentage of women comic book readers. My own experiences from attending Comic Cons and comic book stores in Vancouver would put the figure more at about twenty percent of comic book readers being women. The comic book industry is still largely dominated by men.

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“Lost Heroes” Premiere

Overall the documentary was a slick and informative effort. It reminded me a little of the recent PBS Superheroes three-parter because it made heavy use of talking heads in front of green screen projections. This allowed the film itself to take on a sense of comic book levity and healthy self-deprecation. A comic book doc has to be heavy on graphics from the books themselves and this one didn’t let us down in that respect.

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Restored Grade CGC

The thought of Restored Grade , also known as the dreaded "Purple Label", has been known to make an avid comic collector or two, shudder, when they receive the assigned grade on a CGC submission. Nothing makes you want to raise your fist to the heavens , and scream NOOOO!!! like getting a great grade only to have the dreaded purple label.

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Undervalued Spotlight #192

Dazzler #1, Marvel Comics, March 1981. I’m pricing up books for the upcoming Toronto Comic Con and ran into a nice batch of X-Men. There was a sweet copy of issue #130 in there and I had to pick it up and thumb through it. I remember this book coming out and me being a bad boy rock and roller at the time I remember I hated the character.

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