Week 22: Late May Mix
No obvious theme today, just happy it’s hot out and that comic shops are back open (in Ontario at least). I’m not familiar with Steve Kirkel, but his splash from This Magazine is Haunted #21 (1954) caught my eye. I…
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Read MoreWeek 22: Late May Mix
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…
Week 21: Brides
Last week I should have been on the outskirts of Belgrade, Serbia for my cousin’s daughters wedding. This whole pandemic thing had them postpone, new date yet to be set. I missed the wedding so I thought I’d compensate… I…
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…
Week 20: More Marvel Keys and Some Tonic
It’s been almost three months since my I highlighted the splash pages from early Marvel keys. Today I’ll add the next three keys chronologically. Showing only three will allow us to add some variety into the post and it will…
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,…
The Gamut of Comic Creators at Sheridan College in the 1970s
As a child growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I was innocently unaware of the fact that many of the cartoons that I watched were produced in Canada. Companies like Nelvana, Atkinson Film-Arts, Cinar and later Mainframe Entertainment and…
Week 19: Don’t Mention It
This week I thought I’d highlight the artists that the commentors mentioned on this week’s ‘Time to Collect: Artists’ post. Gene Colan came up in the discussion, we were disputing whether he is a truly great cover artist. I know…
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…
Week 18: Throw me a Bone
Bone was one of the best comics I’ve ever read, I highly recommend it for all ages. Jeff Smith amazes with this page below using that lightning strike to great effect. One Smith deserves another, Barry Windsor-Smith does stellar work…
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…
Week 17: My First Mag Splash
I did a Time To Collect post on magazines early this week so I thought I’d lead with some art from a mag. Rudy Nebres does stellar work on the splash page for Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #16, page…
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…
Week 16: Here and There
This week I just aimlessly let my thoughts go just to see where they would take me. I’ve always loved Howard Chaykin, he gives us some high quality pre-stylized Chaykin in this splash from Detective Comics #441. Some week’s ago…
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…
Death and taxes
Benjamin Franklin once said (in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le-Roy) that, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” This famous idiom has been used to the point of becoming cliché, but it still…
Week 15: Staying Strong
I hope everyone is doing well, staying healthy and staying sane. I thought I’d try a visualized tour of our current plight. With his beyond excellent splash to Giant-Size Man-Thing #5 Frank Brunner sums up the way most of us…
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…
Week 14: Anything Goes
No April Fools prank from me today, just some good clean splashing around. Oh and one other thing, I’m trying to keep Making a Splash a spur of the moment post, I want to try and feel the moment each…
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…