Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
This week I thought I’d double the fun by highlighting a comic book with two great splash pages by two great artists. Silver Surfer #4, Page 3 – John Buscema. I’m gonna come out and say that this is one…
I hope everyone is safe and healthy and practicing their social distancing responsibly. Right now we need to keep up our mental health as well as our physical health so I thought I’d post something positive that looks forward to…
A great comic provided by Image; check if your local comic shop is still servicing customers!
This week I’m paying tribute to St. Patrick’s Day and to the spirit of the Fighting Irish. I only know one Irish song and it goes something like this; “we drink and we fight – and we drink and we…
It seems the whole world has been turned upside down with this Covid 19 virus and my thoughts are with everyone and their health and safety. Let’s take the necessary precautions and let’s put all our efforts and energies into…
J.H. Williams III shows off his artistic range and skills in the pages of the new Gallery Edition of THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE, written by Neil Gaiman. Williams’ original art for the entire book has been meticulously scanned at high resolution for its…
March 8th was International Women’s Day and I really should have put this post up last week so apologies. There are some great female comic artists that I’ll be featuring all year long but this week lets reserve all the…
Honestly, I’m not even sure how valid my observation is this week. I’m doing it by feel, this is the way I feel about the subject and I’ve somehow morphed this feeling and lack of awareness into a full-blown summation…
One of my guilty pleasures has long been magic. One of the oldest performing arts in the world, there is something about magic (be it illusion, stage magic, close-up magic and even mentalism) that find both extremely entertaining and intellectually…
My mind is all over the place this week so I thought it best if the splash pages were all over the place as well. Yowzers! This splash from Hangman #3 is just nasty. Comics.org has Mort Leav and John…
Covers! While the number one driver of comic book demand and value is and will remain character introductions (I have some posts coming on that topic too) there is no denying that cover appeal is the second biggest comic value…
Original Art: Daniel Clowes turns the spotlight on one of the medium’s most dynamic creators. A vital entry of the Fantagraphics Studio Edition series, this volume draws from Clowes’s nearly 30 years of comics art, ranging from his seminal one-man anthology, Eightball (in which Ghost World was originally serialized), to his most…
As comic collectors, we’ve all seen the covers to these Marvel keys featured below. I did a thought exercise and I couldn’t visualize even one of these splash pages in my head. I was close on a couple of the…
As many of you know, this column began seven years ago as part of my attempt to focus a newly minted retirement on something both interesting and challenging, albeit perhaps trivial in comparison to the struggles we all face daily…